evaluation

While we’re not completely finished with our school “year” and our schooling runs through the summer…here I evaluate what worked and what didn’t.

We typically finish up a majority of curricula in springtime, like science, math, history, and many extras. We spend spring and summer doing “light schooling” – we finish reading and complete history projects. We do lots of art and nature study and spend our mornings watching hummingbirds and playing outside in the sun. We spend the too-hot afternoons watching educational DVDs and shows on Netflix or playing educational apps and computer games. Evenings, we’re back outside to work in the garden, enjoy the cooler air, and watch hummingbirds and bats.

So here’s my evaluation of what worked for us and what needs tweaking this past “year.” I think I’ve finally hit my stride and we were pretty successful. My husband is quite pleased that we’re settling down and are more comfortable with our curriculum choices and not wasting time and money on products that don’t fit.

History

We love Tapestry of Grace (ToG). I use this primarily with Elizabeth, who loves history and outgrew Story of the World after one cycle through their 4 books in 4 years. We did Ambleside Online that 5th year since it was a survival year for us. I had Alex and we PCS’ed from Hawaii to Utah. We needed simple and free. I had coveted Tapestry of Grace since we began homeschooling and I knew it was time to take the plunge. Liz needed something with more structure than AO and this keeps us well accountable. We love all the choices and some weeks we do too much and other weeks too little, but it will balance out in the end. We are just finishing up Year 2 with TOG.

Tori and Kate are still really young. They would be just beginning the 1st cycle of history, but to keep my sanity, we’ve tagged along with Liz’s schedule. I have to read everything aloud – it’s time-consuming. Some weeks are more interesting than others for them. I plan to do better next year with maintaining their schedule and helping them to keep their notebooks organized. They began really loving the mapwork just about a month ago. Next fall, I plan to really do a full schedule with them for Year 3.

Language Arts

I won a copy of All About Reading Level 2 and Tori and Kate just loved it. We’re almost finished with the lessons and I read that Level 3 doesn’t come out for a few more months. We may wait and just focus on other things until then. We have journals and plenty of literacy games.

I bought AAR pre-level for Alex and he loves it. Ziggy is his bud!

TOG also has a LA component Writing Aids and we incorporate that into our notebooking work. I am excited to review IEW for Liz next month, who needs a structured writing program. We get lots of grammar practice from our Latin studies.

Math

The girls adore Life of Fred and Singapore and we had wild success with both. Liz finished up the Singapore 6B and focused only on Life of Fred. She also enjoys Kahn Academy and I think they’re filling in a lot of gaps for her. We did lots of games and math journaling.

Science

Apologia is perfect for our family. The girls are completing Land Animals and Liz finished up with General. They love the notebooking journals! We did appropriate nature studies, but had a really hard winter and didn’t get outside as much as I would’ve liked.

Music

The girls still love the Musiq Homeschool lessons. Liz plays around with it, but takes formal lessons from a neighbor. She just had her recital last month and it was flawless. We do composer studies as a family with TOG. I hope to start back up with guitar from Schoolhouse Teachers.

Art

We did artist studies along with TOG. We occasionally did extra unit studies if we had time to fit it in or it had extra cross-curricular significance.

Latin

We love Memoria Press Latin. Liz is finishing up Second Form and the girls are beginning with Prima Latina. They love it so much. I love listening to them learning derivatives and grammar. A review is coming up soon!

Practical

Liz is the cupcake queen. She enjoys baking and I hope to encourage her more, but we don’t need all the sweets in our diet. I hope to find an outlet for her creations. Any takers?

Liz has quite a successful babysitting service to our pastor’s preschool-aged grandchildren. Having such a flexible schedule has allowed her to attend them whenever needed. The boy is deaf and autistic and the girl has ADHD from FAS. I am sure this experience will be invaluable in the future. They love her and Liz adores them and works very well with them.

The kids are learning to use essential oils along with me. They are fascinated by how quickly effective they can be to change our feelings or owies.

All the children are learning how to be servant leaders. We’ve been focusing on relationships.

Bible

All the kids and I love The Dig for Kids. Alex is working on Raising Rock Starts Preschool. Tori and Kate read and did great copywork with Hero Tales. Liz completed Who Is God? and Who Am I? from Apologia.

We <3 We Choose Virtues!

I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve grown with God this past year. I am so different than I was even a few months ago. He has changed my heart and our family is so much more successful for the Kingdom and on the righter path.

Other

Tori ran two 5K’s with her Dad. For this last one, she got 3rd place for her age group, after two 10 year olds! She was the youngest female in the race at age 7.

Liz is working towards promotion in Civil Air Patrol. She flew a plane from Provo to Salt Lake City a few weeks ago. She loved it.

Conclusion

When I look back at all we’ve accomplished, I feel good. I see how much progress we’ve made! The bad days {read: weeks, months} seem far away and the overall picture is success. I look forward to some downtime and planning for next year. We’re not changing much. Things are too good right now.

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She’s mostly in 6th grade.

One of the freedoms and blessings of home educating is that we don’t have to maintain that grade level standard. We do have to report to our local schools a grade level on the form, so I go with whatever math level we’re currently using. Elizabeth reads on a high school level, and has vast interests in languages, history, and art.

She does like science, but we’ve not pushed her because I wasn’t ready to move on to Apologia General this year. One reason is that I wasn’t ready to put Elizabeth in with the high schoolers at our homeschool co-op. I am kinda worried about how she would do socially with 13-18 year olds.

In reviewing our proposed scope and sequence and upcoming schedule for 7th grade, the workload is going to increase exponentially. I hope Elizabeth can rise to the challenge. She has done better this past month or so; I hope that means she is maturing. First semester had some rough patches.

After intense research and polling the members of our homeschool co-op about math curricula…it seems our best bet (since we’ve used Singapore from grades 1-6) is to go through Saxon 8/7 and then dive into Video Text algebra.

So, next month, we’ll continue with

Elizabeth takes P.E. and drama at co-op and a cooking class through our community learning program.

We need to get out and do more nature activities, but I’m just not a winter girl.

We’ll be finishing up Singapore math 6B and Apologia Swimming Creatures. I plan to wait until this fall to start the new math and science. Co-op will probably offer an experiment course.

Track should be starting up soon! Elizabeth and Victoria can hardly wait!

The girls are doing Kindergarten work.

They’re not fluent readers yet and we need some work with handwriting. I find that I’m getting frustrated with them because they’re not where I want them to be. Some days, they really get the concepts we’re doing…and other days I want to pull my hair out.

My son likes to sit with us and be nearby. We give him fun Montessori toys and keep him busy and watch him play.

I plan to supplement U.S. history with a download from a while ago called Read-draw-remember American History Activities.

Here are the co-op classes we’ve done: Swimming Creatures experiment course, a StArt class that’s really popular, a PE class, and a geography class with Window on the World: When We Pray God Works.

I’m thinking about doing Apologia Land Animals for science in the fall. I kinda want to see if co-op offers a science course for this age group next fall.

I still like Singapore math for grades 1-6, but my husband has never really cared for it, so we may change. They still have a K math workbook to complete and lots of fun hands-on activities. We’ll continue to do some Montessori works. The girls have been great about going out to play even when it’s cold. Good for them and gives me a break!

Annual Review 2013