6 Week Homeschool Review

Well, as I have mentioned before we are one of those crazy homeschool families planning on schooling all year around. When you do this you get to take periodic breaks throughout the year and you still have a good 6 weeks to take off during the summer.

In my last review I was concerned about a few things as noted in my comment : We were more then 5 lessons behind in a couple of courses "The one thing I want to note is that if the trend occurred over our 36 week school year we would be about 30 lessons short in one subject. Prior to my periodic analysis I would not have noticed this deficit. This is exactly why I wanted to get a tighter reign on homeschool progress. So over the next six weeks I will also write on our family calendar if and why we miss school so I can go back and review this at the end of our next 6 weeks."

Well, this time we have really tightened up on the amount of work completed over the six weeks. The only large deficit is in Parker's reading lessons. But frankly, as they have gotten harder for her we have started moving more slowly. So I am not concerned about this deficit. In all of our other courses we were only one lesson behind. We missed school one day during the semester so this is a positive turn around!

I did want to talk a little bit about how I review progress. 1st I use an actual Progress Report form that I created and modify according to our curriculum. I literally count the number of days we have to school over the 6 week period subtract out field trips & bells/co-op days to determine the number of school days. I then go and see what our last completed lesson was and add the number of school days to the last lesson (so if we have 30 school days and the last lesson completed was lesson 100 (100+30=) so our goal is to reach lesson 130). I keep notes on the progress report regarding days off sometimes they say sick day, day off etc... nothing complicated. This time I was able to look back and forth between the last two 6 week periods to see how we did during each period comparatively.

I love this system it is keeping me accountable. I always know where my kids are academically and like most homeschool moms I can rattle off the things they know, need work on and have not year covered in disturbing detail. But what I was not doing was making sure our school was progressing in an exemplary manner (as unto the Lord).

Some great things that have happened this semester is that Parks is truly a reader now and she is plowing through Hillert books like no ones business. She has a stack of readers on her shelf in the bedroom and she reads in many of her spare moments. She is reading firmly on a first grade level and this is amazing to know that a regular Mom can teach her child to read!

A more difficult thing to look into is to pinpoint Peyton's reading comprehension issues and determine the effect of autism on comprehension. However, we are still persevering through Christian Light Reading to find her footing. We are also going to start some reading comprehension suggested by Little Giant Steps.

Finally, we have also neglected our home economics curriculum, by Pearables, which I absolutely adore. Well, we did a few lessons during our week off on organizing your book shelf, making salads & organizing your drawers. We will be making sure we complete at least 6 lessons this semester. This week Parks will be making her first dinner as she progresses through Home Ec. 1 for us on Friday!

This is just a reminder Heather at Sit a Spell and I will be hosting a Homeschool Hoopla sometime in May keep an eye on our blogs and plan to be there or be square!

I hope everyone is enjoying their homeschooling and keeping an eye on their flock!

RHA