Cleaning out the trash from the treasure

For record keeping, I've kept all of our old workbooks in piles, and all of our loose papers stacked in boxes.  After a few years, these things really add up to one big mess!  I spent the weekend sorting through things, trying to pull together a portfolio for each year and each child.  This has been no easy task.  It has been an excellent exercise, however, in seeing what is Educational Trash and what is Educational Treasure.  It has reminded me of an important aspect to curriculum planning.
When you look back on your homeschool five years down the road, what would you like to see in that stack of books and papers?  What would you look for to keep?  What would you toss? 

I didn't have my answer right away.  It took some sorting and reviewing to see what really seemed Save Worthy.  Here is what I came up with:

• Tests and Chapter Reviews.  This gave me a good overview of what was accomplished in a whole chapter
• Handwriting samples.  I dug this out of spelling tests, dictation, narration, or simple question answering in the workbooks.
• Writing samples.  Any papers that the children had written were saved.  Some things I saved a Rough Draft and the Published (or Final) Draft.  If an outside teacher were reviewing this, they'd want to see the process.  I didn't save all rough drafts, but a few to show that we did go through a planning, writing, revising, and final publish phase.
• Projects or pictures of projects.  Let's face it; you probably don't want to save that lopsided diorama, or that huge human body poster your child made.  However, a picture of it is a nice, small thing to keep.  I kept some originals, as long as the originals were small and easy to store.

And that's it! 
I realize that the things I value and save are DIFFERENT from what I value when I lesson plan.  Oops!  Over the past few years, I have been letting the kids skip the chapter reviews and tests.  These are the easiest things to save.  Rather than saving a whole chapter on Addition, why not save that Chapter Review at the end as a testimony to mastering Addition? 

One more thing I found very valuable:  a report card.  I did not keep these every year, but I wish I did.  I didn't assign a grade to each subject, however.  I wrote a brief description of what was covered under each subject.  For example, in Kindergarten, it might've looked like this:
Math:  can count to 100.  skip counts by 2s, 5s, and 10s.  Understands place value ones, tens, hundreds.  Telling time to the hour.  Basic addition and subtraction using objects.
Language Arts:  can use phonics skills to decode CVC, CVC-E, and some double vowel words.  Can read 30 sight words. 
Social Studies:  studied Community Helpers by visiting a Firestation, Police station, Doctor and talking to each one about their jobs.

I used WorldBook.com to get my scope and sequence for each grade level.  I used some of WorldBook.com's ideas and terminology, but wrote what I thought was important for each child, each year.