We are nearing the end of another homeschool year, which means it's time to reflect upon what worked well, what didn't, and make changes for next year. I will be sharing our curriculum choices and plans for next school year soon, but in the meantime, I thought it would be helpful to share what we used this year and what our thoughts were on each.
We went with mainly family-style homeschool resources this year because I had envisioned this year as being one filled with lots of trips to the hospital or to help my parents when I was planning this year last year, as my dad a horrible accident in January 2023 that left him with a major traumatic brain injury and I was helping my mom with him in the hospital and then when he came home in May 2023 as much as I possibly could. So, I knew the year would need to be as streamlined as possible without sacrificing learning. I'm so glad we made this switch because we LOVED it and plan to continue learning as a family as much as we can!
We mainly followed Peaceful Press' Playful Pioneers suggestions for this year when it came to bible and theology, but then added some of our own options in as well. For Playful Pioneers, we read through The Ology for half of the year and then read through The Jesus Storybook Bible. We had never read The Ology before, but overall we really enjoyed it. It was a wonderful look at the principles in which Christianity is built upon and it took a lot of what we have learned through out bible learning in the past and brought it all together. We had already read this particular storybook bible before (as well as many others), but I have always enjoyed how it points every story to Christ and how it was God's plan from the beginning.
We rotated through three different prayer books to start our day: Little Golden Book Prayers for Children, Praying the Prayers of the Bible for Kids, and A Book of Prayers for Kids. We always use one of these to start our praying (so my kids can learn many different ways to pray) and then I pray over our day and for anyone we know has specific needs. Sometimes I have the girls go around and add to the prayer as well, but we do individual prayers at bedtime.
For Easter, we gave our girls Little Pilgrim's Progress, and we have loved reading a short chapter every day and discussing how the story reflects the Christian journey. It's been very eye-opening for all of us and I greatly appreciate how short each chapter is so we can discuss and my kids have time to digest each one.
My girls also participate in Awana weekly, so we incorporate learning their verses into our family bible time because it's nice to do it together so it's one less thing my kids have to do later on their own, and we all are really learning the verses together.
Recently, I bought this journaling bible to be our family bible that we started reading a chapter out of daily, starting in Genesis. I then record a little something we discussed or that stood out to us after each reading. We have been loving that and continue to do this through the summer and into next year.
When deciding on a main curriculum to use for this year, I chose Peaceful Press' Playful Pioneers for a few reasons. First, it is family-style which is what I was looking for. It was definitely accessible and challenging for my kindergartener and 3rd grader. My 3 year old loved it, too! Second, it leaned more Charlotte Mason in approach with living books, notebooking, practical skills, picture study, etc. which is what I wanted. Third, it follows the Laura Ingalls Wilder books which I've wanted to read with my girls (we read one last year) and then I wanted to take them to some of the sites in the book since we live so close to many of them once summer comes.
Overall, we have LOVED this curriculum! I'll break down the different components, but as far as history and literature we loved it. We enjoyed the additional picture books we read to build upon the history we were getting from our main books and we adored learning about pioneer life and lots of life lessons with Laura in the first 5 Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
With Playful Pioneers, all of the subjects build around the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. So for example, when Laura visits a lake, we learned about the different types of bodies of water in the Julia Rothman Nature Anatomy book and journaled about it. I will be honest and say that sometimes we skipped over these when they were topics my girls already knew or we were short on time. I really like this approach, but I also would really love to dive deeper into different scientific topics instead of jumping around, so I plan to do things a little different next year.
Playful Pioneers also comes with a picture study guide. Every week, there is a different painting that fits with what we are reading in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. For example, when we read about Laura and her family going on a train to move out west, there was a locomotive Van Gogh painting for the week. This was a fun way to observe different artwork. Usually the teacher guide told us to paint our own version of the art. We didn't do this most weeks for a few reasons - first of all, my daughters get very frustrated when their art looks nothing like the painting. Second, while I can see the value of this, I would like to teach them actual art technique, so we will be doing this differently next year.
Playful Pioneers also came with a book of recipes for both food and items around the house. All of them were tied to the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. We probably made about a third to half of the recipes. This was the first thing to go when we needed to save time, and I usually prioritized going outside over doing a recipe. We did try to fit them into the evenings and weekends as well, but honestly, sometimes I just forgot! Our girls do regularly cook with us though, and do lots of chores around the house, so I looked at this part of the curriculum as a fun extra. I do plan to do more of these next year, however!
Something I added this year was having my girls do a book report after we read each book. We did this envelope book report idea I heard about from Little School of Smiths where they decorate the front and back of an envelope with the book's title and scenes from the book, and then inside they put their book report. For my kindergartener, I had her draw two detailed pictures from her favorite parts of the book and then I wrote what she said about it on the back. For my oldest, we started by writing an essay where I walked her through an introduction, two paragraphs about her favorite parts of the book, and then a conclusion. Then, we switched to these book report printables which were the same idea but with less structure as she is still wrapping her mind around essay writing.
We aimed to do this about once a week, but in all honesty, it was more like once every other week when co-op was coming up because they share their nature journals there. This was much easier to remember to do in the fall and spring when there was a lot more nature to notice during our time outside. Usually we would go for a walk and then when we came back, the girls would draw something the observed. Sometimes I would take a picture of it they could reference, sometimes they would pick a weed or something to draw, and sometimes they would just go off of memory. They often would pull out our electronic microscope to see more detail. Sometimes I would look up the item in a field guide or online, but usually they just observed and drew what they saw.
We used a few different resources for handwriting this year. Our Playful Pioneers curriculum included student notebooks with places to draw and then to do copywork. We would usually do 1-2 of these a week. My kindergartener started with Level K handwriting from The Good and the Beautiful. She finished that a couple months ago and moved on to Spectrum Manuscript Handwriting for K-2. My 3rd grader worked through Level 4 Handwriting from The Good and the Beautiful. She finished that recently and just has been focusing on the Playful Pioneers copywork to practice her print writing. As for typing, my 3rd grader used Typing Club online all year and it has gone really well! We will be making a couple changes to these subjects next year.
We started the year using Level K Language Arts by The Good and the Beautiful, but it was really frustrating her, and honestly I don't like the "extras" (geography, picture study, etc. - we already do these subjects and don't need them in our language arts). So, we tried Explode the Code and love it! I love how simple it is, hhow most of our time is spent practicing reading and blending letters and not me eexplaining tons of things to her. She's been picking up reading much faster now aand just moved into book 3 after switching curricula in January. We mainly use BOB Books and other random readers we have to practice reading after our Explode the Code sheets.
Due to her year of kindergarten in public school in kindergarten, she really regressed with her reading skills. So, we started back at kindergarten level when we started homeschooling in first grade. She has worked over the summers to "catch up" and finished Level 2 Language Arts by the Good and the Beautiful in December and is now mid-way through Level 3 Lanugage Arts. She needed some extra support with her spelling at the start of the year, so I also added in Spectrum Spelling: Level 2. Overall, we don't love The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts but we also don't hate it. It's what I went with for her and she has learned to read really well, but I feel like it took much longer just because of all the "extras" they add. If we didn't cover those topics already, it might be something we would like, but I feel that the lessons can get really long sometimes. Seeing how fast my kindergartener is flying through reading without any extra fluff has me thinking about making some changes once we finish the Level 3 book. I also have wanted to move away from The Good and the Beautiful because it is created by people of the Mormon faith, which we do not follow and I don't really want any of their beliefs that aren't biblical creeping into our curriculum. We haven't encountered anything yet, but I would rather get away from it sooner rather than later.
We went with The Good and the Beautiful Math Level K for my kindergartener mainly because of the price if I'm being honest! I print it free and just buy the math box that goes along with it. My oldest loved their math and since we have all the math boxes for levels 1-3, we figured we would just use it as the foundation for our girls since it's very fun, inexpensive, and so far I think it has done a very good job teaching foundational math skills in short lessons. My kindergartener has loved it and actually did a lot of the math book last year, so we have done just a couple lessons a week to finish the book at the end of year so she isn't getting farther ahead than what she could developmentally understand.
My oldest has really enjoyed The Good and the Beautiful Math 3 this year! I feel better about using this company's math, because I haven't noticed any mention of God really at all in this curriculum, but it does use basically all real-world examples for all of the lessons which I appreciate. This level also teaches about different areas of the world through the learning, so we've learned about different animals, plants, foods, etc. from different countries just by completing this curriculum which I think is a fun addition that takes no extra time. I also appreciate that there is a lesson portion I teach but then there is a lesson practice and review section she does on her own. I really was gearing up for her to do more of her math on her own next year, so this was a good transition to that.
We are part of a Charlotte Mason co-op with friends that we created together (a couple of them were the main founders and the rest of us gave input and helped as we began) last year. This was our second year and we LOVE it! It's a very informal, fuss-free co-op that focuses on soem of the things we don't always get to at home. We meet every other week and the moms also have a book club the weeks we have co-op where we read a book about Charlotte Mason and discuss it. We start our co-op with prayer as a group, sing a hymn together, and then the kids are able to do recitations of poems, songs, stories, etc. in front of the group. After that, the littlest kids (under 5) head to the nursery which is where I served this term. The older kids do composer study, narration (learning from different genres like biography, fiction, etc.), handicraft, and Shakespeare, I believe. The kids older than my children also meet to do Latin and science before we arrive. We end with nature study where we read a picture book and the kids can share something in their nature journals. Then, we sing a folk song and then pray before we end. There are also typically weekly hikes but we have not been the best about attending but hope to next year! It's been a wonderful addition to our co-op!
We don't do a ton of extracurriculars because family time is very valuable, and my husband works 50-60 hours a week, making time he doesn't work very precious to us. Our girls both participated in Awana at our church, which is always the staple that we do every year. It's a wonderful way to grow closer with their friends from church, deepen their faith, learn bible verses, and just be immersed in a culture that talks freely about God every single week (in addition to church and Sunday school we attend weekly as well).
The girls both tried a few months of a group piano class because I've been trying for years to get them into private piano lessons with no luck. It was a fun experience, but we found it hard to learn in that setting. My oldest daughter finally got in to private lessons which she's been doing since January and she's been loving it! I have plans for my younger daughter for next year so she can start to learn more piano as well.
The girls also took a gymnastics class this year. It was very fun and something they would like to continue doing! They both took dance since they were three until this year, but because the dance program we have locally starts competing in second grade, we stopped this year, because that's not something we want them doing at this young of ages. I danced most of my childhood and went to state for dance in high school as one of the captains on the varsity team. I LOVE dance, but I also appreciate the skills and confidence it teaches, which I feel can be undermined by the competition aspect when introduced too early. It's one sport that doesn't require competition (it's not a game played by two teams against each other - we can have a recital to show off our skills and do not need to compete against others), so I'm bummed that the competition piece is introduced so young. But, we plan to try out different activities now that they are not involved in dance anymore.
Lastly, the girls took a craft class every month where they did lots of art with various materials and techniques and they had a BLAST! We definitely plan to continue with it next year as it's also a wonderful time to spend with friends every month.
There you have it! That was our homeschool year! It's amazing how much we do without really realizing, but writing it all out made me realize we do a lot more than I usually give us credit for! I hope you enjoyed this recap, and I can't wait to share what our plans are for next year!