Should I keep old Curriculum for my Homeschool Records?

Hi everyone! I feel totally lost as to how to keep school records that are connected with large curriculum sets! I know I want to be able to have proof of what I have taught my children in case I ever need that for anything in the future, but I am not sure how to do that in the best way. I live in Peru, but we try and stick to Texas laws since we are originally from there, and we feel we will most likely be back there after Peru in a few more years, so I am sometimes a bit unsure of how to keep up with my records since I do not technically have anyone asking about them now/yet. I use Sonlight, so I have been marking the date and my children’s initials in the instructor’s guide on each week’s page. But by the time my youngest 2 are old enough for our current curriculum, I feel there will have been updates made and I might be inclined to get the updated IG. Does this make sense? I am just unsure, do I sell this curriculum so it isn’t cluttering up my home, or do I keep it for records purposes? Should I just keep the Scope and Sequence? I appreciate any help or advice on what you all have done!

@alison.thompson.peru I would keep the following:

Scope & Sequence page(s)
Name of curriculum (book title)
Name of publisher
Date published.

Do that for each of the curricula used.

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@KathiJohnson Thank you. You certainly made it seem simple. :slight_smile: I appreciate your thoughts.

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I like how this one mama does it:

If I remember correctly, she mentions in her video about saving the Scope and Sequence and things of that sort, so that might give you some more direction. Hope this helps!

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I would not keep old curriculum just to prove what you did. I like the idea of keeping the scope/sequence page. I’m in a state that doesn’t require record-keeping. When my kids were in 8th and under, I generally just kept artwork or writings I couldn’t bear to part with, and a list of what we had done for each subject. Sometimes I kept my schedules for a year and then recycled them.

In High School, I kept a few more things:

a course description for each subject (often a paragraph copied & pasted from a curriculum website–I can always rewrite it later if I need to send it somewhere, but I have the info handy at least)

a list of all resources used–books read, movies watched, field trips/activities, etc…

a list of test scores and papers written. Usually their papers were on the computer, so I would have something representative to show if I needed to. If you have a scanner, you could scan a few things if you were concerned you might have to show something. Some people keep a portfolio with a sample from each subject, so that’s an option too.

Here’s one site on Texas record-keeping: https://www.thsc.org/home-school-resources/recordkeeping/

Other things you might not normally think of are things like immunizations. If you do any kind of standardized testing, keep those records. If you have kids who have done any kind of evaluation for learning disabilities, keep those (and if they haven’t been evaluated but you suspect disabilities, keep a record of ways that you accommodate them–it’s very helpful to have this later on, both as you seek an eval, and if you seek formal accommodations for standardized testing.)

Here’s what HSLDA says–this is more than I kept, but might give you food for thought:
https://www.hslda.org/earlyyears/Records.asp

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Thank you! I appreciate the video, @GC123

@MommaReck Thanks for such great information and thoughts. Lots to consider. I feel this gives me some direction.