In the first post in this series, I focused on subjects that are going well. I do love it when a plan comes together!
But that was the easy part. Now we come to the part that can get discouraging really fast if we’re not careful…
A lot of homeschool bloggers like to post their yearly curriculum choices (like I’ve been doing in this series) for their readers. Over the years, I’ve found it incredibly helpful to see what other families are using.
But sometimes these “what we’re using this year” lists give the impression that choosing curriculum for the year is a once-and-done kind of thing.
Totally not the case!
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If you haven’t done so yet, read the first post in this series here and check out Our Curriculum Choices – Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4.
Year 5 Snapshot
If you’ve been following this series of posts, we’ve now caught up to real time. I wrote about the first four years retroactively because I started this blog just before we began our fifth year of homeschooling.
Since I can’t summarize a year that hasn’t happened yet, this snapshot will be a look at how our year has started so far. Later this school year I hope to post about lessons learned during Year 5… but I have to learn them first, so stay tuned.
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If you haven’t done so yet, read the first post in this series here and check out Our Curriculum Choices – Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3.
Year 4 Snapshot
While we were (and still are) far from having it all figured out, Year 4 was the first year I felt noticeably more confident in our homeschooling.
After several years of educating our kids at home, I now had some data to work with – some proof that this was working. We could look back on work from the years past and see tangible evidence that growth and learning were taking place. Phew!
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Well, it’s about time!
After years of historical knowledge going in one ear and out the other, I’ve finally found a system for learning and retaining history that works for me (and my kids, too)!
A key element of this system is making timelines. (The other elements that work for us – notebooking and using chronological curricula – I hope to talk about in future posts).
Growing up, one of the main reasons I disliked and couldn’t retain history was because I’m an “overall picture” kind of gal. But in school I had never been given the big picture of history – only out-of-order chunks. I memorized names and dates for tests. I filled in the blanks on my worksheets. I even did some fun projects. But, to my frustration (as a child) and embarrassment (as an adult), I retained very little information about the history of our world.
I don’t even like playing Trivial Pursuit for fear that my historical ignorance will be exposed!
(oops… the truth is out now)
Thankfully, the history curricula that we’ve used so far (Tapestry of Grace Primer and Story of the World) have both suggested creating timelines to keep track of historical people and events.