Our Homeschool Review: What Worked for us this Fall

Tap, tap, tap…is this thing on? Kidding, kidding.

After years of having an active blog plus a few years of neglecting said blog, I finally feel like I have capacity and focus to start writing again and what better way to start than with a little recap of what worked during the fall semester in our homeschool.

For some background, we have officially been homeschooling for about three years and this year our boys are in third and first grades as well as junior kindergarten. And while it has taken some time to get our bearings, my oldest told me during the fall that he thinks this is our best year of homeschool yet!

I agree.

Our Homeschool: What Worked this Fall

We switched to Memoria Press for our core curriculum.

This year, I switched all the boys to Memoria Press for our core curriculum. For the first part of our homeschool, we tried many different curricula, most of which was good, but the eclectic nature of that often made it hard for me to sequence subjects well for the year. Because I didn’t have a clear understanding of how the parts fit together, it was challenging for me to see the bigger picture and scope of where we were headed for the year.

I’ve learned that I do much better when I can see the full scope of something and understand how the parts fit together. Memoria Press does that well for our family. It follows a classical education model that has been easily adaptable for each of my boys.

I cannot overstate the difference that the grade level curriculum manuals have made in our homeschool. Even thought we have adapted some of the subjects and do not use Memoria Press for all aspects of our homeschool, having a daily guide of each subject has been instrumental to my planning and consistency and it has helped me understand how best to sequence course work for each grade.

We dropped our Friday co-op.

This one was a big change for us. During the 2023-2024 school year, we were so busy during the week. I told my husband that I had begun to feel like a task master at home, constantly needing to get our work done so we could rush out to our next fun activity.

We were missing connection and flexibility. We had packed our schedule with a lot of great things that we all enjoyed, but it meant that school was often inconsistent and stressful. I knew going into this school year, we needed a change.

So, we stopped our Friday commitment. I won’t say there haven’t been times we’ve missed it, but the time and flexibility we have gained on Fridays has been a gift to our family.

We consistently “did school”.

This one seems silly to write, but one of the big things that worked for us in the fall was that we consistently did our school work.

We worked hard to finish our assignments. We wrapped things up and we got into a good rhythm. Being consistent makes planning easier and lets us enjoy adventures and field trips when we have them because we don’t have work that is getting left behind.

And the consistency has helped all of our boys build their learning muscles and hold onto information better.

We adjusted curriculum as needed.

I mentioned earlier that we have loved using Memoria Press for most of our subjects and I definitely consider that to be a spine in our homeschool. As the fall semester progressed, however, we adjusted some of the subjects to better meet our needs.

Specifically, we changed science curriculum for my oldest, we use a different math curriculum, and for another of the boys, we switched spelling curriculum. In some cases, we have simply done subjects (literature, for example) in a different order. We have worked ahead in some subjects and taken others more slowly. Some things have even been put off until further notice.

This has allowed everyone to learn in the way that suits them best and it has been life giving to all of us.

I treated homeschooling like my job.

One of the biggest things that helped our family in the fall semester was that I began to treat homeschooling as my job. This helped me prioritize planning and teaching consistently and allowed me to put other household things on hold as needed to be sure that we got our school work done.

As the semester went on, this really helped me understand my priorities during busy seasons and weeks in terms of what I needed to focus on, what I needed to let go of, and what I needed to delegate.

We made time for fun.

Lastly, we made time for some fun. We played outside. We met with friends. We picked our favorite extra curricular activities and did them well.

Were we still busy? Yep.

Were there still challenges? Yep.

But we did it together and I am so proud of us for what we accomplished.

Dare I say, we are finding our groove?

Looking Ahead

We are almost two weeks into our spring semester and we have continued to make changes that bring order, rhythm, and life to our homeschool.

One of the big things that all boys requested at the end of last semester was to put more focus on activities and hands-on learning, meaning crafts, games, and activities.

So that’s what were doing this semester.

That, I am I am personally tweaking our home rhythms that allow me to manage our home well during the school week. It’s a give and take, but we are making progress over here.

If you homeschool, I would love to know some of the things that are working for you! Reach out and let me know!