Homeschooling High School: What High School Records Do I Need To Keep?

What high school records do I need to keep is a common question of homeschooling parents. You don't want to have your house over-run with papers, but you strive to be organized and prepared with anything you might need. There are certain things that all homeschool families should have.

Colleges are going to need to see a transcript. A transcript is an necessary thing to have even if your kids aren't going off to college because at some point, somewhere, somehow, somebody will probably ask you for one. Make certain that you have a transcript that includes the course names, the credits and grades.

Often colleges will want to see a reading list, as well. A reading list is just a list of books that your student has read. It is not a reading bibliography. So as long as you have the author's name and the title of the books that you have read you should be just fine.

Many colleges, if not most colleges want to see course descriptions as well. A course description is really just a one paragraph descriptive essay of what you taught in a class. This should not be scary or overwhelming either because a descriptive essay is something that we teach our children how to do starting at fifth grade. It's really just a fifth grade writing assignment. I know that you can do that.

Other types of information that colleges might look for is a little bit more varied. For example, some colleges will ask for samples from a class. I cannot tell you what class it's going to be because each college will ask for something different. What I usually recommend is that people try to keep a few samples from every class.

You will want to keep a wide range of samples. In your math class, you may want to keep math tests, you should keep some science lab write-ups for science classes, and you might keep that paragraph they wrote in French, or their menus and recipes from their culinary arts class. Try to keep something from each class because I was a little surprised at the things that the college admission people were asking me for. It came as a surprise and I was really thankful that I had a sample from each class.