Ch, Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes...

I love homeschooling. I do. And.. no, I didn't romanticize homeschooling... too much ;-)

But I did expect it to be a more fun experience than my daughter has seemingly experienced this last year.

Academically, she has excelled. The child has a reading level grades higher than her own. She's at or slightly above on Math (very slightly). For fun, we did some beginning Geography from a workbook, bought a puzzle map of the U.S., and for Science, she just read her "Let's Read & Find Out" Science books. Had a bit of fun with an experiment or a related craft here & there. Art? I don't need to make that an assignment... this kiddo loves to draw, and just devoured the two drawing books I bought her. Due to our single-car family, and Hub's requirement of said vehicle for work, we didn't get out much, altho we did get to tag along a couple of times to field trips with a local homeschool co-op.

But has she necessarily *enjoyed* learning?

Not nearly as much as I wanted her to.

So this coming school year, we are switching up the curriculum.

*** I MUST add this disclaimer: Horizons (Alpha Omega) has served us extremely well. My daughter reads as well as she does *because* of Horizons, and so I am in no way switching because I found it a faulty curriculum choice. ***

In fact, we will still be using Horizons Math in the coming year. I might like to make a permanent switch to Math-U-See, as I've heard raving reviews on it; but this year, having made the switch we've made, it wasn't in the budget to do so just yet. And since I can't find much fault with Horizons Math, we'll be going forward into the new year with it, again.

So, we're switching up Penmanship... making more changes to Science (and more emphasis on it, now that we're going into 2nd grade)... and delving a little more deeply into Geography, perhaps. I've decided to use more manipulatives in Math, simply because they make it more interesting. We'll bring some Language Arts to life by creating a 'Pen Pal-ship' between Michaela & her sweet little friend, Brenna. Brenna's family lives 'here'... but our families will be about an hour apart, and so get-togethers will be somewhat spaced out. This way, our girls get to be in touch...*and* they will be learning Letter Writing at the same time. They'll be ''old pros'' at it in no time ;-)

Last year, Michaela & I really delved into reading chapter books. Each day, I'd read a chapter from a beloved book, and honestly, it was our FAVORITE thing to do. We weren't doing it 'for school'. Just for enjoyment. And boy, did we... did SHE... enjoy it. I also feel like she *learned* a lot from our reading time, even tho I wasn't teaching from our reading.

And so this led me back to my original desire when we first began homeschooling - literature based learning.

So, I've wrapped up the 2011-2012 session, fully confident that she's done well this year.

But I'm very much looking forward to seeing her *enjoy* homeschool much more in the next.