We have officially finished out the 2025-2025 school year, so this is the time of year where I get to come here and reflect. I personally enjoy coming back to these blog posts and reminding myself of what we accomplished and the memories we made. I also like to be share what we actually used versus what we THOUGHT we were going to use at the beginning of the school year. At the start of this year, these were my plans. In the past, I would always get bored with our original plans and switch things around constantly. But surprisingly, this year kept us all engaged and we finished the year strong, having completed much of what we set out to complete in the beginning. I will share both what we used and what we didn’t.
Our Wins for the Year
This was by far the craziest year circumstantially that we’ve ever experienced. We started the school year living with friends, and we’re ending the school year living with parents. Our stuff has been packed up more times and ways than I can count, we’ve been in sleeping arrangements that I honestly never thought would work, and yet we finished our homeschool year strong. I can honestly say that our homeschool became an anchor, the only thing that DIDN’T change about our circumstances. I clung to the stability of our routine, no matter where we laid our heads. I’m proud of our resiliency and our consistency.
Lyon (my kindergartner) learned to read this year! What a surprise! I started Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with the intention of taking it slow and seeing if Lyon was even ready to read. I was in no rush. We didn’t do lessons every day or even every week, but we plugged through that lesson book slowly and gently with LOTS of snacks and cuddles. After about a year and a half, she completed the book and is now reading nonstop! Although she was not required to jump in on any of our formal lessons (as we do not start formal lessons until age 6), she jumped in so much of our artist study, composer study, memorized all the hymns and Bible verses, started doing recitations, and joined history and nature journaling as well!
Lavender grew so much in her reading and writing this year. It started with a simple book recommended in our curriculum, A Gentle Feast: Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective. That book was the jumping off point to her realizing her love of mystery and adventure reads. It was the first book she read in 24 hours! She began voraciously reading chapter books after that, and hasn’t stopped. Here’s a photo of all the chapter books Lavender read independently this school year.
Her writing improved a ton as well, but not how I expected. Through Mail Mondays, letter writing and taking a huge step back from notebooking this year, she felt free to write based on personal desire rather than obligation. That caused her to write more than ever!
What We Stuck To, and What We Didn’t
Main Curriculum
I used A Gentle Feast as my main curriculum, as we also used the Morning Time as well. I’ll be honest- I haven’t been one to stick to curriculum in the past. As I said before, I often get bored and make constant changes. But this year was our first FULL Charlotte Mason feast, and we thrived using A Gentle Feast. While I did add to and remove some of the readings, ultimately A Gentle Feast Morning Time and Main Curriculum did work for us very well. As for Without Doors, we pulled from it more as a history booklist, but didn’t follow the plans. We ended up diving full force into A Gentle Feast. Nevertheless, I will still continue pulling from Without Doors’ fantastic book choices for history.
Church History
While nothing was wrong with the book, we ended up not using The Story of Jesus’ Church be Generations. Instead, we read from Stories of the Saints most Fridays, and adored it. While we don’t adhere to Catholicism in any way, the martyr stories of faith, steadfastness and love proven by death still rang true in every story we read. This became one of my oldests’ favorite books, and I would often find her up reading it at night by herself.
Science/Nature Study
We ended up using Exploring Nature with Children and reading Burgess Animal by Thornton Burgess as planned. However, we only read a few chapters of Birds of the Air by Arabella Buckley. We just couldn’t get into it. We switched it out for another fabulous book following the real-life journey of an osprey named Belle. We also didn’t use the Science Art and Drawing Games for Kids that I planned on using- like, we didn’t open it once. Oh well!
Instrument/Singing Lessons
Instrument and singing lessons took a huge pause this year once we moved into our parent’s home. I am adamant about jumping back in with it next year.
Language Arts
We didn’t end up using Learning Language through Literature: The Yellow Book at all. I tried a few lessons with Lavender and she couldn’t stand it. We did, however, use Sequential Spelling as planned, as well as Cursive Kickoff from Learning Without Tears. Both worked well. She worked through cursive once a week and spelling twice a week, with Mail Monday as our Monday writing prompt and Nature Journaling as our Friday writing prompt.
Math
This was our second year with Math with Confidence, and we enjoyed it. We did choose to stop after the Part A book and not continue to the Part B book, because we realized Lavender needed more time with multiplication before moving on to division. I think I’m going to make a math curriculum switch for next year, so stay tuned for that.
Morning Time
As I said above, A Gentle Feast’s Morning Time exceeded my expectations and was a complete delight every single morning. I can’t recommend it enough, and we will definitely be continuing with it. Bible, composer study, artist study, hymns, Bible memory, fables, tales- we loved it all. The only thing we changed were the hymns. I opted to teach them hymns from my childhood instead of the ones selected in the book. I also opted to add in Shakespeare, and we read from the Edith Nesbit edition. We also added in some Calendar Work, all fully explained in this blog post.
Spanish
Spanish went so well for us this year! It was more of an introductory year of Spanish, and rather than using the resources I thought I’d use, I mostly made up Spanish songs about days of the week, body parts, conversation starters, family members and the like. I know quite a bit of Spanish, so I just went with teaching them some of what I knew orally. Funny enough, it became Halston, our toddler’s favorite subject. He asked to work on Spanish constantly!
Geography
We successfully completed Beautiful Feet Books K-3 US Geography. It was simple and effective, and we ended the year having made this beautiful map.
How We Documented Our Learning
While we didn’t utilize notebooking as much as in previous years, we did still use this technique to document our learning a few times per month. We used these beautiful notebooks from Humble Heart Press. It’s one notebook, split into sections that you can customize! So our notebook had a history tab, a geography tab and a nature study tab. It was literally perfect for this school year and I couldn’t recommend Humble Heart Press as a company enough. Not only did we get these notebooks from her, but we also get all of our printing done there for any curriculum I need printed.
To get one of these gorgeous notebooks, click here.
In Conclusion
I am proud of what was accomplished this year, by the grace of God. This year proved the beauty of homeschooling for me- that no matter our circumstances, gathering around the table or cuddling on the couch with a book can be our constant. I’m ending the year having grown so much as a mother, and having watched my children endure hardship and still thrive in the freedom and gentle disciplines of home education. I am already knee deep in planning and purchasing for next year, so stay tuned!
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