Winding up the School Year

Technically, we school year-round, but the cross-over from June 30th to July 1st is significant in my mind. That is the day I "graduate" the kids from one grade to the next. I try to have them finish up any loose ends while I am head-long into planning the curriculum for "next year". As usual, we are "a little behind" but I feel that we have make some good progress this year and should be meeting my minimum goals by the end of June in math, and the end of July in Grammar. Spelling and Composition is a bit of a struggle for us but we are making steady progress and hope to get closer to target over the next year. I really like the Apologia science that we started this year (we just skip the few random paragraphs that are not consistent with our beliefs). DS12 just finished the HOAC pack on US Gov't (okay, he didn't get into actually making the lap-book, but he did read the info and did notes). My last post outlined some of the other curriculum changes I have made over the past year.

I think that the main goal for the upcoming year is that I NEED TO BE MORE CONSISTENT by encouraging the routines that I know will work best overall. (It is to easy to let other things take over the daily routine.) I also know that if we do not start school first thing in the morning, it will never get done ... I need to enforce SCHOOL FIRST THEN PLAY. (That means I have to do lessons before I get to sleep no matter what.) We have missed more school days this year because of that, than any other single thing. Still, DD10 is reading more. DS12 is developing personality and conscience. DD5 will do any math I give her and is starting phonics, while DD2 sorts and piles and puzzles for long stretches of time and loves to be read to. And they all like to spend time exploring nature. Always looking for the silver linings and for the most part, things are looking good.
DD10 went to her first visit with the speech pathologist, and I will get the evaluation results tomorrow. The first thing she said when she came out of the testing room? "I never knew there where so many words I didn't know!" I guess that means the testing was thorough, right? I will wait to post more of my thoughts on this until after I have the results, but I think it will be a positive experience that will help me to teach everyone better.