2024-2025 Homeschool Year Review
What a year it’s been! This was my first year officially homeschooling all four of my kids and it was definitely harder than I thought it would be, but we did it!!! Last week I wrote a whole blog post on why I took a big break off social media —A Season of Surrender. During this time I decided to slow down and really focus on my family and homeschool and it was really good. I’m feeling like I have a much better handle on life so today, I am sharing highlights of our year and some of the few things we changed and added.
Highlights
I am sure most of these things won’t surprise you guys at all…
Harry Potter & Fairytale Classes: All my kids agree these two studies were their favorites and it was definitely mine too! I put together these classes (and a wonderful friend helped me with the fairytale class) and I just pulled from A LOT of different things. It would be really hard to share everything, but I do have a blog post: A Deep Dive Into Harry Potter that may be helpful if you’re looking for a unique way to study Harry Potter.
Around the World with Art Makes Me Smart: Last summer I had planned to do a different history curriculum for this year, but at the last minute we switched to do monthly world studies and absolutely LOVED this.
Study of Light: We used the light study unit out of Berean Builders: In the Beginning, plus a handful of other things I supplemented with and LOVED this. (We ended up not using Berean the rest of the year though —see below.)
My Encyclopedia of Very Important Things: This was something I did with my kindergartner and it was such a fun and easy way to connect with him right on his level for a few minutes each day. All we did was read one page of the encyclopedia and then watch a coordinating video with it. We got through the whole book and it was definitely the thing he loved most. I didn’t have the energy to do this, but I think it would be so fun to do lots of crafts with the topics in this book.
Inventor’s Study & Crunch Labs: This was something I did just with my 2nd grader and, of course, it is no surprise he loved it! We loosely followed Waldock’s Way Studying STEM for our inventor’s study and we’re now on Year 3 of Crunch Labs.
Book Club & Children’s of Influence Group: We have a little book club with two other families and then we also meet up with a big group of our homeschool friends once a month. Both of these are always such a highlight for the kids!
Family Read Alouds: Together we read the first three books of Harry Potter, The Princess and the Goblin, A Place to Hang the Moon (my favorite), The Vanderbeekers on 141st Street, A Christmas Carol, The Bark of the Bog Owl, On the Dark Sea of Darkness, and Beyond Mulberry Glen. I’ve also been reading the Boxcar Children and Dragon Masters to my 2nd grader. (We’re planning to skip book 22 of the Dragon Masters since, unfortunately, it is not appropriate for children.)
Field Trips/Vacations/Fun Opportunities: It’s almost hard to remember, but a few things we all really enjoyed this year were: learning how to print with our 3d printer; our trip to Glacier National Par; book signing with Brandon Mull; The Tree of Life Exhibit at Thanksgiving Point; bike riding in St. George Utah, visiting multiple temples, performances of The Messiah, Lamb of God, and the Passover Celebration; visiting Moon’s Rare Bookstore; a fun skateboarding class at Carry On; private tour of Greg Olsen’s art studio, and visiting Ballerina Farm’s Market (the girl’s also learned to make sourdough bread this year which they’re very excited about).
Last week on my IG I asked what else every one loved and here are a few things that were shared: TGTB Birds Science Unit - we did this a few years ago too —here is my blog post on it: Bird Unit Study; Seasons Afield —this nature study is another one we’ve done and also loved! I also have a blog post all about it: Seasons Afield Review. A few others people mentioned: Math with Confidence; Abeka Social Studies; Around the World from Beautiful Feet Books; Art Makes Me Smart; Brave Writer; Alvery; Everything from The Good and The Beautiful; Beowulf’s American History; Me on the Map (we also loved this unit); 50 state study, teaching reading; morning basket time; and studying history, culture, and diversity.
Changes
Here is a look back on our curriculum picks for the year:
We had a great line up and loved all our core curriculum and really didn’t change anything there. We did do some switching around with history and science though. I mentioned this above but the very first thing we changed was switching my girl’s 6th grade history to the Around the World Art study and we absolutely loved that! All my kids were able to do it together so it just made it so nice for a family-style study and made my girl’s load lighter which I am really glad we did (for both our sakes).
Mid-year we also added in a US history study (which also goes along with our study of church history and the Doctrine & Covenants this year). This was not part of our original plans at all, but after the New Year we decided to book a trip back east and visit Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, Harmony, Palmyra, and Kirtland, Ohio. I pulled from all over to learn about the history in these place. But, as far as US history goes, we mostly read a lot of books and watched YouTube videos of the places we’d be visiting. We LOVED the Millennial Instructor’s: The Divine Founding of America and I also pulled a handful of lessons out of The Good & The Beautiful’s Constitution Course. This is our third time through early US history so a lot of it was introducing some of the basics to my younger boys, but also adding in some new stories and learning on a higher level for my girls. A few years ago we used Little School of Smith’s American History guides and absolutely LOVED them so if you’re looking for a great US history course —that is the one I’d recommend. (Code: Homecenteredlearning10 will get you 10% off in her shop). I also would recommend reading Timothy Ballard’s books beginning with The Washington Hypothesis.
We also started off the year strong with Berean Science Builders: In the Beginning, but when we came back to it after Christmas break —I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it was the January blues, but one thing I struggled with the course is that it was pretty dry by itself so I had to do a lot more prep to make the lessons engaging. Like I mentioned, especially in January, I was looking for ways to simplify so this was one area that we needed to adjust.
Instead, we decided to do the Mammals unit from The Good & The Beautiful. We loved the unit and it was so nice to have something that was open & go again and then I could add what I wanted when we had a little extra time. One of the things we did during this unit was get Fahlo bracelets which are so fun! If you haven’t heard of these they are animal tracking bracelets. You download an app and every few days your animal’s location is updated and there are little educational videos or short snippets you can read about them. We started with 4 bracelets —one for each child and we’ve since added two more. We have the red wolf, gorilla, snow leopard, penguin, sea turtle, and a lion.
In January, when I was re-evaluating everything, one thing I recognized was that I needed to let go of some of my pride and look at what I could do to get some help in our homeschool. Was there anything I could outsource to take some pressure off of me? I looked at a number of things, but my husband and I ultimately decided the best use of our time and funds would be to enroll my 2nd grader in the on-line reading program through Savvy Learning. He is doing great at reading but, I was really feeling the tediousness of teaching reading to both him and my kindergartner. Good reading skills are just so important and so I knew this was an area I wanted to keep a high priority and by outsourcing and getting a little help I felt like a huge weight was lifted off of me. I am so glad Savvy has turned out to be such a positive experience.
My son is enrolled in a 25 minute group class and it’s every day M-Th so it’s just nice to know he is getting some really good solid instruction while I can work on some other things. He does the class early in the morning so it doesn’t interfere with anything else we have going on. We are going to take a break from Savvy while we’re traveling for the month of May, but it is something I am planning on him resuming as part of our summer learning. I am also planning to enroll my upcoming 1st grader in it. And, because I know someone will ask, yes, we will continue to use The Good and The Beautiful Language Arts courses along side this. Savvy is great for the reading supplement and to help with fluency but there are still things in TGTB courses we used and will continue to use.
And, just a heads up, Savvy classes aren’t cheap, but we have the homeschool funding to put toward them so now that we’re really settled with all our homeschool needs we felt this would be a wise way to best utilize our funds. I do have a referral code if ever decide to try it out. It’ll give you a one-time $25 discount when you enroll. You can use code: 1UA8WO at checkout.
As far as my 2nd grader goes —he had a great year and we ended up sticking to everything else I listed in his 2nd grade curriculum picks. We were happy with it all! He is still loving everything STEM related. He also loves to draw and create so we’re hoping to get him into some fun art classes for next year to support that passion.
For my kindergartner —we also did everything I listed in his Kindergarten curriculum picks. There is definitely a side of me that is super sad his kindergarten year is over, but the world keeps on turning so we’ll keep on turning with it.
I hope you all had a fantastic 2024-2025 school year!
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