(Spark Plugs making "healthy" cookies on the last day of school)
I'm not sure where the lyrics came from, but I distinctly remember in my childhood my mom singing to us, "It's over, it's over, it's over!" whenever a major event had ended. When the school year finished for us, this was the first thing that popped into my head!
We're now into our fifth week of summer freedom. The time is flying, as evident by the fact that I'm writing this post four-and-a-half weeks after summer vacation began! All totaled, we completed just one more day than the minimum California state requirements for public schools. I briefly felt guilty that we had not aspired to more, but when I thought about the fact that we completed all of our textbooks, never took a sick day, accomplished every goal and more, and only had two half-days in the entire year, I realized how crazy it was for me to think that we'd slacked in any way.
So, how did the school year go?
Looking Back:
As burned out as I got in the final weeks, this year was a banner year for us. We learned much more than I ever expected, tried more new things than I thought possible, and increased our love of home schooling 10-fold.
Where curriculum is concerned, I LOVED using Modern Curriculum Press for math. It presented the concepts in very simple, easy-to-follow increments, with lots of review problems to use when needed.
The Weaver Curriculum, which we used for Bible, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, and Art, definitely had its pros and cons. I loved how it developed unit studies based on a chronological study through Genesis. I despised they way we stayed on one verse for months and then flew through multiple chapters in a single sitting. The hands-on projects were wonderful; the disjointed history lessons were not so (the biggest faux pas that comes to mind is the Social Studies lesson where the parent is instructed to educate the child on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War all in one afternoon). The preparation time associated with The Weaver, in addition to glaring grammatical and punctuational mistakes, drove me crazy. Overall, my take on The Weaver is that it's an excellent start; I only wish someone would go in and finish it up, clean it up, and balance it out.
Bob Jones' reading program - sans any busywork assignments - was a perfect fit for us. We supplemented with McGuffey Readers - may I just say that if everyone were required to read McGuffey's short, moral stories, we would all be better off? It's amazing to think that these were once the standard literature for the classroom. How far we have fallen!
For Health, we read through the suggestions in The Weaver but mostly focused on Abeka's Health and Safety. The Abeka book worked well and was very simple - just my style.
Field trips are also suggested in The Weaver, but the field trip days rarely matched the days that I had the car, so we tended to go with our GRACE home school group on some of their outings instead. We additionally participated in several nature walks that a friend organized for us. We greatly enjoyed these as well.
Spelling and handwriting were our toughest subjects, mainly due to our curriculum, or lack thereof. Since we liked MCP for math, I expected to like MCP's Spelling Workout. With its jumble of unrelated word groupings, however, it simply did not work for us, even though I did like the spelling activities. Handwriting simply consisted of left-over work sheets from the previous year in addition to the Creative Writing assignments from The Weaver. I loved Creative Writing, but the boys' fine motor skills still need some guidance.
Looking Ahead:
For the coming school year, we'll be keeping some things the same and trying a few new ideas. Since I already own the next volume of The Weaver, we will again be using it for Bible, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, and Art, as well as adding in Vocabulary this coming year. (If I still find parts of it as wildly unbalanced as this past year, we may opt to find a new unit study curriculum in the future.) To supplement, we'll go through Bob Jones' Heritage Studies (Social Studies and History) and Abeka's My America.
We'll use the next levels of Modern Curriculum Press math and Bob Jones' readers. Health will come from another Abeka Health and Safety book, supplemented by The Weaver just as we did this past year.
Field trips will continue with our GRACE group and nature walks, and I hope to include more of the field trip suggestions from The Weaver when possible.
Our new spelling curriculum will be Sequential Speller. It looks as though it will have many spelling activities similar to Spelling Workout but with logical word lists. I have high hopes for this new method!
For Handwriting, a friend sent us a free download for cursive writing, which T will start in the fall. Additionally, he'll be practicing writing his spelling words in cursive. K will try the popular Handwriting Without Tears.
This coming year, I want to introduce T to Logic, Typing (Mavis Beacon, anyone?), and Music. We won't go in-depth right away, but we should have a lot of fun incorporating new concepts.
One last change for the coming year: I developed my own Lesson Planner! I based on the Unit Studies Lesson Planner found here, but I tweaked mine to fit our personal needs. Once I get them printed and bound, I'll share photos.
And now that I've mentally run through our year, I realize why it was that the house cleaning got neglected and why I was so tired by the time May rolled around. To think that we should have done more...silly me!
That said, I can't wait for fall!! It's going to be a blast.
