The LAST day of school!

Yes! It's true...as of this afternoon, our homeschool year will be complete! HOORAY!

We'd planned on finishing last week, but we're a week behind due to our recent illnesses. I love my son dearly, but I'm so very glad that the year is at an end.

It was our first year, full of learning curves on both our parts. Sometimes I rushed, sometimes I moved too slow. I noticed halfway through the year that several things were very repetitive and could be combined. This surprised me since I'd been through all of the books we were going to use before beginning. Of course, I was using a traditional school class system and textbooks, which could have a lot to do with that. I've noticed that systems designed for homeschool contain less volume, page wise, but cover the same content... Something to consider for next year's curriculum!

I think I should've made more time to complete a few more projects. I know I need to be better about designating (and following through on) PE time.

Toward the end of the year I became less stringent about the start time. Definitely a big NO, NO. When I became more relaxed about it, so did he. Before I knew it the day was over and I had accomplished little of the things I needed to do, due to school starting so late.

Things I loved about this year:

• Spending time with my son. This was good, quality time. Our relationship was good before, now it's great. We smile more, laugh more, and cut up more...lots of stress relief from the past few years!
• Getting to know his learning style on a deeper level. When you only have time to rush with homework, you miss a lot of enjoyable learning with your children. I don't think that I considered that much before.
• Developing a more respectful relationship with one another. I think he sees me in a different light now. He's more respectful and lends more consideration to things that I say. He doesn't bristle up when I correct him or encourage him. This is certainly mutual!
• It's like watching your baby develop all over again. No, he's no longer a baby and I realize that. It's the developmental phases that are so similar. Babies creep, crawl, walk, talk, etc... We never stop learning in that way. Everything begins with baby steps and watching him complete educational milestones is just as amazing as watching his first steps!
• Learning alongside him. When we learn we pick up on certain things and skim over the rest. I've enjoyed recalling and relearning "the rest".

My list of things to improve on next year:

• Be definite about the start time and stick with it the entire year.
• Be more consistent with time with lessons. As I mentioned, some I rushed and others I went too slow. I think I've discovered the happy medium and need to stick with that plan.
• PE time. This is a deep-seated personal thing... I'm inflicting this on to my son. BAD!!
• Spend more time with hands-on and life relationship correlations. This worked so well for him (and ME). As I was going over some of the lessons, things would click and I would suddenly realize how I'd used these skills in my life. AMAZING discoveries! I should've paid much more attention in school...

Here's an earlier homeschool post with some project photos... Gosh! Those were fun!

What are your homeschool goals for next year?