Documenting

I do not harbor hostility for the State of California.  If I can forget that it has been illegally skimming the top off my husband’s paycheck for over a year, I harbor even less of the non-existent hostility for the State of California.  Even so, it is an entity for which I hold little trust.

I was always taught when dealing with bureaucracy to document, document, document—it really isn’t bad advice in dealing with certain individuals, either.  The other thing I have learned is to give no more than is legally required.  What you will provide can be used against you!

By California law, I must teach all the standard public school subjects and keep attendance.   If I ever were to have to turn over proof of my homeschooling, it would only be the attendance I would submit.  (The subjects covered would go to my lawyers.)

With all that in mind, I have been on the hunt for a good book to use for documenting our school.   I have been using Homeschool Tracker, which is an awesome program, but I am doing this weird convoluted thing with it this year that precludes me from using it for attendance.  I have a notebook logging our actual work, but nothing that holds our attendance exclusively.

In my search, I found lots of great books that are predated or show only weekdays.  Since we started school in October and school can happen seven days a week, these options simply aren’t options for us.  I have found that generally homeschool record keepers don’t have set-apart attendance pages, and institutional record keepers provide attendance for 36 kids.  Everything required modification.

I realized that I was really looking for a chart.  So, I opened up Word and made one!  I am so jazzed and a little embarrassed that it was so easy.  Now I have a year’s worth of attendance ready to be recorded.

If you’d like to look at it to see how easily you can create something similar, check it out.  KidsROCK Academy also offers a full consulting program, if you’d like help with other aspects of your school year—though, I guess this could be seen as a cautionary tale.  Unless you choose to look at it as a demonstration of our diligence to never give up!