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As the school year draws to a close, what does it look like to finish well?
Finishing well doesn’t mean that you need to complete the whole math book. It doesn’t mean that your child needs to master their letter sounds before they move on from Kindergarten. It doesn’t even mean that you need to meet all the state standards for your child’s grade level.
Ask yourself questions like:
- Did my child make progress? (Even slow progress is progress!)
- Did our family connections strengthen?
- Did my child learn from our life experiences?
- Did my kids gain life skills?
- Did we stay true to our homeschool goals and values?
Your measuring stick for a “successful” school year doesn’t have to look like checking the boxes of state standards and completing curriculum. Homeschool isn’t supposed to look like school, so our measure of success should look different too.
When I was teaching, we didn’t always (or ever…) complete the curriculum by the end of the year. We would just go until the end of the school year. As far as we got, that’s where we ended. And the next year’s teacher didn’t pick up where we left off – they picked up where the next grade’s curriculum was supposed to begin. So were there gaps? Probably. Did kids really “lose” what they learned or “fall behind” over the summer? Or did they just never learn it… because it was never covered at all?
Either way, the point is that you don’t need to finish your curriculum by the end of the school year any more than a teacher does.
If your baby hasn’t learned to walk by the time they are 12 months, do you stop them from reaching a different milestone until they have learned to walk? Of course not! They continue learning and developing, and eventually they learn to walk.
Your homeschool year doesn’t need to end… you can continue to homeschool through the summer if you want. Or you could just continue working on your math curriculum. Or you could stop midway through the curriculum and pick it up again in September – you get to decide!
There isn’t one right way to finish the year and transition into summer.
So stop when you need to stop. Pick up when you’re ready to pick it up again.
If you need some no-workbook ideas for learning this summer, check out this video:
