The homeschool law of 2015 means that the school district office will no longer see your logbook. You do NOT turn in your logbook to the school district any more – just my year-end evaluation report. But that also means that as your evaluator I am required by law to make sure that you have a good log-book.
HSLDA recommends that the logbook be sufficient that if a question were raised, you would be able to reasonably “reconstruct” the school day. With all that in mind, I have given more thought to what I would like to see in a logbook.
What am I looking for in the logbook?
- Dates and a sequential labeling of days from 1 to 180+
- Some brief notation of subjects covered each day and topic or page numbers (or some similar notation)
What are some possible formats for the doing the logbook?
- This really depends on your personal management style and I don’t want to dictate anything too specific. I think the best logbook will help YOU as a parent in planning your child’s work, and keeping track of work accomplished. Primarily it has to work for YOU and you are just sharing it with me for a few minutes at the end of the year.
- Some like to use a week-at-glance planner book
- A large calendar may work, but needs the information listed above – not just the 180 days labeled
- I’ve heard good things about software like Homeschool Tracker and Homeschool Sked Track – you can check out their websites to see if that’s a good match for you
- Some have used Excel spreadsheets
Do you have other suggestions I should list here? let me know!