Homeschool record keeping fears can be eliminated!
"I am so afraid of homeschooling my high schooler next year. I don't think I can keep up with all the record keeping that will be required. Any help he would greatly appreciate because he doesn't want to go to public school and that is where my thoughts are heading toward."
~ Kim on Facebook
Nothing educational needs to change when your child starts
homeschooling high school! The only difference is that you want to somehow keep a running total of what your child has done. That "running total" is called a transcript. It's helpful to create a transcript and a reading list. Once you are comfortable with that, consider making course descriptions.
Making a transcript is like riding a bicycle. Once you have learned how, it always seems easy and you never have to learn how to do it again. You don't have to learn it again for each of your 8 children, you only have to learn it once. None of the record keeping tasks (transcripts, reading list, or course descriptions) is particularly difficult. It just takes a little effort to learn how, and then it's easy.
When I wrote my book on high school record keeping, I did it with mothers like Kim in mind. I wanted to make sure to explain it in the simplest and easiest way possible. My book is called Setting the Records Straight: How to Craft Homeschool Transcripts and Course Descriptions for College Admission and Scholarships. About 1/3 of the book is from my ebook called "The Easy Truth About Homeschool Transcripts." About 1/3 of the books is a section about how to make course descriptions. About 1/3 of the book is just samples of homeschool records and course descriptions, including my complete homeschool plus records from two other moms who were also successful. I really do try to make it sound as easy as possible!
The Total Transcript Solution can help you even more, particularly if you are in a hurry, if you prefer ebooks, or if you are a visual learner who does best with webinars or videos. It has four steps: an class on Making a Transcript, an ebook on transcripts that you can print or read on your computer, a complete set of transcript templates so you can choose the one that looks prettiest to you, and one month of support from weekly 20 minute consultations with me. So even if you're scared, you can get help!
I promise, there is nothing scary about homeschool record keeping! You can do it!
