2023-2024 Final Homeschool Year Review
Have I ever said how much I love homeschooling? Ha…if you’ve been around here long enough, you’ll know I say this ALL the time! Whenever I sit down and look back at our year, I am SO grateful I get to spend this time with my kids. Overall, we had a fantastic year and I am going to share some of our 5th grade, 1st grade, and pre-k moments with you guys. I also wrote more in-depth reviews of our family-style studies which you can view here:
5th Grade
To see our original 5th grade plan head here: 2023-2024 Curriculum Picks: Morning Time & 5th Grade
If I could sum up the girl’s 5th grade year I would say this is the year they both REALLY developed a love for reading. About a year ago I could see they were starting to head this direction, but at this point, it is very clear. They hardly go anywhere without a book in their hands. Every morning they sleepily walk out of their rooms with their books and go right to our couch to start reading. Mid-afternoon you might find them cuddled up in our hammocks outside reading or working on a puzzle listening to an audio book on their Yoto. And, at night, they always read in bed right before falling asleep.
Since I knew this was a big part of their year I already went ahead and did a blog post on the books they’ve read in the last six months which you can read over here: 10+ Books My Upper Elementary Girls Have Recently Read.
For Language Arts, we had a great year using IEW Fix It for grammar and Evan Moor for spelling. In hindsight, IEW Fix It Level 1 was way too easy for the girls. I probably should’ve switched them mid-year to a harder course, but I feel like we have a lot of time to work on the grammar rules so it isn’t something I’m too worried about. Next year we’ll be skipping level 2 and continuing on with level 3. I’ve really liked how simple and independent these books are and they only take about 10 minutes a day and give great writing and structure practice. The girls check all their own work so it’s pretty hands-off for me. For spelling, they cruised through their Evan Moor book so mid-year I started them on 180 Days of Spelling and that has been perfect for them. I love that this has both spelling and writing, word, and vocab study. We’ll also be using this next year too.
This year we’ve embraced more of the Bravewriter Lifestyle of writing and it’s gone really well. We did one creative writing project from Jot it Down and LOVED it. We visited an art museum and my 3 older kids wrote a story using some of the pieces they were inspired by. They turned out so cute and I absolutely loved what they came up with. One thing I didn’t account for using these projects is that as they write more it just takes a long time to edit their work and help their projects come together. So, I think for the future we are just going to do one big creative writing project a year and then keep the final drafts in their writing books. You can read more about our first project and writing books over at our Cinderella Writing Project post. This project is very similar to what you’ll find in Jot It Down.
We also tried Structure & Style from IEW for about two months and it fizzled so I added in two Dart guides for The Very, Very Far North and Dragons in a Bag after Christmas. I knew these reads would be too easy for my girls, but we chose to do them as family read-alouds so my boys could listen in. The girls still really enjoyed them and learned a lot about the literary devices which I focused more on with them. I really love the idea behind these guides, but I still really struggle with how they're organized. I’d still recommend them, but next year I am leaning more toward something the girls can do more independently and is combined with their history since there is just so much cross over between language arts and history curriculums. Ultimately, I do feel like they’re getting lots of writing practice with more of the technical structure in IEW and 180 Days and also formulating thoughts in our history/science notebooking so while these other projects have been fun, I haven’t felt like we needed to add anything else for language arts & writing. I also talked a bit more about our Shakespeare literature studies and some other books we read in my SOTW 2 Review blog post.
Another really big part of their year was working through Simply Math 5. This was a hard course for them, but they did so good and we’ll be continuing on with Math 6 beginning in June. You can read all about my thoughts for this course here: Simply Math 5 Review and Tips.
Finally, the girls also really enjoyed Generation Genius, but, unfortunately these kits are no longer available. We also loved our year subscription of the Tuttle Twins magazines and I’d definitely recommend these. Last fall, the girls continued their private sewing classes. They made the cutest PJ pants, halloween bags, a stuffed animal, and a fun Christmas count down chain. Mid-year we switched them from on-line Hoffman piano lessons (which I’d definitely recommend if you’re looking for beginner on-line lessons) into private piano lessons which has been a great fit for them as well. They’ve really enjoyed learning how to bake sour dough bread -we use this recipe book. They’re baking lots and have also been experimenting with making their own earth pigment paints. I recently grabbed The Organic Artist for Kids to help them learn more about it. They still love all things animals and being outdoors!
5th Grade Independent Work: I get a lot of questions on what the girls can do independently so here is a list of what their daily work load looked like. It usually takes them about 2-2.5 hours to work through.
Grammar (IEW Fix It)
Spelling (Evan Moor + 180 Days)
Handwriting or Typing (TGTB and Typing.com)
Math Review (TGTB)
Piano (Hoffman + Private)
Reading (Personal + History)
Science (GG kits which they did 3-4x a month)
1st Grade & Pre-K
My son’s 1st grade year was a delight! Four years ago, I pulled my twins out of 1st grade public school and did about a half year then so this was my first full year doing 1st grade! This was also my last year doing pre-k! You can read about our original curriculum picks for 1st Grade & Pre-K here. And, remember in addition to these we also did history and science which I linked above.
For my 1st grader this is going to be so easy because we completed everything I had planned to do and honestly I wouldn’t change anything with him. (So, you could just read over my original post above on 1st grade curriculum picks). One thing I’ll note is that he is almost done with math 2 so he’s going to just go ahead and finish that over the summer so we can start fresh with math 3 next August. Math comes really easy for him so he’s just cruised through his books and I am going to just keep letting him set the pace.
His school days are so short - maybe 2 hours at most including science and history. So mid-year I added Beast Academy and Lexia mostly just to fill a little bit of his time with some fun on-line things I didn’t need to help with. I really like Lexia and have used it with my girls, but he’s been hit or miss on whether he’ll do it. He loves Beast Academy, but he struggled a little bit with the online platform because he can’t read a lot of the problems yet and the narrator speaks way too fast for him. We stopped our subscription, but I may re-visit this once he’s got a little more foundation in reading because I’ve heard it’s great especially for very math minded kids which is definitely his strength.
In his free-time he LOVES legos and anything building related. He’s very engineer minded so he’s always crafting and building things. Crunch Labs was THE highlight of his year and we’re already into our 2nd year subscription. He also loves to draw-like he has TONS of notebooks full of drawings. We love the Draw, Write, Now and TGTB drawing books and he recently drew every tutorial out: How To Draw All The Things. He also does lots of Art Kids Hub. He did loose interest in the bells so we aren’t using those anymore. We also do lots of reading. We mostly pull from TGTB for his readers and his favorite read-aloud this year was Robin Hood and, of course, we still read lots of picture books with him and my youngest son. He also spends a lot of time outdoors and loves going on long bike rides.
1st Grade Independent Work: This load usually takes about 15-20 minutes a day (4x a week).
Handwriting (TGTB)
Spelling (Evan Moor)
Explode the Code
Math Review (TGTB)
This was my last year with a pre-schooler and I had BIG plans to make this a fun hands-on year with him, but, this is one area that I definitely had to simplify. I’m sad about it because I just LOVE this age so much, but I also know my brain can only hold so much. Most of my brain power went to math 5 and supporting my 1st grader and science/history. Which, I’m okay with and I know he doesn’t necessarily need all the fun extras. So with him, he did the Upstart Early Learning Program for 20 minutes a day which is something I’ve used with all my kids and it’s so nice because it’s very hands-off for me. We also completed books A & B of Explode the Code (we’ll do C over the summer). He did both the doodle books from TGTB (which I love and think they’re great for fine motor skills) He’s also dabbled in TGTB Kindergarten Prep course and math K - he’s still pretty hit or miss if he’ll sit down and do a work book so I’ve just been following his lead and interest. We’ve been working on his letter sounds and he is getting close to blending and anxious to read, but he’s not quite there yet so that’s something we’ll definitely be working on over the summer. I’ve got a whole post on Learning To Read At Home which you can visit here. He also LOVES to cuddle up and be read to and he listens to his Yoto a lot. Another really simple thing I’ve been doing with him lately to work on scissor and glueing is this cute Scissor Skills book.
On a final note, I did want to mention we did a really fun color unit study to kick off our year and I talked more about that on these two posts: Back to Homeschool 2023 + Color Study Unit and September Recap.
If you’re a Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saint family, we just LOVE using The Red Headed Hostess to supplement our scripture study because there is something for every age in the monthly subscription - including me! We have used the weekly kits very consistently for 3.5 years now and just appreciate them so much. We’ve also added in a morning prayer/spiritual journal which we do a few times a week right after our morning time devotionals. It’s become a special quiet time and I’ve loved seeing what is touching my kids hearts - even my 4 year old has expressed some really sweet things through pictures.
And, that is a wrap! We actually finished up most of our work almost a month ago so we’ve been taking it real easy these last few weeks and enjoying our spring weather. Next up…we’re hitting the road for a big RV trip and after that we’ll settle into our summer rhythm!
PS - if you’re starting to think about summer…last year we LOVED this big engineer print complete with an editable summer bucket list.
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