Our homeschooling year continued full swing into the first half of June mostly because this is a testing year for us, and I wanted to finish up a few things before I administered the tests last week. As a result, I am feeling burned out on all things homeschool. I am so glad we have those tests out of the way, and now we can relax a little, though we have some exciting summer activities we need to get ready for. I’ll be able to tell you all about that next month.
We will do some “lite” homeschooling during the summer months, and I also do a lot of administrative work in the summer, but I don’t mind. I have to write up progress reports for the year, and I use that as a way to document everything the boys have achieved during the year. I’m not required to show it to anyone, so I include everything, and it makes a good keepsake. I also like to put together a slideshow of photos from our year, but I never finished the one for last year 😬, so I’m not pressuring myself to do it this year either.
I am still working on a 7th grade curriculum, which means settling on the resources for all the subjects plus a full literature curriculum, in which I’ve picked my own books, resources, and questions to ask (with help from the Internet). This is the first time I’ve planned so far ahead. It’s been fun, but it’s a lot of work, and it’s slow going because I have such little time to work on it. (Here’s where I daydream about a week alone in a mountain cabin to work on stuff like this. lol) I am also putting together a much more formal plan for 4th grade for my younger son than I ever did for his older brother, but that’s much easier to do since I have already taught 4th grade once.
My twelve-year-old told me recently that his younger brother was lucky because I already did all my experimenting before I got to him. lol That’s not always true, though. My younger son is very different in his interests and learning style, and I feel like I’m starting from scratch with him, though it is nice to have a bunch of resources and experience to draw from.
Speaking of curriculum, if you read my last post about how our year went, you might want to skim over it again. Because I forgot to include some things! Opps. I realized this as I was working on the progress reports. This is what I get for trying to write fast.
What else have we been doing? I just posted my twelve-year-old’s spring recital piece on his YouTube channel. I hope you’ll check that out.
As for me, I enjoyed having a photography job last month at the beautiful William Harris Homestead. My great aunt is the person who restored the log house and dreamed of using the homestead for heritage education. Now her daughter (my cousin) is carrying out that dream with help from a wonderful staff, which I got to photograph too. I love how my photos turned out, so I hope you’ll check them out. How I wish I could do more photography jobs. 🙂
We also took a day off to visit the Atlanta Botanical Garden Gainesville. Since my son has a keen interest in trees and horticulture, we bought a family membership to the Atlanta Botanical Garden last year, and we try to take advantage of it! We got lucky to see a pileated woodpecker while we were there.
And what else? Well, it’s mostly just been busy Daily Life stuff. But we do enjoy hanging out at home on our front porch when we can, and we all like to read and watch television. For fun, I thought I would list our current favorites.
Books to read silently:
12-year-old: Death Gate Cycle series
9-year-old: Calvin and Hobbes (any book will do)
Me: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Books I’m reading aloud:
Chickadee by Louise Erdrich
Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science by Jeannine Atkins
Just for the 9-year-old: The Little House series
Television
The whole family: Deep Space 9 (Netflix), Northern Exposure (DVD), Big Dreams, Small Spaces (Netflix)
The boys: The Adventures of Puss in Boots (Netflix)
Me: Scott and Bailey, The Durrells in Corfu, Poldark (all on Amazon Prime)
If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your readership so much. Please tell me what you have been up to.
Mama of Letters 
A friend of mine who homeschools in another state was shocked to learn about the record-keeping requirements we have here. We have to keep a daily log of activities and put together a portfolio of our daughter’s work throughout the year to demonstrate she is making progress. I submitted close to 100 pages for our evaluation last year. To be honest, I resented it at first. (You know traditional school teachers do not document the progress of each child to that extent…) I have come to love putting together a portfolio, however. I know our daughter will enjoy looking at all the things she was doing across the years – the history and science projects, the field trips, her piano and horseback riding pictures, her thoughts on books she read. The first time I put one together, I was so proud of everything we had accomplished as a family. I know forcing people to organize their memories was not the intent of the record-keeping legislation, but that’s what it is for us!
I love Jhumpa Lahiri so much. Interpreter of Maladies will always be one of my favorite books. I re-watched the movie for The Namesake recently and it reminded me how much her storytelling just expands your heart.
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saucysandpiper — Thanks so much for your comment! Wow. That is a lot of record-keeping requirements! I’m not sure I would enjoy having to do that, but I actually do keep a chart where I check off daily work, so maybe I already do?! LOL I completely agree that it’s a good thing to reflect and record the work done during the year because it can be very validating at the end of the year, and it’s so easy to forget just how much you and your child have accomplished together.
I will have to get Interpreter of Maladies. The Namesake is one of my favorite books, and I only recently realized it was made into a movie. I haven’t seen it. Unaccustomed Earth is a book of short stories, and I have enjoyed all of them so far. She’s an incredible writer, and most of her characters are at the same stage of life as I am, so I can relate very much to her work.
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I also put together a portfolio for keepsakes. I enjoy it, but it does take time and effort! A week alone in a cabin sure does sound great…imagine how much we could get done!
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Rachael — Thank you for your comment! Yes, the portfolio is worth the effort! Perhaps we need to open a retreat in the mountains for homeschool moms! LOL
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I would love to see what you’ve put together for 7th Grade and 4th Grade, as my two oldest kids are also in the same “grades”. 🙂 I put that into quotation marks because I’m not really a “by grade/level” person. Please do share if and when you can! Thank you so much! God bless.
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Tina — Thank you for your comment! I will definitely post some information on what I put together for future “grades.” Although I use grade levels to help with planning and organizing their portfolios, I definitely go at my boys’ pace and don’t try to push them to reach certain milestones just because that’s what they are doing in public school. Though as my eldest enters junior high/high school, I’ll have to pay more attention to those details.
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