Learning Log

I would like to share with you my secret in homeschooling. I'm the type of person that likes to see progress and I like to have some form of reference for Little-N's learning. Years ago when I was only homeschooling I made a learning log.

In Montessori you don't really plan learning, instead you follow the child's interest and decided on suitable activities by observing the child. I designed this learning log where I note down what Little-N has been doing over the past week. The columns are for the different areas of learning and the rows are for the days of the week. Each time he does an activity I note it down in the correct box. I try to make sure that 3 days don't pass without making sure he has done something in each area [except for those days when he is obsessed with one area of learning]. If I find that he isn't learning in a particular area I look and the materials and see if there is something I can change about them to interest him. Maybe the activity is too easy, maybe he already knows this, it might be to hard or not interesting. I then play around with the 'purpose' of the activity and see if I can find another way of getting Little-N interested in that area. It is important to look at the child's holistic learning every once in a while.

The Learning Log should be made to fit your child's needs, so if you have a 2.5 yr old then add extra columns for 'Grace and Courtesy' and perhaps change literacy to language and then note down language development. For my older children at school I will use a more complex Learning Log that covers the different area's of mathematics [Operations, writing, geometry] and literacy [ Grammar, reading, writing, spelling]. We send these learning Logs to the parents once every 6 weeks.

I can't find a way to easily upload files on my blog so that you can download them. So if you want this Learning Log [1 page] then let me know and I'll be happy to email it.