The (school) year in review

Observations of the past year:

• Brynna has learned to read, in spades. We now have to tear books out of her hands to do her chores.
• Kora is able to handle two foreign languages at once, something we did this year on a trial basis. We are doing both at what amounts to half speed. She didn't finish either book, but has reached or exceeded the goal I set for how far she would get.
  
• I can see improvement in both Kora's and Aubrey's writing, something that Kora especially has struggled with at times.
• I started making Kora and Aubrey both write out the spelling rule at the beginning of each spelling lesson, and have discovered that this really helps make it "click." Especially for those who are not natural spellers.
• I like Tapestry of Grace! It has really simplified things for me, and I think it will continue to do so as I add more kids into our "academy."
• Kora and Aubrey have made great strides in becoming much more independent this year, much more than I would have thought possible. This is very good for me as I have Brynna and Hailey coming up hard on their heels, who will need much more attention from me in these early years.
• In the classical education model, dialectic age children take formal logic courses. Although Kora was too young for this, she spent time each week doing a sort of "warm-up" to logic activity - mindbenders. These were a big hit. In fact, I had to put a time limit on her or she would have blown through an entire book of them in a day.
• We didn't get our garden planted yet - between all the illnesses we've had plus a May taken up with family responsibilities, this project will have to be pushed into June (or July).
  

Looking ahead to next year

• It is time to get Kora a "real" piano teacher - so I am in the process of finding a piano teacher for her. I have been teaching her the past 2 years, but I have taken her as far as I feel I can.
• I need to do more hands-on projects for history. This is one aspect of TOG that I didn't do this year, but especially with a 1st grader next year, I need to do more of these types of things. I am pretty good about doing these with science, but for some reason I struggle to do them for history, Maybe it's just because I would just rather read another book about it than do a messy project? But my plan is to schedule time for this each week so I am forced to do it. Tapestry sells lap books to go with their stuff, and I am thinking about buying one to see if we like that.
  
• Although I love Tapestry of Grace, I think their year 2 plan covers too much territory. TOG covers all of world history in four years, but I think year four spends too much time on the 20th century. Many families take 2 years to go through year plan 2 because it covers so much, but in order to keep within the 4 year time frame, my plan is to take a year and a half to go through Year plan 2 (roughly 400 AD through 1800). Then a year in Year plan 3 and do Year plan 4 in one semester. That's the plan anyway. In three years, I'll let you know how it turns out. ;) This also gives me time to tweak the plan further before Kora hits high school. That is a great plus about this curriculum - very flexible.
• I didn't do as much read alouds as I had intended to this past year. We did do some, but this is not something I did on as regular a basis as I'd have liked. So next year I need to find a way to do so more consistently.
  
• I hereby take a solemn vow to never, NEVER again go through an entire semester without any breaks. We did so this year for family reasons, only taking a single day off here and there, but not a whole week, because we needed to. But NEVER AGAIN! We will go longer into the summer or start earlier if need be.
• I want to concentrate more on cooking and sewing skills this year, especially for Kora.

Anyone else willing to 'fess up?