How to Keep Home School Templates

Documentation is very important for homeschooled students. Like all students, whether in public or private school, homeschooled students must keep good school records. Using templates saves a lot of time and aggravation when preparing documents to send to the local superintendent and when gathering information to create a transcript. Here are proven guidelines for how to keep homeschool templates.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Word software
• Homeschool guidelines for your state

Instructions

1. 

   Type in Microsoft Word the document that you need to create. This document will serve as your template for all future documents of the same type. There are many documents that may be required by your local superintendent, such as a Letter of Intent, Individualized Home Instruction Plan (IHIP), Quarterly Report, Assessment Results and any others that you choose to write up and keep for yourself. These created documents will serve as your templates for your homeschool.

2. 

   Create a file in Microsoft Word and title it “Homeschool.” Under this folder, create a subfolder and title it according to what the document is for. For example, if your document is a quarterly report, then label it so.

3. 

   Name your document in more detail under the subfolder. For example, if your document is a quarterly report for Caleb, grade 9, 2008/2009, then label it so. You will use this document as a template for a second child or for the next quarter.

4. 

   Pull up that same document and change the information to reflect a second child’s information for that quarter. When you save the document, be careful to use the “Save As” command and change the name under the subfile to that of the new child--for example, "Ashley Grade 8 2008/2009."

5. 

   Burn these templates on a CD in case your computer gets a virus or acts up on you. You will be very thankful that you did. These templates save you so much time because all you need to do is replace the information that is inside the templates.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure to proofread your information.

• Use Microsoft Word’s Copy and Paste functions to quickly fill in your template.

Resources

• How to Maintain and Organize Homeschool Records
• Homeschool portfolio examples