Homeschool Year Recap and Plans Ahead
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It is hard for me to believe it is June again and I am thinking about how to end our year of homeschool. As the year comes to a close I am reflecting on what we learned this year, what worked, and what didn’t. I am sharing those reflections here, along with our plans for the summer and fall.
I wrote a blog post back in September with our curriculum picks for the year. Though I’m not fully sharing next year’s picks now, I am hoping to write that earlier this year! As I noted in that post, my son is always changing rapidly and I was planning to pivot with him. I did a ton of pivoting with him this year, which I will discuss below. For some context on our learning, my son was 3.5 at the start of the school year. While officially 3K age, academic-type learning is an interest of his and come easily for him. Much of his learning is above the expected spot for 3K. We largely followed a Kindergarten scope this year, but with phonics and overall reading skills being far above that. My curriculum choices reflect how I attempt to navigate that asynchronous development. I hope this post is useful in some way to some people, despite that.
First, let’s take a look back at how our year began.
Year-long curriculum to unit studies
I started the year with a space unit. I had an overarching curriculum I planned to use for social studies/history/science, but I was pregnant with a baby due near the end of September. I didn’t want to start a whole year unit before he was born. We started the space unit with a bang the first week of September, but then my baby was born that week. I chose space because, with my son being an early reader, I found this was a gap in his knowledge that affected him as he read more books. Many books for young readers have space themes. It turned out my son loved learning about space. He had not been exposed to this much before, so I had no idea what to expect. He took to it quickly and intensely. After my baby was born, we took a week or so off and then slowly eased back in. Since he loved space so much, I was not ready to move on to the around-the-world unit we had planned.
That brings me to the biggest “miss” in our curriculum choices from the fall. I purchased a Charlotte Mason-style around-the-world curriculum I was very excited to try! While I am sure it is a wonderful curriculum, we never made it past the first week. First, I had a baby. Then, we wanted to continue with more space-themed learning. I used the first week of the curriculum to “bring us back to earth” with studying the map, Earth, and our place in the universe. But, then it was the Jewish holidays and I wanted to teach my son about them. After the holidays, we were going to Italy and it felt silly to start teaching about North America when we were about to go to Italy! For Thanksgiving, I tried to incorporate a bit, but it didn’t really work out. In January, we finally started The Very Very Far North and some Arctic learning. The around-the-world curriculum begins with North America and the Arctic. I used some of that, along with materials from HOKA. Then, we got too into the Arctic and were not ready to move on the next week. All that to say, we never actually followed this curriculum.
We also never followed the Jewish Charlotte Mason style curriculum I purchased. I am trying to figure out the lesson here. I don’t think it is that Charlotte Mason isn’t for us, as I will discuss some of our successes with it below. I think, perhaps, an overarching year-long curriculum just doesn’t work for us. We want to be able to dive into things for longer, move on with interests, and explore a wide variety of topics. I could see one of these curricula being wonderful in a few years (or not!), but at this age, it doesn’t seem to fit our style. I like to do it more my way.
As I mentioned, we started our year studying space and then did an Arctic study. I decided to continue with some unit studies for the rest of the year after that, rather than trying to follow a full year curriculum. Our unit themes were space, the fall Jewish holidays, the Arctic, the human body, Passover, Peter Rabbit, and the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. We also had a few other more minor holidays we spent a week or two studying and we spent a week in the spring studying dandelions. For most units, the core came from Hands on Kids Activities.
For Peter Rabbit, I found a spring with Peter Rabbit curiculum from A Year of Learning. I combined that with some other Peter Rabbit materials, including from Teaching O and A and Twinkl. During that unit, we learned about Peter Rabbit and gardening. It was so much fun and showed me I do really enjoy Charlotte Mason, even if a full year curriculum isn’t for us. Coming off of the human body unit, this was the perfect shift. The human body unit had fewer books that were a joy to read and, while a good unit, was not my favorite to teach. Reading beautiful literature, doing nature journalling, and enjoying the arts was a beautiful way to follow that. I loved it so much that we spent a week on her dandelion unit as well.
Language, Math, and Handwriting
For the cores of language and math we did some pivoting this year as well. I mentioned in my blog post in September we were finishing up All About Reading level 4 and may work on All About Spelling. While we did finish up All About Reading, I never began All About Spelling and likely will not for some time if at all. For math, I said we were doing Preschool Math at Home and left it open to following my son’s interest in math. We still loved Preschool Math at Home, but it wasn’t our core this year.
After my baby was born in early September, we took a few weeks off then began again with All About Reading level 4. My son at this point was able to decode most words. He was reading books like Little Bear and Frog and Toad. We went through the first part of level 4 like we did with the other All About Reading levels, really enjoying it. But, as we got to the end, I found it wasn’t working or needed for us anymore. We finished up all the All About Reading stories, but I didn’t teach the final lessons. They were all about borrow words from other languages and then started to get into Latin and Greek. It didn’t feel helpful for my 3.5 year old, so we moved on.
Once we finished All About Reading, I opened up All About Spelling. My son was reading very well, but his spelling was still pretty phonetic. I quickly got intimidated. He didn’t write letters much at that point and it just didn’t feel like a good fit for us. I am glad I made this choice. Instead, I let my son work with the movable alphabet, writing sentences there. His spelling got much better on his own this year. While I am sure we will use a formal spelling curriculum at some point, I have a feeling I will opt for one that is a bit less intensive than All About Spelling. Dash into Learning looks interesting. For now though, I’m holding off.
Instead of focusing on spelling, I introduced grammar. We used the Montessori symbols and the grammar farm.
Math took a major turn this year. We started with Preschool Math at Home, which I adored. However, his abilities in math skyrocketed and we graduated from that early. We started the year with my son not consistently recognizing every number from 0-10 and are ending the year with my son doing 4-digit dymanic addition with the golden beads and stamp game, extensions on the hundred board, recognizing numbers through 10,000, and subtracting, amongst other things.
After finishing Preschool Math at Home, I continued with Kate Snow’s Kindergarten curriculum. I loved her focus on hands-on and minimal writing. We also used the Montessori math scope and sequence. As the year progressed, I found the Montessori scope and sequence was a better fit. It allowed for some independent work and allowed us to go a bit faster. Kindergarten Math with Confidence was enjoyable, but we got to the point where my son had mastered most of the topics before even getting to them in the book. The weeks focusing on addition and subtraction, for example, really dragged as he was already confident there. I decided to jump fully into Montessori math. I am trained in Montessori for 0-3, but my knowledge of the Primary curriculum was not as strong. I purchased an affordable math course and it was a fantastic decision.
Angela Momtessori’s math course showed me the full scope and sequence of Montessori math in primary. We jumped in with the hundred board and golden beads. Using her course as a guide, he learned numbers up to 10,000, how to add 4-digit numbers (static and dynamic), and mastered the hundred-board. Though this was a better fit for us, I am so glad we did Kindergarten Math with Confidence as well. It gave me lots of fun games to play with my son, and kept me from worrying about gaps.
We finally added a little bit of handwriting this year as well. Prior to this year I never introduced any tracing and we just focused on fine motor development. This is a spot I find a bit challenging with an advanced Pre-K age child. Finger muscles still are not developed and even though he wants to be able to write the things he knows, he can’t. That said, I introduced Doodles Help Handwriting in the fall. This helped him develop some more pencil control while having fun. In the spring, we started Kick Start Kindergarten from Handwriting Without Tears. At this point he was very interested in tracing and starting to form more letters. I hoped starting this curriculum would prevent bad habits in letter formations. I love their wet, dry, try technique and overall have been happy with that choice. We don’t do it daily and still focus on a lot of other fine motor activities, but it has been a good addition to our home.
My son learned to read Hebrew this year. We have been using Hebrew Scouts Nikud Quest. For the most part I am happy with it, but I do think the price reflects the scarcity of options. We spent much more on it than all of All About Reading and it has more errors. That said, it is a solid Montessori-inspired phonics program that is similar to All About Reading. In terms of Judaic studies, I ended up figuring out my own way this year.
Looking Forward
We are not quite done with our year over here. Where we are, schools usually end mid to late June. Our spring classes (swim, nature class, music) are continuing until June 19th. We are going away the week of July 4th, so I will end our school year the end of June. End is a loose term as I do plan to continue learning year-round, but I intend to shift things a bit in the summer.
We are going to finish up our year with A Year of Learning’s Frog and Toad unit. We loved the Peter Rabbit unit and, with lake and pond season starting, I thought learning about frogs, toads, and ponds along with some favorite literature would be perfect. I am combining A Year of Learning’s unit with the ponds unit from Hands on Kids Activities. I intend to spend 2-3 weeks on this to formally finish our school year.
Over the summer things will be a bit different. My son is signed up for a few camps, but they are mostly in the afternoon. He is doing a nature camp for a few weeks. I am also potentially signing him up for a week of soccer camp and a week of swim camp. Since we homeschool and he is home with me all year, I am looking forward to taking advantage of some of the camps available in the summer.
I am not going to do any unit studies in the summer but we will continue with math and Hebrew. My son reads tons every day (look out library summer reading programs!) and I read to him every day, too. I will probably stick with any language practice just being everyday life. We will do things like write birthday cards to people and maybe work on a journal. I am thinking of getting Wild Math for the summer. I want to continue working with numbers for a few minutes a day, but want to do as much as possible outdoors. I planned to get the Kindergarten curriculum as review and reinforcement, but, looking at the scope and sequence, I think the first grade one will do a better job of that. I don’t plan on really teaching new material, but I want to reinforce the math he knows and loves doing. We will also continue to play math games.
Next year, I think we will continue doing unit studies, Montessori math, and grammar work. I am yet to decide exactly which unit studies, but I am going to use Hands on Kids Activities for them. I will give more of an update on that in a few months.
