As year-round homeschoolers we typically start new grade levels in late spring or early summer. This year we began on Monday, 15 June, so we have completed approximately five months so far. Usually I wait until the halfway point before evaluating the homeschool year, but it seems appropriate to assess everything a bit earlier this time around.
When I shared our plans for starting the new homeschool year, I stated that rather than attempting to consider everything we might want to cover for the entire time period, we intended to simplify. Instead of laying out the entire annual calendar at once, we would just look at where we wanted to begin with most subjects.
This worked well for us at the time, but now I feel we need to step things up a bit and consider more of a full plan to round out the rest of the year. Before addressing that, however, we must start by evaluating the homeschool year so far: our successes, our failures, and what changes we intend to incorporate going forward.
This post will share ideas you can use when evaluating the homeschool year for your own students. Along the way I will offer specific examples of what we like and dislike about our own homeschool progress over the past few months. Our students are currently in 9th, 7th, and 4th grade, and we have used a similar assessment process every year since they were kindergarten ages.
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Start With What IS Working
Although it may be your nature to want to fast forward to the fun of planning what comes next {I can certainly relate}, you should take a moment to acknowledge some of the high points {things you liked, ideas that flourished, what turned out better than expected} for the homeschool year to date.
I highly recommend that when evaluating the homeschool year you begin with what is working. This is not just good for morale; it will also give you a framework to hang your changes on. Start with what clearly works, and use it to anchor your planned revisions.
For our homeschool, two aspects I feel we have really “gotten right” over time deal with establishing a firm routine and realistically appraising the amount of time school takes each day.
One consistent thread in our homeschooling has always been our routine. While we may have tweaked it along the way, we have made education at home a core component of our lifestyle. No matter how we intend to mix up our subjects or reading or written work, I know I can count on our days running {relatively} smoothly because we have internalized a routine of learning every day that works for us.
Even though we tend to be pretty relaxed in both our schooling and our generally un-busy life, I like knowing our days have a flexible yet predictable flow. We have sufficient margin that we don’t feel too “scheduled” or stiff, yet the pattern is ingrained enough that we feel “off” if we stray too far. When we do change things up, it’s easy to fit our new activities into the already existing configuration without reinventing the wheel.
Another important thing we have learned over the years is that more time does not {necessarily} equal more learning. One of the biggest misconceptions folks have about homeschooling is that it must take over your entire day. {Spoiler: It doesn’t.}
When you work one-on-one with your own kids, it takes astonishingly little time to keep them at “grade level.” We can cover the basics in a fraction of the time they would spend in the classroom. This leaves tremendous amounts of free time for the Agents to explore interests on their own or simply play and, you know, be kids.
Currently we spend approximately one to one-and-a-half hours per day {Monday through Friday} on written work {primarily math and language arts, but other subjects as well} and another hour or so reading together. Our joint reading time includes history, mythology, art, science, and health, among other topics. The Agents read quite a bit {both fiction and nonfiction} independently each day as well. We might do other “school-ish” tasks throughout the day—art and fitness and watching documentaries—but the actual structured part takes surprisingly little time.
Ask Yourself: What Could We Do Better?
After you determine which aspects you definitely want to keep, next you need to address what could be done better, or {maybe} what needs to be tossed altogether. This could mean streamlining current plans so they move along more efficiently, or coming up with an entirely new agenda. For us, it usually involves looking at how much time we devote to each subject, and what books we currently use.
Some subjects just always seem to get the short end of the stick. Every year I think, this is going to be the year when I conquer The Issue of the Short-Changed Subjects, and every year at about the halfway point I realize it happened again.
One idea I have had in the past—although it never truly got off the ground—is combining some subjects into unit studies. For example, changing up geography, art, and music so we tie them together and provide a bit more continuity instead of just looking at random people, places, and things.
Additionally, we have explored a lot of interesting science and history topics, but we still lack cohesion. I think we need to try more of a timeline approach so we can start to fit things together properly.
One final change would be to limit the number of specific topics in each subject and do fewer in-depth studies instead. I realize we may have been spreading ourselves too thin with some areas. To this extent I plan to focus our attention on spine books once again.
Do you use spine books in your homeschool? Basically all this means is you have one particular “reference” book for each subject, and you use this text as a guide for your studies. I cannot emphasize enough this does not need to be a dry textbook! In the past we have used a number of joint publications from Smithsonian and DK, including Geography, Science, Human Body, and History.
The idea behind spine books is they provide a firm structure to follow while still allowing for extra exploration and rabbit holes. You might use, for instance, an American history spine to stay on target with keeping events in chronological order, but add in multiple sources—perhaps a closer look at primary documents or a collection of interesting biographies—when you reach a chapter that piques particular interest.
This is a great way to keep your overall studies and goals on track, while also providing enough flexibility to encourage more in-depth learning.
Be As Specific As You Need To Be
When evaluating the homeschool year, how detailed your appraisal will need to be depends on many factors.
For younger children—say, kindergarten through about third grade—you may be more concerned with logistics and overall structure. {Do we have a good rhythm to our days? Am I encouraging a love of learning? Are we building a firm foundation?} Critically at this point, you want to make sure you are teaching the child you have, even if {especially if} the way you want to teach is not the same way your child needs you to teach.
Keep in mind that everything happens in its own time. Believe it or not, there is no rush to learn . . . anything. It doesn’t matter if “all” first graders are doing xyz, or if someone declares students must be able to {fill in the blank with a random skill} by a certain age. Education is not a race. They have their whole lives to explore; you and I are just temporary tour guides. The best laid plans are no match for your child’s natural curiosity.
As your students age you will likely want to spend more time looking at how specific subjects are going. When I wrote about planning the homeschool year I included several resources that address knowing what to teach in each grade. You may want to consult outside sources such as these just for your own peace of mind.
For example, what mathematical concepts are typically covered by the end of elementary school {grade five ish}? What pre-algebra and pre-geometry skills should my middle schooler focus on? Are we on track to have the necessary prerequisite knowledge regardless of what path my student takes toward high school math credit? {You can do this with any subject, but math is always a good example because it tends to organize proficiencies in a very concrete fashion.}
Accept the Ever-Changing Process
Part of evaluating the homeschool year is accepting that homeschooling is a fluctuating process. You will need to continually refine what is working and what is not. This is not a flaw of homeschooling, but an opportunity that will ultimately benefit your students.
We have been rocking this homeschooling gig for roughly ten years now. The Agents generally have it together academically and can hold {semi-reasonable} conversations with other humans and have not deteriorated into social misfits. This might lead one to {incorrectly} assume we have a least a little bit of a clue as to what we are doing and how we’re going to keep moving forward.
The reality is, however, I don’t ever feel like oh, nowI know what I’m doing, full stop. Why? Because the bar keeps moving. I come up with new ideas that are just so much better than what we were doing before. The Agents won’t stop growing and changing. New books come out. Everyone needs more {or less} sleep than they did last year, last month, last week. The weather changes and we want to either live outdoors or paste ourselves to the couch.
As a homeschooler, you might never be able to say this is how we homeschool, now and forever, the end because how we homeschool is a moving target. Right now, you may have a pretty sweet system. You might like the way you do A Lot of The Things. But, my experience has shown that can change quickly. And that’s okay.
How is your homeschool year going so far? What specific aspects do you consider when evaluating the homeschool year? What changes will you implement to make things even better going forward?
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