How I Organize for County Homeschool Reviews
Where I’m located, part of the homeschool requirements with the county is a review of the materials during the fall and spring to show the work that has been completed during those times. The requirement is that you show 3-5 pieces of “proof” for each of the main subjects and the specials. Proof can be photos, videos, copies of grades from an online program you’re using, print-outs of workbook pages, writing entries or artwork. We are very lucky with where we live that they are somewhat “loose” in their requirements: i.e. no testing is needed. Keeping our fingers crossed that it remains this way.. But when you’re working with 4-6 months of work you’ve done with your child, and in many cases multiple children, it’s easy to get disorganized and cause yourself to have much more work to do around the review time than you really should need to do. So for those who have questions about homeschooling or who are preparing for their first review, here’s my advice on what to do!
Keep your work organized. Personally, with two school age kids, I keep two accordian files. These are great - grab one for each kid! But I’m not organized every day enough to take the work directly from the kid then place it in their individual folder. It sounds easy enough, right, but I bet some of you know how quickly the day can move from one thing to another that by the end of the day or week you just have a stack of books and papers. I have a document holder for my desk that I stick everything in and where they stay until they don’t fit anymore, then they move over to the kids’ accordian files. That may be too many steps, just know we aren’t all super organized every single day like you may see other places.
So it’s in the folders - now what?
Make a List: ELA, math, science, social studies, music, PE, etc. What are the required subjects? Now list what you’ve done in each. To do this, you may want to go through your planner, your lesson plans, the items in your folder now and of course, the pictures on your phone! Start in the month of the last review, or when you began homeschooling, and move to the present. Start a new album on your phone and begin dropping photos in there. More than one kid? More than one album!
It’s always interesting to me to see what the girls have done or the places we’ve gone and see which subject they fall into. So a field trip to an art gallery? Obviously art, but could also be social studies and history. Aquarium? Science. A local farm to pick pumpkins? Science - talking about growing - but for littles it could be math, to compare sizes or circumference and other measurements for older kids. My advice, make it fit. Anything you do, fit it into the curriculum. You are working hard to keep your days filled and your kids educated. Life is education, so these reviews can be bursting at the seams!
So now you’ve found your pictures, you’ve made your list, now what?
Locate any worksheet, writing, notebooks, any hardcopy thing you can show the reviewer. You can flip through your phone or an album on the computer and share your screen. But all I do, and this is truly unnecessary for the review but it makes it so easy the day - of, is I create a Canva Presentation. Think a powerpoint but with cooler fonts, already made layouts and designs you can choose from! Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, start from scratch. Then plug and play. Put your information in, your photos, go by subject and yes, of course “wow” the reviewer, but it organizes your information, documents and your thoughts so that the day of the review, all you have to do is share your screen.
They’ll still ask to see examples of work, so feel free to make it even easier and just scan in the examples of work and add to your presentation! Or have a second PDF doc. My last review had way too much share screen, unshare, share and unshare going on, so next review I’ll have much more scanned it to let it flow better. This allows for more conversation with the reviewer, more time to talk about your kids and how great they are! And ask any questions you might have.
I’ve included some examples of my previous presentations. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t remain organized through the season leading up to the review, you’ll get it all together and make it all make sense. No one wants to see you fail, if anything the reviewers are there to be your guides as much as your child’s advocate, too, ensuring that they and the other students of the county are actually being educated at home. It’s just three proofs of work for each subject, it could be a lot worse. It’s your time to show off all you’ve done, how hard you work and how much your child does!