As much as we are loving this curriculum and absolutely plan on using it for years to come, there are of course some little tweaks and adjustments to be made here and there moving forward. So today I'm sharing what has been really working well so far for us this year, as well as what hasn't.
What working: 4 day school weeks. The material we are scheduled to cover each week condenses well into 4 days and free days are nice to have, even though we get all of our work done fairly quickly on school days.
What's not working: Picking one day to always be our off day. At the beginning of the year I figured we'd just always take off on Thursdays since it tends to be our busiest day. That actually ended up feeling really restrictive and we homeschool specifically so we won't feel restricted by anything! Now I look at our schedule for the upcoming week and pick which day we'll take off, but sometimes I change my mind halfway through the week, and sometimes we actually just spread 4 days of work over 5 days. I don't even always chose our busiest day as our day off, occasionally we'll still do our scheduled schoolwork on a busy day, to give us a really quiet day at some point with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Flexibility. We love it.
What's not working: Morning being our only school time. This one kind of goes hand in hand with what I just said about our days off being flexible. At the start of the year I figured the day we were busiest in the morning would be the day we took off, since I didn't really want us to be doing school in the afternoon. I do still very much try and stay within our usual blocked schedule, but I've added schoolwork as a possibility into some of our later blocks.
What is working: Copywork and drawing upstairs during rest time, reading aloud to the little ones when I need a quiet minute, schoolwork in the lobby at ballet, schoolwork outside, reviewing word cards with me while I cook dinner. Again, flexibility.
What's not working: Trying to plan out activities ahead of time for Kate and Henry.
What is working: Flying by the seat of my pants, to be completely honest. Some days I tell them to go to the playroom and just play, some days I just toss a pencil and a piece of paper their way, some days I pull something from my bins of pre-school activities. A lot of days though they are both begging to "do school" and I've found I'm able to satisfy them with just our alphabet puzzle. We can cover letters, counting, and colors with just the one puzzle.
What's not working: Setting aside specific times for school readings. We started the year going to the couch to read, or reading while I nursed Anna. Life got busier as the year went on though and we needed to multitask more.
What is working: Reading during mealtimes (we had already been doing that from the beginning to some extent, now I'm just doing it more) and reading during clean up time. Reading to them while they clean up toys has been working really well. They focus on actually getting toys picked up rather than messing around when I'm in there with them and they focus on the reading because they're just cleaning and not playing. I've gotten some really good narrations from Sam during clean up and even Kate has chimed in with her own narrations sometimes.
What's not working: Picking and writing copywork each individual day.
What is working: Planning and writing out a full week of copywork on Sunday afternoons. I had planned to do this from the beginning of the year, but slacked off through the fall and into the holiday season and was trying to choose and write copywork every single morning. Doing it ahead of time in so much better especially because copywork is something Sam does pretty independently. He often does it in the morning after breakfast, while I'm doing dishes or dressing the little ones. On busy days he'll do it in his room during rest time. As long as it's coming back to me with nice, neat letter formation it doesn't matter to me where or when he does it.
There are also some things that I planned on doing from the beginning that we have continued doing all year because they're working extremely well. Namely: Bible, poetry, and prayers over breakfast and using toys to keep characters straight while reading Shakespeare.
Then there are also some things we've been doing a little, but that I want to do better or more consistently in this last term and next year. Nature study, for one. We do it, but not as consistently or as intentionally as I would like.
Handicrafts are something else I'd like to improve on. We've done a couple things here and there with great success and I'm really hoping that we can learn some new things and do them more often.
Yarn wrapped sticks were really fun and have really brightened up our dining room!
Something that my mom always did for us when we were homeschooling, that I'm hoping to carry on with my own family, was weekly poetry tea. It's also a very "Charlotte Mason-y" type of activity, but for whatever reason it hasn't been really high on my priority list. Probably has something to do with the whole having a newborn thing. 😉 We did manage to have our first poetry tea this past week and it was wonderful! Even Henry sat so nicely, carefully sipping his milky tea from a fragile tea cup and listening to me and Sam read poems out loud. I'm going to strive, for now, for poetry tea at least twice a month. When Anna's naps get more consistent we can try for once a week.
All in all, like I said before, I'm very pleased with how our year is going! We are managing to get all of our work done and still feeling very free and flexible, which is exactly what I was hoping for when planning this year. Sam is clearly learning so much and Kate and Henry are absorbing much more than I ever expected they would. I am looking forward now to finishing this year strong and am already doing some planning for next year!
