Keeping Records You Might Actually Need

Assume you might return

Plans change. A job, a grandparent, a child who wants school. The families who struggle are the ones with no record of two years.

Ten minutes a month solves this.

What schools and authorities actually want

Evidence of progress over time, in the child's own hand, dated.

Not lesson plans. Not hours logged. Not a curriculum document.

The four things to keep

A dated writing sample, once a month. Same prompt if you like, so the change is visible.

A dated maths sample, once a month. Whatever they were working on.

A reading list, running, with dates.

A one page term summary. What was covered, in plain sentences, three or four lines per subject.

That is the whole record and it fits in one folder.

Photograph everything else

Projects, models, drawings, the market stall they ran. A dated photo folder is a portfolio and it takes seconds.

Know your own country's rules

This varies enormously and it is worth thirty minutes of research before you go rather than a panic later. Some countries require registration and periodic assessment. Some require nothing. Some make it very hard to leave and re enter the system.

Find out which one you are, from an official source rather than a forum.

What nobody will ever ask for

The hours you did. The lovely photo of the sunset. Your reasons for doing it.

Keep those for yourselves.