We originally homeschooled through a charter school. They did testing, supplied the books, and had a record-keeping system. The following year, I liberally borrowed from their system when we began homeschooling on our own. I have described this system so many times, that I figured it was time to put it on my website so this is the last time I have to say this!
I found a skills check list by grade level for the state we live in. Twice a year, I would read through the skills they were expected to have for that grade level, check off what I knew they had mastered, orally quiz them (if possible -- or observe them for a week or so) on things I wasn't sure about, and then I made a list of goals for the things I knew they had not mastered and were having trouble with. This was the first step in my planning process and the notes I made became the basis for planning the curriculum for the next six months.
We homeschool year-round. We did year-round school with the charter school and that worked better for our kids than a 'regular' school year. Because they are twice exceptional, they tended to forget a lot over the summer. Additionally, they would get really burned out during the school year. With a year-round schedule, we take a shorter summer vacation of about 4 to 6 weeks, we usually take the entire month of December off for Christmas break, my kids get a school day off any time my husband gets a day off from work for a federal holiday (he is military and the "holidays" he is granted tend to line up pretty well with the ones the public school system takes off), and we usually do a 3 week spring break. I have been pursuing my college education part-time while homeschooling, so we typically start spring break a week or two before my spring break starts and that gives me a breather during finals week for that quarter.
The "straw that broke the camel's back" was not that my kids are gifted nor that they are learning disabled. The real reason was my oldest son's health problems that were not properly diagnosed until after we had been homeschooling for almost 3 years.
I found a skills check list by grade level for the state we live in. Twice a year, I would read through the skills they were expected to have for that grade level, check off what I knew they had mastered, orally quiz them (if possible -- or observe them for a week or so) on things I wasn't sure about, and then I made a list of goals for the things I knew they had not mastered and were having trouble with. This was the first step in my planning process and the notes I made became the basis for planning the curriculum for the next six months.
We homeschool year-round. We did year-round school with the charter school and that worked better for our kids than a 'regular' school year. Because they are twice exceptional, they tended to forget a lot over the summer. Additionally, they would get really burned out during the school year. With a year-round schedule, we take a shorter summer vacation of about 4 to 6 weeks, we usually take the entire month of December off for Christmas break, my kids get a school day off any time my husband gets a day off from work for a federal holiday (he is military and the "holidays" he is granted tend to line up pretty well with the ones the public school system takes off), and we usually do a 3 week spring break. I have been pursuing my college education part-time while homeschooling, so we typically start spring break a week or two before my spring break starts and that gives me a breather during finals week for that quarter.
The "straw that broke the camel's back" was not that my kids are gifted nor that they are learning disabled. The real reason was my oldest son's health problems that were not properly diagnosed until after we had been homeschooling for almost 3 years.
So we are very liberal about taking "sick days" as well. I am very flexible about when schoolwork gets done. We set out what has to be done for the week, not for the day, and my kids are now old enough to mostly manage their own time. I still have to sit down and work with them for some subjects (like algebra) and my husband and I critique their work, check to see that reading assignments are done, and so forth. But even when they were younger and I was more directly involved every day, I was very flexible about how much got done on a specific day. If they didn't finish things by Friday night, they had "homework" over the weekend. If they did finish all goals by Friday night, their weekends were their own. Any real crises got them "exemptions" from this rule. Having a little cold for a day or two did not count as a "real crisis".
We either filled out these work sheets (below) on the computer when planning ahead -- filling in the specific subjects our kids were going to study as well as which resources they were intended to use -- and then used a highlighter to mark off when we finished something, or we printed them off blank and simply wrote in whatever got done. Each block was intended to represent about an hour of time but I quickly discovered that the one-on-one tutoring of homeschooling was too intense for that. As a general rule, you can expect to spend about 3 to 4 hours a day on "formal academics" with elementary school kids. Then, just like the school, you will do lunch, recess, and so forth -- and, before you know it, the day will be over.
In addition to the formal stuff you find at school, I went through the house and assessed every computer program, book, educational TV show, and so on that they might do during the week. A lot of the 'good stuff' they did for enjoyment ended up being recorded on our blank sheets.
We either filled out these work sheets (below) on the computer when planning ahead -- filling in the specific subjects our kids were going to study as well as which resources they were intended to use -- and then used a highlighter to mark off when we finished something, or we printed them off blank and simply wrote in whatever got done. Each block was intended to represent about an hour of time but I quickly discovered that the one-on-one tutoring of homeschooling was too intense for that. As a general rule, you can expect to spend about 3 to 4 hours a day on "formal academics" with elementary school kids. Then, just like the school, you will do lunch, recess, and so forth -- and, before you know it, the day will be over.
In addition to the formal stuff you find at school, I went through the house and assessed every computer program, book, educational TV show, and so on that they might do during the week. A lot of the 'good stuff' they did for enjoyment ended up being recorded on our blank sheets.
Any written or typed work could be stapled to the weekly progress report or, if everything has a date written on it, filed behind it in the folder we kept for each child. I had an additional folder for "administrative" requirements for homeschooling legally -- shot records, physicals, the paperwork we filed with the county to be legal, and so forth. That is where I also kept my skills check list, curriculum plan for the semester, and similar materials.
I no longer have the original spreadsheet I used. This Google Sheets link is an attempt to give you some idea of what it looked like. I made it fit a single page exactly when printed with boxes big enough to write in.
Typing is an example of a special subject they were required to pursue for a time and that last box changed periodically. I required typing practice ten minutes a day until they hit 35 WPM because they both have dysgraphia and everything is on computers these days, so if you can type it's largely irrelevant that your handwriting is terrible and you hate old fashioned physical writing.
You should add the name of the child and the dates or date range somewhere. I don't know where I was putting that information. I no longer have copies of the originals and both my kids are in their thirties. It's been a lot of years.