We have reached the end of the school year. A few thoughts on how our year went. It started rocky with all of the changes and the moving around we did. We were unsure of where we were going to be but we ended up back in our hometown. With all of this traveling and moving, I was struggling to stay on track with our Sonlight program. And then, I had a new baby in the house. I just kept getting farther behind with our Sonlight science and chapter book reading. It frustrated me. I didn't like being behind schedule. I started to stress over it and that's not good.
So, I did what every new mother should do - I let the schedule go. It didn't matter that I was behind. I worked with J on her core subjects (Math, Language Arts, Bible) and then we decided to do our own Science units. We ended up doing a unit on the Solar System which J loved and learned so much. I didn't over plan. We read from thousand books from the library and worked on a notebook. She had a ball!
We did a unit on Geography. Again, not super planned. We worked through a core book that I found at a Goodwill and I added a large inflatable globe, a wall map, and the World Landmark Toobs. We created another notebook and J learned a lot. We read about each different Landmark and wrote about them for the notebook. She even created some with clay. Can learning get any better?
We learned about several composers and artists. We read books about their lives and listened to their music. We added them to our timeline and created a music/art notebook for them.
We worked through a unit on the body. We read a ton of books. I love living by the library! J worked on a model of her body as well as another notebook. She was grossed out at first but she came around - the body is amazing!
What I am saying is that you don't need a schedule to learn. Sure, we had a ton of books left (okay, not a ton but enough) for our Sonlight B + C Core but I had to let it go. I was tired of trying to finish on a schedule, jam packing everything in to get it done. I wanted to do the fun stuff. J did too. She said she missed the fun stuff. To tell the truth, so did I.
So, I brought back the fun stuff and if you ask her what was her favorite subject? She would say Science! Way to go! I love Sonlight. I do. I love the books that we receive each year but sometimes, I feel like I can become a slave to the schedule. I feel like I have to get it all done. But I don't. You don't either.
J learned without it. She probably learned more without the schedule. More that I expected. I love that. We read more books, even though they weren't the ones that came with the core. We had FUN! and we LEARNED!
I struggled when I was deciding what to do next year. I struggled because I love Sonlight but I wanted to do the fun things of learning. So, that's what we are going to do. We will be working on Core D but I will not be following the schedule like before. We will be reading about American History and doing fun things along the way.
And what about the rest of the chapter books and easy readers from Core B+C? Well, we are slowly reading through them this summer. Everyday, J picks an easy reader to read to me for practice and I read a chapter or two from our chapter books. So, we will be reading them - just on our schedule:)
