homeschoolers check in...

[MamaBee]

We haven't done this for awhile...and since just came back from our state convention, I'm fired up!

How has it been going this year? Any learnings? Anything still trying to figure out?

We have been plugging through kindie/1st grade this year... I haven't been as structured/routine as I planned to be... but J still seems to flourish, so something is going right... right? haha

I did realize that I need a curriculum... I spend this year trying to "make" my own and that isn't me... so we are doing a package as a start and I will supplement to that. We are also going to start Classical Conversations this fall... has anyone done this? Now I just need to figure out what I want to do for math and reading next year... kiddo excelled in these areas so much that we went off the books and now i would like to get him back on the books and everything I look at looks so easy at his "grade" level... but I don't know what he is "missing"... I know I shouldn't worry about it, he will get it in time... but I'm a first time homeschooling parent... and worrywart about everything...

So, how was your year... do you break for summer or change it up? I would like to do more art and science experiments over summer... my list is long!

 

[heathergw]

HA... no summer break for us this year... we just had our 100th day thanks to sickies this year, it's been a really bad year for us as far as sickies... but Moriah's doing awesome and she literally flies through the school work and reading in no time. If we're lucky we'll finish by the end of July, beginning of August... take a couple weeks off and start the new year lol...

Our conference is the beginning of June and I'm looking forward to it but not going all three days this year, really just going one day for some ADD oriented classes and then roam the exhibit hall... pretty sure we're sticking to My Father's World and adding our own math and language arts... and still debating whether we're going to start learning Spanish or not.

 

[dailydwellin]

We won't finish up until mid-June. We had to take longer than I would have liked to off for our move right after Christmas. I am already thinking about next year, though. I just decided yesterday to continue on with Sonlight for our core. I just had to work it out in my mind exactly how it would work, since I don't think I can combine. I'm going to do Core A with my son (6) who was supposed to do that this year, but just wasn't ready, so I just basically did reading and math with him. And I'm going to do Core D with my girls (both 8) over the course of two years. I'll supplement LA with First Language Lessons and All About Spelling. I'm looking at Brave Writer for writing. We'll continue using Saxon for math (I debated switching to Teaching Textbooks, but we really do love Saxon and it's working for us for right now). We also use Apologia for Science...love them!!

I would love to do Classical Conversations, but there isn't one close to where we live. A friend of mine does it and absolutely loves it. But then on the other hand, I don't think one of my girls would do well with the memorization. She struggles with memorizing verses for AWANA from week to week. My other daughter would eat it up and would totally excel, but she does at most things.

So...the plan is to finish up mid-to-late June, take July off to get organized for the next year, and start back in August.

Sometimes I'm really discouraged about the year, but then I look back as where we were at the beginning of the year (especially with my son) and I see a ton of progress. He couldn't count to 10 at the beginning of the year and now he's counting to over 100, counting by 10's and 5's in math. He's beginning to read and his handwriting is (slowly) coming together.

All in all, I think it's been a pretty good year.