End of the Year Review: The Changes We Made

Here we go again with another year end review.  This time I will be talking about each individual child and the choices we made for them this year.  Like I said in my last post, we ended up making quite a few changes through out the year.  Be sure to check out my other posts about Classical Conversations and our all together subjects.

Zach- Age 5  Kindergarten

For Zach, I really thought he would be ready to learn to read at the beginning of the year, that was not the case.  We tried for a few weeks and he just was not getting it, and that is ok.  He had just turned 5, he's a boy and his attention span at the time was really short.  At that point I just put everything away and we just did Math, which was all hands on.  Slowly as the year went on we made some changes and added things in.  We added in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading instead of All About Reading, Zaner Bloser Handwriting the kindergarten book instead of the Italic handwriting, and Plaid Phonics A.  I love all of those choices!  Zach has just been thriving in all aspects.  He is really beginning to understand some phonics concepts, his handwriting is improving and his reading is really coming along.  During the summer we will continue on with his reading and maybe the phonics book.  All of these books we have been working through super slowly, so we will continue with all of them next year.  The one thing I did stick with for Zach is the Saxon Math K, we really enjoyed it.

Noah- age 8/9  3rd Grade

Noah has made tremendous strides this year with his reading.  He went from reading hardly anything to devouring everything he gets his hands on!  Honestly the only thing that is the same for Noah is his math.  He just finished up Teaching Textbooks 3, he did really well with it.  Although these last few months I have noticed his need for me to help him through the lessons, so next year we will be switching up our math choice for him.  For handwriting I also switched him to Zaner Bloser the 3rd grade book instead of the Prescripts from Classical Conversations, he has been working hard on his cursive writing.  We dropped All About Reading Level 3, and All About Spelling Level 1, I just felt like they weren't working for Noah anymore.  For a replacement we added in First Language Lessons Level 2.  That is going really well, we won't finish the book this year, but I hope to work a through it a bit this summer.  We also added on Nessy Online learning, we haven't been very consistent with it but I can tell its going to be a big help for him.

Elijah- age 12  6th Grade

Elijah worked so hard this year!  He made amazing progress in his spelling and grammar work.  I really didn't make any changes for him this year.  Although he didn't finish his Fix It Grammar book or the Phonetic Zoo.  We will hopefully work through them more over the summer.  I did drop the Prescripts handwriting for him and we switched to Zaner Bloser the 6th grade book.  I am not sure how much he actually got out of it, his handwriting is just not improving as much as I would like.  He is left handed and a boy and his father has really terrible handwriting so I think I will just concede that it's as good as it's going to get.   He also did not do any of the reading books I had picked out.  He just does not like to me to force books on him, on the other hand he will pick up random books and just start reading, so I guess I don't need to worry about him.  He finished up his Teaching Textbooks 6 and did really well, although it was a tough road at times!  I really feel like the Essentials program through Classical Conversations helped a lot with his writing and for a final project for him he is writing a five paragraph paper all on his own with very little help from me.  I am requiring this of him because I want him to know that he can do it!  Next year will be a big leap of independence for him and I know he needs this boost of confidence.

My final thoughts on this year:

This was an amazing year of tremendous growth for all of us!  I am so excited that we made the decision to use Classical Conversations and I feel that after five year of homeschooling we have finally found our thing!  I have been reading a lot about the Classical model of education, and I am hoping to dig more into it this summer.  Reading The Well Trained Mind is what helped me make my mid year changes for Zach, I took most of the recommendations from that book and surprisingly they worked for him!  Here are some books on my summer reading list, The Question, Teaching the Trivium, and The Life Giving Home .


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