The first stage of planning for next year is taking an honest assessment of where we are and what is working and what could work better. This is one of those times where having a big family means a lot more work. This is a bit of a time consuming process. You really can’t skip this step even if you are moving from a school environment to homeschool. You just really need to know where you are in order to get to where you want to be.
The first things we are going to decide is if homeshooling is the best option for this child for the upcoming year or should we investigate other options, is the program and/or methodology we have been using working for us as a family and for this child in particular and which subjects are we continuing and which are we not. Once we say “yes, we are homeschooling next year.” I list out the subjects that each child has been working on this year and their extra curricular activities. For example Joshua has been working on Handwriting, Math, Spelling, Reading, History, Science, Grammar and Writing. We do CCD at our parish and Boy Scouts.
These go into my Yearly Assessment Worksheet. Then working across I ask the child their thoughts on the subject, I put down my assessment and if this is a subject that we will continue next year and if so will we use the same text series and what level we will need.
This is also a great time to do a parent interview. We do this from time to time through the year but the end of the year is the “big one”. I sit down with each child and we go through a bunch of questions. The kids know they are free to say anything. This is a time where they can say anything at all and there will be no repercussions of any kind. It is very valuable to be able to see what they are feeling and thinking.
These are the questions we are using. If they don’t have an answer I let them think about it overnight and ask them again. I ask the questions and let them answer and then I hand the questions to them if they want/need to have some thinking time. It is ok to not have an answer. Once I get the information I have a conference with each child and we talk about things they could do to make the family better. I never share the specifics of what any child says to another, but we do talk about any themes that are revealed.
Simply Catholic 