One More Thing... (end of year portfolios)

I had thought my next post would be about our first week of school, but I was thinking about our portfolios yesterday and decided I would share how we do them. So, I'm backtracking to the end of May when our school year ended. (See what happens when you don't blog for awhile?)

Living in Texas, we are not required to keep any sort of paperwork. However, I think most homeschooling parents want to keep a record of the year. The problem is deciding what to keep, what to toss, and how to put it together in a way that will stay together.

I originally wanted to make a really nice bound book, but knew that if I waited for the "perfect" method, it wouldn't get done. I also found a couple of 3-ring binders that were the right size and, since I already had them, free!

So, what's in our portfolios? It's really simple, people. Done is better than perfect, right? Right.

• - Final grades as figured in Homeschool Tracker. I only take grades in a few subjects, so it's a pretty short list.
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• - Scope and Sequence Report, also from HST. This is one thing I love about HST. I use the "topic" field when I make assignments. S&S uses that field to make a list of everything we've studied that year. One bonus is I easily get a list of all the books we've read during the year. Love that!
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• - Quizzes and tests from CLE Reading, Math, and R&S Grammar. I threw out all the daily worksheets because I just want a snapshot of what they learned
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• - Science worksheets. We didn't do test in science last year, so I included the worksheets. If we had, I would probably have just included the tests and experiments.
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• - History notebook pages. We kind of fell of the notebook pages wagon once we started TOG (my fault, not TOG's), but I included the ones we did.
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• - Maps. Any mapping assignments we did during the year
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• - Other various writing assignments. Our writing usually centers around history and is made into notebook pages. We did have a few assignments that are not, though, so I included them as well. (not shown in slideshow)
  

We did not do many projects this past year. The kids weren't that interested and I didn't push it. If we did, though, I would have either included photos of the projects, or scanned and reduced copies. You can have the latter done at places like Kinko's if they are over-sized.

Like I said, it's simple. But, I'm happy to have it done. If you make portfolios at the end of the year, please leave a comment so I can see how you do yours.