Plugged In Homeschool

Record keeping can be a real drag for active homeschoolers who love learning. We know how much we’re learning, but without records, we can’t show anyone else. As one person put it, records are the difference between a homeschooled child and a truant child. While I don’t really agree with that opinion, there is a kernel of truth in it. Good records are the first line of defense if your homeschool should ever be investigated.

With that said, here are directions for making a weekly class chart for record keeping. These directions will be for using Open Office Writer, but the same thing can probably be done on Word with just a few differences.

First open a new text document. A title can be centered on the first line. It can be something like “Jones Family Class Chart” or “Robert’s Records” or whatever your family likes. Make it in 14 or 16 point font and boldface. Times New Roman is a nice font for anything you want to be professional-looking. If you are really a newbie at creating documents, look back in our archives for the Wordpad posts. The techniques – highlighting, choosing buttons, etc. - are similar.

Enter twice and type a place for Name__________ and Week of ______________. (If you didn’t know, you can make blanks to fill in by holding down the underscore key on your keyboard.) Press enter a time or two.

Now find your Table tool. The button has a little grid on it. Click on the little arrow beside it. You will see a little table. Now pull your mouse across it. It will get larger. If you look at the bottom you will see two numbers indicating the size of the table. When you let up off the left mouse button, it will automatically give you a table in your document. If you don’t like it, just go up to your undo button.

A nice size to make your table is 8 x 20. This gives you 7 days of the week across the top and 20 spaces down the side for different subjects. You’ll have room for odd subjects like “cultural literacy,” “home economics,” and the like. Of course, you can skip weekends or use fewer subjects if it works better for you. These are just basic ideas to get you started.

Click on the top left box of the table and type “Classes.” In each box across the top, type in the days of the week. They will automatically center justify. I abbreviated Wednesday to make the chart neater. In the first box of each row going down, type in a subject.

When it looks like you want it, print it off. Each student will need a form like this for each week, but you could make it a two-week or monthly chart just by changing the table size. Experiment and see what you think. If you’re good with the computer, you could add some fun clip art.

Click here to see a sample record-keeping chart. (The actual chart looks much better than this jpg.)