End of the home school year, tying up loose ends and looking back!

Wow, this time of year gets really busy and I kind of dropped out this past week. I've been planning out our last few weeks of school. I plan on being finished with home school around Memorial Day weekend. Here'a a recap of our homeschool year.

We've covered everything I had planned for and more. We were able to move forward in Math, starting some 2nd grade concepts. Nothing too indepth, but since I had teaching opportunities I didn't want to let them go by without at least an introduction. We started with multiplication and we really went deeper with fractions.

Math

We took our time with Math, because I think it's really important to have a strong foundation, since Math builds on itself. I feel very confident with how my daughter performed. She really loves math. She has a good grasp of Geometry, Algebra, Graphing, Fractions, Addition, Subtraction and Patterns. With addition and subtraction, she is doing two digit addition/subraction with carry over (we don't do re-grouping).

Reading

My 6 yeard old daughter is reading so well, we've moved to level 3 books and chapter books.

Writing

This year we focused on cursive. Now that is the only way she writes and does it very well. I'm so proud of her! I gave her plenty of opportunities for writing. She wrote about herself and her family. She wrote notes, cards, how to's, and tail gating on our history lesson on occupations, she made a book about different occupatations. There were many other writing assignments, I can't remember them all right now.

Science

We covered the Water Cycle, Clouds, Recycling, we had a weather sheet that she completed everyday. We predicted the weather by looking at the clouds. We made graphs to study weather patterns. We made a rain gauge. We studied habitats, the rainforest, oceans, etc. We studied energy sources. We had fun doing science experiments in our own kitchen!

We had some rainy weather so my lessons on rocks and soil had to be postponed, so we still have to do those.

Social Studies

In Social Studies, we did a lot of geography and learned how to read a map. I also taught geographical terms, such as equator, hemispheres, etc. We also did history lessons on families throughout time, we studied how families lived in the 1800s, the 1950s, and today.

We studied cultures, especially around the holidays.

Art/Music

She started taking piano lessons! In art we learned about different artists such as Seurat, Degas, Edward Hopper, and Geogia O'Keefe. We did lots of art projects based on those artists and did lots of other ones on our own, like paper snow flakes, tissue paper art, etc.

We also went to museums, plays and concerts. We had a very busy first year in homeschool!! Looking back I am very happy and proud of what we accomplished. I have learned a lot too. There are things that I plan to do differently(I'll leave that to another blog entry).

The one thing I have learned is that I do not want to follow any curriculum or book to a tee. Thankfully, I had my school district's curriculum as a guideline (I didn't want to go completely alone). But it was just that, a guideline, more like suggestions. The reason that was important for me was that I wanted to make sure that my daughter had a good foundation and learned what she needed to within the state's requirements. Beyond that, we spread our wings and really took off. We liked being able to learn and explore freely without too many restrictions. Although I must say that I am very organized and like structure. I did plan out every homeschool day and week, knowing that things could change. Having that flexibility was priceless.

I started this journey saying we would do it for one year and see how things went. I had no long terms plans. But as our first homeschool year is coming to a close, I can confidently say we will continue!! I am so happy. My daughter is so happy. That's what matters.

I hope this blog has helped other homeschool parents along their own journeys. I hope my lessons helped as well. I will continue the blog throughout the summer but on a more relaxed schedule.

In the meantime, look out for my Summer Reading list!

Lesson Planning for Homeschool

As a homeschool mom with very little support in my town or immediate area, I've had to come up with a lot of my lessons completely on my own. The bright side is, as an English teacher, lesson planning is something I am very familiar with. In my twenties I also taught ESL-English as a Second Language to teens and adults. While adults are very motivated to learn, after all, they are in the classroom of their own accord. Adults chose to be there, they paid for the lessons. So they have the most interest in getting all they can out of the classes. Teens, on the other hand, are there because their parents made them, and of course, paid for the classes. Teens are much less motivated to learn. So I had to be really creative when I taught kids and teens. It led me to come up with games and activities around lessons I was trying to get across. We even had competitions, races, anything that got the kids involved and out of their seats.

Now, many years later, I have taken this homeschooling journey with my own child. It's been incredible to far. I've learned as much as I've taught. I know that my daughter is a very active child and doesn't like to sit for long periods of time. I also know that she responds better when she thinks she's playing. She'll actually ask to do these activities over and over, thus retaining more than with traditional methods.

To that end, I've created games and activities to help with certain topics. I like to have an activity for every topic we do, so as we proceed with the school year, I will have more and more of these lessons and ideas to share with you.

I will include free printables to help you in your own lesson planning. I hope you and your homeschool children love and enjoy these activities as much as I did coming up with them. My daughter certainly loved these, especially because she responds much better to "fun learning". In other words, any activity that doesn't feel like work. I have found that she retains what she's learned much better as well.

Once the printables are up, feel free to print whatever you like. Please refer to my terms for using my printables.

-Printables may not be used on any website or blog (you may refer to them with a link to my website on your own blog or website)
-Printables are protected by copyright as they are my original materials
-Printables may be copied or printed for personal use, but may not be sold or distributed in any way
-They may not be altered in anyway