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Step 1
Download a homeschool record keeping software program. There are several on the market and they each have similar benefits and features. Make sure that you can program your own “school days” (Homeschool Tracker has that option) lesser programs only acknowledge learning that occurs Monday-Friday between 8am and 3pm, as if children's minds automatically switch off after that time.
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Step 2
Try using a notebook printable homeschooling planner and record-keeper. Downloading software isn't an option for everyone, especially if your computer skills aren't what you'd like. Another reason families might not want to use a homeschool record keeping software program would be if they had limited access to a computer during the day, or if they're on the go a lot and using a notebook would be easier. There are websites that offer intuitive daily record keeping planners, listed in the resources here.
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Step 3
Throughout the day, take brief notes of what your child is doing. In kindergarten, for example, a child's natural play and exploration counts as learning time. Playing dress-up is a form of role-playing often used in classroom Social Studies lessons to teach children that people have different jobs and personalities or perhaps that a family has people of all ages or even that a neighborhood is made of people that work and play together. Those are real learning goals for many Kindergarten classes, and as lame as they sound, kids in classrooms are doing worksheets and using textbooks to “be taught” such mind-numbing facts. Let them play, just keep track of it all.
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Step 4
As you're cooking meals, involve your child in the measuring and cutting of foods. This will give them a hands-on application of real life math skills. Even if you can't explain to your kindergartener that a perfect cut “in half” makes two equal portions, you can bet that if he gets the “small half” he'll notice. Keep track of those things. That is learning. As your child gets older and is able to cook on his own, those real-life skills will make the kitchen a math and science lab.
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Step 5
At the end of each day, go over the list of things your child has done all day and turn them into education-speak to be entered into the software program or your notebook. You can go over the ten trips they made to the dress-up box and say “45 minutes role-playing neighborhood helpers” or whatever it was. My smaller kids like to dress as Princesses, so I read them a lot of books about real life princesses, and they're versed in European and Russian royalty from medieval through renaissance times, because they enjoy it.
