RECLAIM: Recap of our Homeschool Year (2nd & 6th Grades - 2021-2022)
This is the first school year we’ve had in 8 years of homeschooling where I looked back and realized I had to actually eliminate some things that I allowed to steal time away from our family and add stress. It is an actual fight. I had to push back and make more changes. I had to push against the pressure that checklists and grades are more important than the wonder of childhood.
Don’t give up, mamas! RECLAIM. Trust what you know inside is best for your children and fight for it. We will definitely be making some changes next year in how we spend our time, including less classes at our homeschool tutorial for my oldest daughter who will be entering 7th grade.
This school year, we had some big losses. We lost our beloved farm goose and even more beloved Ginger cat. But by the end of the year, we’ve gained a new kitten that brings joy and have added so much new life on the farm. These girls have grown inches in height and leaps and bounds in their joy of learning, reading, and desire to do math (thanks to The Good and the Beautiful).
✅ 2nd and 6th grade done!
Here are a few memorable highlights of our 2021/2022 school year:
Celebrating Rosh Hashanah
One night last September, we learned about Rosh Hashanah and celebrated it at home in our living room as part of The Precious People curriculum. Even though this Jewish holiday was actually the week before, and I slightly over-baked the challah bread and was running from thing to thing all day before this (video calls, tending chickens, watering plants), that night an overwhelming peace descended in our simple living room. We were reminded again: He is the God who was, is, and is to come, the Alpha and Omega, the bright morning star.
The wine was for the grownups - obvs. :)
“Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
“Chasing the Spark”
My favorite kind of homeschool days are the ones where we “chase the spark” - follow our different interests, have time to go down rabbit trails, and make connections. These days can have so much variety. One particularly memorable day, I remember that my oldest daughter Luci made a hot chocolate with gibbous moon foam. I have NO IDEA how she did this. But it corresponded perfectly with her space-themed math lesson about exponents (…which I needed a major refresher on! I probably should have paid more attention in math…) and Norah’s math lesson about outer space and tally marks.
That same week, we were reading aloud All of A Kind Family by Sydney Taylor about a Jewish family in 1912 New York’s lower east side. Just 8 years after this story’s setting, my own relatives would live on Thompson Street just around the corner. We found a real-life photo of New York’s Mulberry Street in 1912 that looks almost exactly like the book illustration and talked all about what it must have been like for our relatives as immigrants in a new world.
The Wild World Handbook
“I love this book so much that I’m going to cry when it’s over.” Well, I think that’s just about the best book review you can get from an 8-year-old. The Wild World Handbook: Habitats by my friend Andrea Debbink was such a bright spot in our homeschool this year. Beautiful illustrations, so much to learn about the world’s habitats and how we can help preserve them, and inspiring biographies! To dive deeper, we would look up more about the habitats or people on YouTube. One afternoon, we went down an entire rabbit trail about The Everglades and learned that pythons are more than 3 times as long as the tallest person we know. We also learned about Marjory Stoneman Douglas who actively worked to save the Everglades until she was 108-years-old!
“I believe that life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.”
First Day of Fall 🍁
It’s always a great feeling to make it to the first day of fall, because that means we’ve made it through another hot and humid Tennessee summer. Our tradition is pulling out our autumn-themed books, along with new books we scored at our beloved local library, and hang leaf garlands in their rooms. It’s the little things.
Winter Adventures
When I was growing up in New Jersey, my best friend Jason and I used to play wild explorers on a horse farm where his mom ran the stables. We spent countless hours playing in the hay loft, feeding the horses, and cleaning out their stalls. If I close my eyes, I can still conjure up that exact molasses smell of the feed. In winter, there was a lake across the street from the farm that froze through, and we would slide all around it in our slick winter boots pretending to ice skate. My brown shiny boots with slippery soles were perfect for “skating.”
I thought about this memory when Norah and I ventured out one freezing winter morning in 27 degrees to stretch our legs and explore. We found some cool ice formations, checked on the berries inside a walnut bowl we left for fairies in a hole in a tree (they ate some), and discovered that when you take a slab of ice and throw it onto ice, it shatters in the same exact fan shape every time.
Somewhere along the way from childhood until now, a lot of us have lost our imaginations and desire for adventure, and in winter especially. We commit to not giving up on adventure in winter! All it requires is multiple layers of clothing, shorter time periods, an imagination, and a hot tea kettle waiting.
Schooled by an 8-year-old
One day while writing on the chalkboard and kinda singing to herself, my 8-year-old dropped this truth bomb and stopped me in my tracks. From the mouths of babes!
Welcoming Spring
Ahh, I love digging my toes in the grass in early spring, and I’m downright giddy when it’s time to bring out the spring picture books with my children. Spring is about HOPE and GREEN and ADVENTURE, and it’s time to dig into some amazing stories as we open ourselves up to a new season! Check this post for our favorite spring picture books and what else we did to celebrate spring’s arrival.
Last Day of School
Both girls wanted to hold our new kitten, Natasha, in their last day photos. The hope of new life and a fresh start.
I’m grateful beyond words for the privilege to learn together at River Lake Sunshine School and for all we discovered this year about diverse cultures, geography, art, math, science, writing, early world history, and caring for this big beautiful world God gave us. 🌍
Check out this post with my original plan at the beginning of the school year.
