Year In Review

I can hardly believe that the school year is almost over - four more days to go! This year we've seen some firsts with our homeschooling. It actually started at the end of last year's schooling. I told our son that he was getting to a point in his education where we really needed to choose a curriculum that we could stick with through high school so that we wouldn't miss anything important. I think he very much appreciated being included in that decision. We chose AOP's LifePacs for Language Arts, History & Geography, and Science, Horizons Math, Horizons Health, and Ariel Ministries' Come & See for Bible (I'll be sharing more about this at a later date).

With that decision I knew that I was going to have to keep better records. So another first was that this past school year I used forms to keep track of everything. The reason that this was my first year of using forms even though we've been homeschooling for eight years now is because our state doesn't require any sort of record keeping, although they do suggest it. Each year we do have to send in a form stating our intent to homeschool for the year, but that's it.

I wanted to be able to have everything planned out, see our schedule, and be able to show our son his grades. I'm very glad that I decided to do this! It really helped both of us stay motivated and not feel overwhelmed by things.

The forms that I use can be found at DonnaYoung.org. This is a fabulous site with free forms for homeschooling and just about anything else you can think of. If you're thinking about using forms for your schooling, if you need to use forms but don't relish the idea of making your own, or if you just like looking at free stuff, this site is for you! In addition to the forms she also has instructions and suggestions for using them.

Another first for us was that we made it through our math curriculum this year without any, what's the word I'm looking for? Let's use fussing! Four or five years ago we had a very bad experience with a math curriculum and it's taken our son this long to get over it. I can actually say with confidence that our son isn't math-phobic anymore!

This year was also the first time that we took a regular school year to go through the curriculum. Previously our son would speed through things as fast as he could because he just loves learning. Two years ago I calculated how long it would have taken him to get through twelfth grade at the rate he was going and he would have been done at thirteen. My husband and I didn't feel that that was either healthy or necessary so we helped him slow things down a bit and really begin to enjoy the journey.

While we're both looking forward to having lots of fun this summer, we're both looking forward to next school year, too. It's a real blessing to know that our decision to homeschool was really the right thing to do!

Visit Living Waters Homeschool
Visit UnderTheShadowOfHisWing
Visit LAKrueger's Books