What was the best thing about keeping a record of your home ed, if you did one?

[carolinecordery]

Hi there, yesterday I thought I'd quite like to keep a record of the HE of DC (now 4 and 1).
I think I would like to like it to be a digital document mainly for our own pleasure in reviewing and having the memories, but I also thought it could serve as evidence of provision of education if necessary (and information for DD's non-resident dad).
If I want it to be mainly photos with a little text and a few videos embedded too, is Powerpoint the best software for this or is there a special digital scrapbook/diary software that would be good?
If you kept or are keeping records of your HE activities, for any reason, what sort of details did you find the best to include?

Yesterday and today we were at a playscheme and i found myself suddenly obsessed with getting the right photo and then thinking how I was going to caption it- I don't want to be bogged down in thinking about our record-keeping the whole time we're having our experiences, so will this just lessen as I relax?
Also, some days every 5 minutes there's something that could legitimately be called an educational experience, so am I to try and remember, take notes, write down/photograph all of it? What to concentrate on?

Thank you for your thoughts.

We have yet to start HE but I was wondering about using something like Onenote where you can pull together pictures, websites, music clips, word documents etc.

Oh thank you- after reading about Onenote on Wikipedia I was pleased to discover I already have it installed on my computer!

Another question: both children in one record or separate records for each?

I'm only home educating one this year (no 2 will follow in a year) but I will do separate folders so they can have it as a memento when they're older.

I'm also keeping a HE diary of what we've done - just one liners for my own benefit.

I do somewhat like your idea Helenagrace of having a separate folder to give to each as a memento when they're older but I think if it's all digital, their entries could be separated out into different documents at a later date if that's what we decide we'd prefer, for some purpose.
I'm thinking of the holiday scrapbooks my mum made when we were little and how both me and my brother did drawings to illustrate what had happened that day, and the text described what the whole family thought and had done together- I wouldn't have wanted 'Caroline's Holiday' and 'Nick's Holiday' books. I think it's the same for our HE- lots of activities will be done together, even depend on the DC doing it together, so there would either be repetition in each book or I think I'd have trouble sorting out 'whose' activity/achievement it was. That's in my rosy future vision of sunny days of sibling harmony and cooperation of course!

Hi
I have a big notebook and do it the old fashioned way ;) like a learning diary. I write in each day what we've done, what we've talked about, where we've been, who we've met etc etc. I find it really reassuring to look back and see all the things we've covered. I just don't have the time for taking photos, printing them out etc tho I do know someone who does that.
C x

Toddler's still a toddler (hence the name ) but I have a page-a-day diary that I record things like any crafts we've done, what his favorite toy/game was that day, what was his favorite book (that is, which book did I have to read 27 times in a row), where we went (even if it was just to the grocery store or the pharmacy), if I remember I'll record any new words he comes out with (not so much now but at the start of the year when his vocabulary was exploding) and any cute/funny antidotes that I want to remember.

As well I am snap happy. And with my family back in the US I'm ridiculously snap happy when it comes to Toddler (he's the only grandchild and living over here in the UK means my parents rarely see him in the flesh). I take pictures of him doing activities, crafts, playing, swinging, sleeping, just about anything! I also take pictures of his artwork. All of these I put into digital albums. For example, we recently had caterpillars. I took (and posted) a picture of the caterpillars every day up to and including the butterflies release and labelled them with the date and if anything happened (like, first cocoon, transfer of cocoons to habitat, etc. Just about every day Toddler & I did a different caterpillar or butterfly themed activity/craft so I would take a picture of him working and then one of the final result and would post those as well with explanations of what the project was and the materials used. It's been good for my parents to see what he's doing, good for me to have a record of what we've done and good for Toddler because he likes to look at these pictures on the computer and tell me about them.

there are lots of people who use a blog as a HE journal :)

Yeah, I was going to suggest a blog too. I'm really lazy with mine now, but have had times of being more diligent over the years, and I love re-reading it.