Our New Year Reset
A few weeks ago when I was talking about goals on IG I had a handful of messages asking us about our process for setting goals this time of year. Obviously January is a time of reflection and since things are constantly evolving and changing, I will say, most of these things I am re-visiting and re-evaluating all through out the year anyway. But, with the natural break of the holidays, I do like to take a few days and be prayerful about any intentional changes we need to make. It is a good time to reset.
Curriculum Changes
When it comes to homeschool, I pretty much always start here - what’s working and what isn’t? This is something I usually know before January, but if a switch is needed, this is a good time to make a natural transition and start something fresh. But, also, you know the saying, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” and sometimes that is the case with mid-year curriculum evaluations too. Sometimes it’s more about just doing hard things and working to finish what you started. I’ve experienced both scenarios and it’s really only through experience do you learn when it’s good to do one or the other. See my 4th Grade Year Review for more on this.
For us, I decided to stop using some of IEW with my older girls - we were using their Fables & Fairytales writing curriculum which I think it’s a great curriculum and very thorough - but we’re only a few months into it and have completely lost interest so I took that as a sign it was time to move on. My heart kept coming back to Bravewriter and their philosophy so that’s where we are at right now. We used the Charlotte’s Web Dart Guide last year and I just can’t tell you how many times my kids have come back to the things we learned in that guide - even though it was super simple and a long time ago. I have more on this and what we’re currently using below since it’s part of our goals this year.
Academic Assessments
A few weeks ago I decided to have my older girls do some academic assessments. I don’t do this every time I evaluate our curriculum, but it’s been almost a year since I stopped using a more formal language arts program with them so I decided I wanted another eye on their reading and language skills. (And, I threw in math just because I was curious how it’d go.) We used to do optional assessments three times a year through our state homeschool funding program, but the last two years we’ve actually opted out of their testing services. Utah’s upper elementary tests are unnecessarily long and very inconvenient for us to attend. So this time around I used Homeschool Boss and our experience was fantastic. The on-line assessments were relatively short (43 questions each) and we were able to complete all of it from home. The results came within 24 hours and definitely aided in my evaluation of how we wanted to finish out the school year as well as what direction we may want to take next school year.
The Count Down
We’re over half way through the school year so it’s all down hill from here. One thing I like to do is to take the time to sit down and think through how many lessons we have left and how many more school days there are until we break for the summer. I just use the Table of Contents in all our books to do this. This way I can see how to pace ourselves over the next few months. For us, personally, I have noticed we all get major spring fever around April/May. So I like to try to be on our homestretch with our final lessons and have a lighter and more fun load in April so we’re pretty much wrapped up by the first week of May. This worked well for us last year when we did a Butterfly/Ladybug study and Cinderella writing project to get us through those last few weeks.
Also, depending on if we take a spring break, observe holidays, and/or give some flexibility for illness or spontaneous days off then looking at all the numbers helps me know whether or not we need to do things like double up on lessons or do work 5 days a week versus 4, ect. By the way, I know some people who don’t want to try to finish up earlier in the Spring so instead they like to just scale down their current work load and move a little slower which I think is also a great option. I use this homeschool planner to keep track of all these things. For a detailed post on how I organized my planner, you might like this post.
What’s coming up for 2024-2025?
Like I very briefly mentioned, believe it or not, this is also the time of year my eyes and ears start to perk up to what we might want to do for our following school year. I start to have a good feel for what I know we’ll be finishing up over the next few months and whether or not we’ll continue on with certain curriculums or change things up. I start jotting down ideas, but don’t start making any decisions until later in the year. For more on planning, you may enjoy reading this post. I can tell you, I already know one big science unit we’re using next year and I can’t wait!
Daily Rhythms & Kid’s Responsibilities
It took me a few years of homeschooling to realize our homeschool naturally ebbed and flowed with the seasons so we naturally usually have some kind of little change of rhythm this time of year. The kid’s jobs and responsibilities get updated and this month we made a few simple adjustments to our morning core time (see this post for what our days currently look like). I have a post on creating daily rhythms you can read here and I have some editable templates to help you organize your rhythms too.
Homeschool Goals
I find, like so many others, we set goals in January, but then again in July/August when looking into the next school year. Periodically I do homeschool interviews with the kids where I check in and make sure we’re all on the same page, but we do do a more formal goal setting routine at the beginning of the new year. For my kids we sit down and go over goals in four areas: intellectual, spiritual, physical, and social. Their intellectual goals cover what they want to see or do more in our homeschool. For example, this year, my twins set a goal to read 100 chapter books. It’s an ambitious goal, but they’re avid readers and I think they have a great shot at reaching it. My oldest son set a goal to learn how to build with wood which will be an exciting new skill for him to try. We hang their goal sheets in their room where it’s easy to see and right now we keep them in plastic sheets so that they stay nice and can continue to add to them. These are the goal sheets we use and the plastic sleeves we keep them in.
My husband and I also set goals in similar areas, but here are a few of the ones related to homeschool:
Implement scripture study on each child’s individual level. You guys know I love our family scripture study so much and we’re still doing lots of gospel related activities together. However, on one hand, this year I do want to make sure I am not missing “the basics” with my younger boys. And, on another hand, I want to make sure my older girls are getting the depth they’re craving more of so this is an area I am re-working right now to find a good balance for all of us. We have used The Red Headed Hostess for 3 full years now and I am just loving everything in her kits this year.
20 More Read Alouds. Last year my goal was to read more aloud to my kids and we made it to over 20 books so I thought that would be a great goal again for this year. You can check out my last post to see what books we read: 20+ Books We Read Aloud in 2023. Our first read-aloud for this year is The Very, Very Far North.
Read everything I ask my older girls to read. Last year the girls spent a lot of time reading some very long and drawn out series of books. I feel like they could’ve used their time reading a little bit better literature though so this year with their 100 book goal I have a line up of books I’m introducing and I told them I would read everything they do. We’re 4 weeks in and they’ve read almost 7 books so it is going really well. They’re enjoying everything we’ve started with-Viking Quest, Wingfeather, and the Chronicles of Narnia. I think it will be fun and it’ll give us lots to connect on. We’re using this cute reading log from Everyday Reading and my girls also like using their Reading Journal to record their thoughts on each book they read.
Read 5 picture books a day to my younger boys. We go in spurts where we’re really good at daily picture books and then it’ll be a few weeks before we pick them up again so my goal is to set aside a little time each day with my boys and be very consistent. They love to be read to so this should be an easy goal as long as I try to be more intentional about it.
Wrap up bookwork by first week of May. Before the summer crowds hit we like to squeeze in a road trip so I just like to wrap up our work before we hit the road so I can relax.
Travel more. A big goal of ours is to travel more this year even if it just means shorter weekend trips. I feel like this falls into homeschool goals though because we do try to looks for lots of educational experiences on our adventures. A long-term goal of ours is more extensive road-schooling.
Embrace the Bravewriter lifestyle of writing. This has been one of those “dig deep in my soul” things and an area I recently tweaked to have even more in our curriculum. The Bravewriter style isn’t as formal as I am used to or usually prefer. But, right now, we are trying The Very, Very Far North Guide. To be really honest, the Dart guides are really hard for me to wrap my head around - I don’t love how they're organized, but I am going to give them a really good shot for the rest of the school year. We’re also back to our Jot It Down writing projects. Technically, when these two guides are combined it’s considered a full language arts program, but I’d say it’s still a pretty loose curriculum and a little easy for my girls so we’re still supplementing with Fix It Grammar and 180 Days of Spelling.
Have a continued focus on nutrition and physical exercise. This is an area that is already pretty integrated into our daily lives — we talk a lot about nutrition at meal time and the kids are on and off in sports, but as we transition into spring over the next few months here I’m hoping we can get back to regular park dates and be consistent with getting outside and doing more regular family bike rides.
Cut off school work by 2:00. I’m really good at prioritizing our homeschool areas - maybe even too much. And, I notice if school drags on late into the day it can really throw off some of the other areas in our home so I need to be better about letting go of school work when the time comes to move on. It’s a big part of finding balance for me between our house needs, my health and fitness goals, and how much I work with blogging.
Meet more often with individual families from our homeschool group. Last year our homeschool group started gathering more frequently, but the gatherings can be really big so one of my goals this year is to spend time with some of the families in smaller group settings so we can all build closer relationships.
What’s a goal you have for your homeschool this year? Happy 2024!
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