Transcripts and Record keeping for High School

Many homeschool parents get overwhelmed at the thought of keeping records and filling out transcripts. Hopefully this post will take a little fear out of the process. I believe in keeping things relatively simple. So I have one chart that I started for Petunia. It has 4 columns of boxes. One column for each grade year of high school. The rows are for her subjects. Core subjects are first and then the rest of the rows are for electives. Each box is large enough for me to write in. I use this chart to document what books are used for what subject. That way I have a record of what material was used for when on one sheet. This chart stays in my Mom Notebook in the same sheet protector as her transcript. Now, for transcripts. There are many places to download a blank transcript for free. I got ours from our homeschool cover group. I like the ones that have some space to put in extracurricular activities and maybe a little box under each year to write in things like volunteer work or such. These things are just as important on a transcript as grades. I keep a paper copy of this in my mom journal and an electronic copy on my computer. That way I can quickly update the transcript and print a new copy when I update. If you can't find a transcript with a box on the front then you can simply write down dates/grade year and activity on the back of your paper copy. I know a mom who did this and both of her sons are attending the Naval Academy, so it works just fine.

Now, onto record keeping. For each subject Petunia has a folder. After I grade a paper or test then it goes back in the folder. At the end of the year I take all graded assignments, clip them together by subject and put them into their own folder. Any certificates for that year go in this folder as well. Then everything goes into a box labeled with the grade and her name. It takes about 15 minutes to do this and then the school year is complete and I am ready to move onto the next year. If I need to provide records of what she has done for college applications then all I need to do is pull the top folder from each box.

So you see there really is no mystery in record keeping or transcripts. I am sure it can be made more complicated, but I like to keep things simple and easily accessible. Blessings for a happy, drama free school year.