What Worked and What Didn’t – Homeschool Year 8

“School’s out for summer”! It’s a perfect time to look back on what worked and what didn’t in the last school year.

Another year of homeschooling at the Stewart house has come to an end. The girls grade 7 and 5 years are done and dusted. What a year it was! This was our first year here on PEI and with that, it brought so many changes for the girls. They took them all in stride and have come a long way from where they started last summer!

Curriculum resources are always a big topic of conversation this time of year. “What did you like?”. “What didn’t you like?”, “What are you using next year”? I’ve got the answers to what worked and what didn’t for you down below! 

But first I just wanted to share a little bit about having our kids grow up as homeschool parents. I know we all hear the sayings “The days are long but the years are short.” and when our kids are little those phrases can just feel annoying. However, as someone who is closer to having kids graduate grade 12 than kindergarten, I can attest that it is true!

There have been hard thing and wonderful things about each age group and grade level. Wherever you find yourself, enjoy it but also don’t be fearful of the future. You are in the good ole days and you are entering more good days! Things that are hard now wont be as hard in another year or two. Have no fear though, there will be new things! God, in His infinite wisdom, created seasons in life. Let’s trust His good planning and enjoy them. 

Just before I share what worked and what didn’t, I do want to just admit that I purchased way too much stuff, as per usual. I always have great plans to cover more per day but when it really boils down to it, a long school day doesn’t fit with what I want for our family. So there were quite a few things I still would love to do, but we didn’t get to. Those wont be included in the “didn’t work”.

What Worked

There were a lot of things I loved during this school year. What I always love the most is our time spent reading together. We read so many books together this past year; some educational and some for pure enjoyment. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post about our read alouds from the past year!

Together Subjects

We do everything except for Language Arts and Math together. (Spoiler alert, I think this is going to have to change next year a little bit but we will discuss that more closer to the fall!)

We LOVED our Gather Round unit on Canadian Government. I had actually had this for at least a year but I wanted to wait until we were having a federal election to use it. I think the ages my girls were was perfect as they were asking questions about the election and showing some interest. As usual with Gather Round, my opinion as you can take it or leave it with the workbooks. There were a few fun things in there, such as a project woven throughout where they create their own country and government for it. One of my kids named her country “Flurp” and it was a very nonsensical place! If you were saving money, or not a worksheet type family, you could still learn so much about Canadian Government just with the teacher guide!

I will note that, unfortunately, Gather Round has decided to no longer offer their units in print to Canadians. I know I was very disappointed in that. They are still available in Canada for digital download if that is not something that turns you away.

We continued to love using First Language Lessons for a Well Trained Mind for grammar. We have been slowly working through these for most of our homeschool years, not completing one level per year. The first 2 levels are all done orally, while the 3rd adds a workbook component. All the information is in the teacher guide though so you could still do the course without the workbook. 

These grammar lessons take 5 – 10 minutes daily and use repetition and rhyme to teach grammar. I value the understanding of grammar as I think it helps with both reading and writing. I find they have an easier time in their individual LA programs because these grammar terms are not foreign to them. Hailey (grade 7) still LOVES doing these lessons together. She says it is one of her favourite parts of school!

This Copy the Psalms booklet from my shop was a real blessing for the 30 days we used it. I made a copy for both girls and they were excited to see I had used many of their favourite Psalms to create it. They enjoyed starting their days this way and I hope to make a volume 2 soon! Maybe with some longer passages.

We tried out a history from Generations this year and I wasn’t sure where to put that in this review. The girls really liked it because it was quick and they found it interesting. I definitely chose the wrong level so it was far too easy for them, though I did enjoy the layout of it and liked the mapping aspect. I would be very willing to try again with a higher level that was more appropriate for their ages! The books were beautiful! 

Grade 7

I loved Hailey’s resources this year. I really feel confident that she got a great, thorough education. This year she also really took charge of her own days and worked quite independently, other than when she needed help. New math concepts we would work through together and some trickier skills in LA, but it wasn’t as parent involved as other years have been. She also seemed happy with her resources this year as well and didn’t complain about what she was doing, so that is a huge win!

Again this year we used The Good and The Beautiful for Language Arts. She completed level 7 and I LOVED this level. There were some changes from the elementary levels and I enjoyed all of them. Where some of the lower levels I find light on writing, I felt like she did SO MUCH writing in this level. She learned to research, write essays, write responses to poems or short stories, annotate, and write creatively (plus the things I’ve forgotten). I always appreciate the memorization aspect of TGTB courses and we LOVED the addition of dictation sentences. This seemed a perfect way to practice spelling and grammar at this age. I am so disappointed that there isn’t a true level 8 set from TGTB. I thought this was such a good format and I hope they continue it down the road.

We continued on with Horizons for Math, as we have for the last number of years. This has always been a really good fit for her so I will leave it in the “worked” category. However, I would hesitate to recommend it outside of the lower grades because the teacher guide is lacking. There isn’t instruction on how to teach the concepts, just an answer key really. So far, this is working ok for us as I am still comfortable teaching the material. We will see what the next years bring!

Grade 5

I will preface this by saying that my grade 5 daughter doesn’t do grade 5 level work for the most part. We are working along at her pace. We also didn’t complete either of her curriculum resources this year as we paused to focus on specific areas. For the last few months (since April), I have just been teaching her math myself on our whiteboard. I do go into detail about this on my Instagram!

That being said, we did really enjoy The Good and The Beautiful Level 3. The reading portion was easy for her but the separate spelling book was very useful and she loved the jokes that went with each lesson. Even though the reading was easy, she enjoyed the readers from TGTB so much. Towards the end of the year, we decided to focus more on writing so moved to our old tried and true friends, Essentials in Writing and Writing with Ease. The copywork of Writing with Ease is something I thought she could really benefit from and I think that was a good idea. 

We enjoyed Math with Confidence Level 4 but it’s hard to say that it worked. It did, when modified to our needs. The lessons were moving along too quickly for her so we needed to slow it down. But we did enjoy the lessons when we did them and appreciated the review aspect. 

Both of these 2 things we will pick up and finish next school year!

What Didn’t Work

I wouldn’t say that there were many things that obviously didn’t work, more so lots of things we didn’t have time for. 

We tried Generations Science that was meant for grades 5 – 7 (God Made the World) and that didn’t work. We only did a lesson or 2. Maybe we should have given it more of a shot, and we may another year, but it was pretty dry. I also didn’t like how the questions were for the entire chapter, not in order or broken up into sections, so it was hard to do smaller chunks in one day. This may have been fine if I was only doing it for my older daughter, but as I had planned to do it as a family science class, it just wasn’t what we were looking for. It is also possible that if I had just used it as a read aloud, that would have worked better.

The further I get into this homeschool thing, the more I realize we are very much read aloud people!

Another larger purchase I made last year was a Mosdos Press literature study. Again, I do like the idea behind this still but we only did it a handful of days. It is set up more for a school setting, although can be used (and is used) by homeschoolers as well. There is a large teacher guide, readers and student workbooks. In theory, I would still like to work at this as I like the way it teaches deeper understanding of literature, but I am not sure if it will ever fit into the timeline of our days. 

Overall, this was a great year of school and, for the most part, we really enjoyed the things we did. Now my focus switches to planning for next year!

If you are feeling the stress planning for next year and want someone to help you plan and make sense of things, sign up for an hour of consulting with me!