Every year I make goals for our Homeschool. You can read our 2014 Homeschool Goals here and our 2013 Homeschool goals here. In this post I will write about how well I think we met our goals for the 2014-2015 Homeschool year.

1. Talk about the scriptures as we go about our days.

We were in Survival Mode for the majority of this school year. In the middle of it all I was give the wise advice to focus just on what was most important in this time. This meant, for much of August through December, homeschooling was put on the back burner and didn’t happen consistently. Because so much of my focus and attention was on getting Sarge well, I had to rely on others to care for my girls. My parents took on that role and they did a fabulous job of keeping them in line. At the same time, our family was in chaos; our normal life had abruptly come to a halt after receiving a phone call in the middle of the night. This had a ripple effect on our family for many months to come! I felt discombobulated for many months afterwards. I longed to find a new normal but it was going to take the better part of a year before that could happen! There came a time when Dave and I felt like things were spiraling out of control and we had to do something to reign everyone back in after life being so crazy for months on end.

Just prior to Sarge’s birth, we had implemented four Family Rules. These were centered among Scripture, easy for the girls to memorize and each rule had specific consequences should a rule be broken. Our Family Rules are:

• Be kind to one another.
• Obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.
• Do everything without complaining or arguing.
• Take care of your things.
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In the chaos, our Family Rules were swirling along with us, not really having any purpose because we didn’t have the frame of mind to parent intentionally. It was Survival because of Sarge’s special needs. One of the first things we did once coming out of Survival Mode was to re-establish these Family Rules. We decided one night to do it and the next day was Boot Camp. There was nothing on our agenda for the day except to reteach these rules and expect compliance. Within ONE DAY there was an instant difference in the overall climate of our family. The day before I had been worried sick we had done a disservice somehow to the girls in all these months of chaos, but that was all it took to reign everyone in.

Children NEED structure and boundaries. I have always believed this but after seeing my family go through this past year and then feeling like all my parenting had gone down the drain after all those months of craziness, seeing everything rebound beautifully in one day was all the proof I need to know one of the best things parents can give their children is rules with clear expectations of what will happen if a rule is broken. It seemed like our girls were just as much relieved as we were to have these Family Rules re-established in our home.

We believe Scripture is the Word of God and taking Scripture and making our Family Rules has been extremely effective!

2. Continue to foster a desire to learn in my children.

I was told several times this year that if we were going to have a chaotic year, it’s better to be Little Bug’s Kindergarten year than when she is older. Kindergarten is still centered around playing (at least it should be, in my opinion) and Little Bug got ample playtime this year! The girls learned much about life this year. The took the addition of a baby brother to the family like champs, loving him endlessly from the moment we told them God might be putting a baby boy in our family. While the time we were away with Sarge at the NICU was hard, especially for Sweet Pea, they have never shown jealously or any negative feelings towards Sarge. They simply love him. It is evident in their interactions with him and care for him. Even though our family schedule changed drastically with the addition of Sarge and we continue to put his schedule before everyone else's because babies are the least flexible when it comes to eating and sleeping, the girls are very understanding when I tell them I have to do xyz with Sarge before I can do xyz with them. They have both learned how to be considerate of Sarge’s needs. That certainly wasn’t in my lesson plans at the beginning of this year but it is a definite lesson both girls have learned beautifully!

When we did do school, both girls remain positive about learning. Little Bug did have some negativity associated with the school work that she did at the school we put her in from January to May. She disliked all the worksheets that were sent home. Some of that has bled over to our homeschool, which I do not like, but usually when I say, “We are doing Mommy school, not {the name of her school} school”, she perks up and is excited to learn with me.

Little Bug developed a real interest in learning about Indians this year, so we spent some time reading several books about Indians to learn more. One thing I love about homeschooling is the freedom we have to dive in to topics of interest instead of being told exactly what we have to learn about and how we have to learn it.

3. Work on gaining independence and being responsible.

This is something that was definitely overlooked for the majority of the school year. With my motto of “focus on what is important now”, this didn’t make the cut because there wasn’t time (or energy) to implement. Soon after we re-established the Family Rules, I took some time to teach our girls a Morning Routine I want them to eventually do without any prompting or reminding from me. I know if I can train them to do this Morning Routine our school mornings will run much smoother and there will be less chores for me to accomplish on my own in the midst of wrangling three children, keeping up with household chores and homeschooling!

The Morning Routine I taught the girls is this: Wake up and take off diaper (yes, they both still wear one – we have not mastered staying dry at night yet!), eat breakfast, brush teeth, put on essential oils (OnGuard and DigestZen), get dressed for the day, put pj’s back in basket or laundry basket if dirty. After they have completed their Morning Routine, they are free to play until they hear me run the Swiffer vacuum. That is their signal to clean up from their morning playing and come to the rug in the Homeschool Room to begin school!

It took a good week of me having to remind and prompt, but then they were both doing pretty well with this routine.

4. Academic goals.

Little Bug

We stuck to the three R’s as was my plan. I wrote more about the curriculum choices we made for last year and how they worked or didn’t work for us here, so I don’t want to go in to all that again. Even before Sarge was born, I didn’t feel pressured to get Little Bug reading by the end of her Kindergarten year. She is reading BOB Books. We are currently on the second set. While her phonics instruction was choppy at best this school year, I don’t think developmentally Little Bug was really ready to take off with reading. I guess I will never know. If she would have had consistent phonics instruction all year long and we would have completed All About Reading Level 1, would she be a fluent reader today? I don’t know. I may have stopped AAR anyway because she wasn’t developmentally ready to read. Or maybe she would be reading fluently now. It is what it is. I have a feeling when we pick AAR back up for 1st Grade, it is all going to click for her, and it won’t be long and she will move past the simple readers and begin to read real books.

Little Bug’s math skills are right on par for a Kindergartener, thanks to Horizon’s Math. I never felt like she was lacking anything in math instruction this year due to Horizon’s Math being about a grade level above other math curriculums. I am taking it slow getting through the Kindergarten math because I want these concepts to really solidify in her mind as we work through them.

Little Bug, on her own, developed an interest in writing. She wanted a notebook, I gave one to her, and she started writing in it often. She spells phonetically, but I don’t plan to do any spelling instruction until we complete AAR Level 1. Little Bug is constantly writing notes to me, her sister and her friend across the street. Actual handwriting practice fell by the wayside this year because it wasn’t on the Important Now list. I hope to remedy this for Little Bug next year with some good instruction in letter formation. She has had some very good handwriting practice while doing the primer books for Explode the Code. She forms her letters beautifully in those workbooks. When she is writing in her notebooks though, her handwriting isn’t the best. I think this might be because her focus is more on the content of what she is writing, instead of letter formation. Hopefully it all comes together better in 1st Grade!

Sweet Pea

My academic goals for Sweet Pea were very simple as she was just 3-years-old. I wanted her to learn most, if not all, of her letters and numbers 0-10. Just this week we were walking down a HUGE flight of stairs and Sweet Pea counted them the whole way down. There were 124 steps!!! She has counted to 100 several times now. She has to have a little help along the way, but I am astounded at her counting abilities! Sweet Pea not only knows her letters, but she knows many of the sounds they make as well!

Sweet Pea is known to want to sit on my lap while I am teaching Math to Little Bug. I think math interests Sweet Pea! It will be interesting to see if Sweet Pea is a natural at math. She has been known to say the answer to problems as Little Bug is working!

Stay tuned for our 2015 Homeschool Goals!!!

- Elaine