Reviewing the school year

Each year that we homeschool, I learn new things and have to adjust.  I'll start the year, thinking I have brilliant ideas and this is the year that I'll feel confident in how things are running.  The truth is, kids and grades and schedules are always changing and you have to be able to adjust.  Plus, I'm always growing as a teacher and figuring out what works for myself.

This year, I hung a giant timeline for history.  We have a book to write down our dates in, but I loved the idea of a big visual.  I thought the kids would love adding dates that they learn about and could really make it their own.  I would say this was a fail, but may work in later years.  Right now, they just didn't care all that much about it.  I think they would get more out of hands on activities to bring alive the history we read, more than just drawing a picture on the wall.

We also started the year with a futon under the giant timeline, thinking we would sit and read on it.  We did not.  In fact, we never sat on it and did all of our reading in the living room.  Thus, we gifted the futon to a family who needed it and have loved the space it freed up.  I hung back up the maps which our kids LOVE.  They look at those things all.the.time.  I also brought back in the mini trampoline that we use often for practicing math facts.

I often refer to A Well Trained Mind, when planning our year and she always says to keep papers in a binder.  I thought I was being clever by giving each of the kids a 3 subject notebook that they could just write in, but it was also a fail.  Some subjects ran out of paper quickly and some barely have any pages filled.  Also, I do not find it necessary to keep every single piece of paper the kids do.  Hello, we move every couple of years...I cannot lug around all that paper.  And for what purpose?  I highly doubt a college is going to ask to look through every single piece of work for their entire education.  Thus, I keep a few things from the year to show their progress and what they learned in a file for the year (each kid gets one folder for every grade).  

Curriculum that continues to be a favorite:

Saxon Math

Spelling Workout

Story of the World, history

First Language Lessons

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Curriculum I'm not sure about:

Sunlight Science

Handwriting without Tears

Mind Benders (logic)

God's Gift of Language (Abeka grammar)

Curriculum that did not work:

IXL Spanish

Following the Plan (Rod & Staff grammar)

Writing Strands 3

Latina Christiana 1

Typing without Tears

I haven't found a grammar or writing curriculum for 3rd grade and up that I love.  Foreign languages is also a subject that has yet to be successful.  Maybe this year I'll find something good :)

This was the first year that I had all the kids on the same schedule and did history and science together.  Our schedule was something like this:

9-10:00 Math

10-11:00 Language

Lunch

12:00 Piano

12:30 History/Science

1:30 Chores

2-3 Reading

*Fridays we would do art, Spanish, logic and go to the library.

I think it worked well.  The kids knew what to expect and what they should be doing at a certain time.  If they were waiting for help or finished early, they could play a school game on the computer.  I regret not doing more projects in history and science, but I know they still learned from just listening to me read...kids are awesome like that.  I struggle with feeling like they're not learning enough, yet not knowing where to squeeze more into the day.  I'm trying to remind myself that a little done well is better than a lot done quickly.