Well we made it through our first official year of homeschooling. Although we homeschooled last year, she did go to public school for a few months. I can honestly say that I feel confident that she reached her goals and had a good solid first grade year.
Originally we started with the Heart of Dakota curriculum, but by October I had shelved it and moved onto other things. I didn't feel that we were getting all of the benefits of HOD, so we will be picking up with Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory next year. The copywork and spelling just wasn't what we needed when we first started the year. I wanted to focus on reading and math for most of first grade, and all of the extra history and scheduled story times just didn't mesh with what I wanted. Also, the emerging readers were above her grade level at the beginning of the year. Next year the first few will seem easy for her and increase in difficulty as we progress, which is exactly how I want our curriculum to go.
In January we found out that we will be having a new blessing in September. By February I was so sick that we pretty much lost about 4 weeks of school. Since my plan was always to end on June 1st, I do think she'd be a little further ahead than where she is if my morning sickness hadn't derailed us. But she finished her Spectrum Writing book, her Intro to Language Arts book, her Singapore Math book, and improved her reading level greatly from the beginning of the year. We still have about 1/4 worth of lessons left in Phonics Pathways.
We will be starting school again July 23rd. While I typically start later in August, I plan on taking a month off after the baby comes, so starting early will keep us on schedule. I fully plan on following BLHFHG from Heart of Dakota next year because I feel that she's now ready for all of the copywork and history study that makes this curriculum so popular. Whether we'll continue with it for 3rd grade is still up for debate in my head. I hope everyone had a great year.
Look for Heart of Dakota specific blogs starting next month. Until then, enjoy your summer and happy homeschooling!
