Kindergarten: Wrapping it up

Originally, I planned for our Kindergarten year to last until Memorial Day.  But when the other boys were out of school, Reef and I decided that we were done too!  Oh, the of homeschooling!  We will continue some math and reading work through the summer, as well as finishing up our Old Testament studies.

Our big end of year project came in our geography curriculum, Expedition Earth.  We ended the year with Brazil, a country near and dear to our hearts.  The big project for that country was a rainforest diorama.  We worked on it for several weeks, adding new stuff each time.  Here's the final product:

After Reef and I moved on to something else, his brothers decided to continue embellishing.  Jonas made a LARGE worm at school and knew just wear it should go.  Lachlan came home with a turkey that day, so it had to go on too.

Now's as good a time as any to give my thoughts on our first year homeschooling.  We loved it.  And hated it.  And everything in between.  Homeschooling with a baby (and an unpredictable one at that) was harder than I thought.  Most days were the "exception" rather than the "normal" I anticipated.  Hopefully next year will be easier in that regard.  I loved that we could accomplish pretty much all we needed to do in just 2-3 hours (and sometimes less).  Reef was also a big fan of the short days.  Whenever he complained, a quick reminder about his friends who'd been in school for 2 hours and still had 4 to go nipped that in the bud real quick.

As far as curriculum goes, we had hits and misses.  I really enjoyed Grapevine Studies Old Testament, and we will continue that this summer and do New Testament next year.  I also enjoyed Expedition Earth but found it overwhelming at times.  We didn't finish it but are breaking from it over the summer and possibly the fall.  The big miss was math.  We used Saxon Math, and it was a struggle almost everyday.  Reef is naturally good at math but found the constant review worksheets BORING.  We are switching to Horizons math next year and are hoping it's a better fit.  For reading and phonics this year, I kind of winged it with a little bit of 100 Easy Lessons, Bob books, the library, and Readingeggs.com.  While that worked okay and Reef is an amazing reader, I am on the hunt for a good curriculum next year.  We are also adding Apologia science next year and possibly a soccer class. 

Can't wait!