Easing Into a New Homeschool Year | Making Our Kids' Checklists

[Music] that go under want to do English here what are you going to put in it I our summer is wrapping up and we're easing into another school year I've been starting this week on putting together my kids checklist we start our year slowly and simply join me for another day in the [Music] life this is our last week before we open up our books again and get to the academic part of our homeschooling we homeschool all the time this is a lifestyle for us but the book work we do we keep to pretty much a traditional school year and the reason for that is that we have so much garden and farm work around here during the Spring and Summer and so we um we need time to do that kind of work during the summer it takes a lot of handson our kids help with all of it this week we have been canning Tomatoes my husband did some beets we did beans a lot of things are coming in and I'm trying to get as much of it done before we get going next week with our new home school school year if this is your first time on my channel I'm Sherry I'm a Christian homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart Nelson we've been married for 24 years I love coming on my YouTube channel every week encouraging other homeschool moms in the great work that you're doing with your kids I also write on the blog rlif homeschooling decom where you can find a ton of resources for homeschooling book list I talk all about large family life of over there life skills I share our curriculum lots of good things for you to find over there I've begun to see a pattern that we start our home school year basically on the week when a lot of our Harvest is coming in next week when we start um two of our days are going to be taken up with doing applesauce and I've thought about switching pushing this back a little bit but the truth is I just really want these this extra week on the other end in May when um we're just getting our garden started so although it is very exhausting and we're doing a lot of work right now it is great seeing our shelves fill up and it's very satisfying to provide food for your family this is just a really busy time trying to get all this food in and starting a new homeschool year but because we have a very relaxed style of homeschooling we can let our book work fit around our family life my goal for this week was to get started on my kids homeschool checklist their checklists are the part of the day where they do their independent work our day is four-fold we start with morning time then we have chores next is independent work and then the last thing we do after lunch and a break outside is to read aloud in the afternoon when our little ones are down for nap so I have all the work that we're doing for morning time I've put this together in a notebook that you can find on the blog but their checklist is the next part for me and I started I decided to start with our oldest and work our way down now our oldest son is graduated but the next oldest is our son Luke he's 16 he's going into 11th grade when our boys hit High School I turn all of their homeschooling over to my husband I learned this from an older more experienced mom and it really made a lot of sense I talk a lot more about this in a video I did on homeschooling boys I'll make sure to link that for you if you want to look at it so I don't have to put together Luke's checklists I'll sit down with my husband I do go ahead and register him for the classes in his drop off Co-op I I buy his books and then I kind of figure out what credits he's getting talk with him about it and I sit down with my husband but my husband is the one that checks in with him with his work and that works really well with teenage boys while I've been working to get ready for our school year I still have been reading to my kids in the afternoon and this really is my favorite time of the day the little ones are down I've been reading through The Chronicles of Narnia series I read The Lion The Witch in the wardrobe several times to my older kids but I have actually never read through the whole Narnia series and so I've decided to do that with my younger kids and we've really been enjoying it this we're reading through the horse and his boy which is the third book in the series and I'm hoping that it continues to hold their attention all the way through sometimes we'll go through a series and the kids will just kind of get tired of it and want to move on to something else and honestly ly sometimes I get tired of it um but this one has been really good and I think we might just make it all the way through back to putting together my kids checklist I started with my oldest daughter Jenna who's going into 10th grade I took a look at what we did last year I started first with the classes that she's taking at her drop off Co-op this is where our kids get their high school credits our older kids are in two co-ops one is our family Co-op that we go to every other week and the other is a weekly Co-op where they get their high school credits here my daughter I just love seeing my kids picking up some of these fun projects whether it be sewing or baking crocheting just um sometimes the boys will be out making projects with wood just seeing them being creative and thinking and trying new things I love watching them explore their interests this is one thing that doesn't really change that much once we start a new home school year our kids still have plenty of free time to try projects like these to do things that they're interested in when I sit down with my kids to do their checklists I like to just ask them what are you interested in what do you want to learn about and just kind of listen to what they have to say it it always surprises me um a lot of times they've thought about this there's things that they want to study or there's something that they just don't know that much about and they want to learn about um in the older years in middle school and high school I really do shift more towards an interest-led style of learning a relaxed approach because I want them to start taking ownership of their education and to just experiment and learn about what Avenues they're good at and what things they want to try when I sat down with Jenna we looked at last year's checklist and filled um in with new the new classes that she's taking this year at her Co-op she's also doing I think two credits at home so we talked about what she has to do to complete those credits um we looked at some of my favorite book lists and she picked out some books that she wants to read this year one thing that gets me excited about starting our book work again is that it's a really good accountability for me to be checking in with each of my kids it's my one-on-one time with them or it's it's kind of built in one-on-one time it makes me sit down see where they're at look at some areas that we need to work on and make a plan for those just really long it's here all the way to there what are you going to put in it that is really cute that would be a nice gift you could even put a plant in there in there if you had some kind of plastic like a little suculent if you had some plastic in the bottom to catch the and then [Music] he [Music] we got a couple of packages here in the mail this big one I think is my son Luke's Spanish books I'm pretty sure um so we'll see what this one is I have spent more money on my older kids just with them being in Co-op a second Co-op where they get some of their high school credits and so um our oldest son didn't take the Spanish class or actually he he did this is a consumable so we got Spanish here and then this is a package I've been kind of excited about I am doing a unit I want to do some units on Pennsylvania history and so I've been looking for the best Pennsylvania history State resources for homeschoolers and I found some really great ones and I'm super excited to do a blog post on everything that I find when we start a new home school year there's actually not a whole lot that changes in our daily routine we'll start doing morning time again and then my kids will do an hour or two hours depending on their age of book workk in the morning our older kids do a little bit more um and then they have a lot of free time to do things that they want to do in my earlier years of homeschooling I used to worry about little things like what they were missing out on when the rest of the world went back to school and what I've learned over time is that in homeschooling if there's anything that they miss out on there's something else that they're getting that they wouldn't have they had been in school I no longer worry about things like that instead I think the opposite I think about what they would be missing out on if they were in school 8 hours a day 5 days a week if they weren't able to have all these experiences at home and out in the real world I got another package here just getting lots of packages today this one is one I've been waiting for it's another one of my Pennsylvania State history resources um this is going to be a good blog post for any of you who live in Pennsylvania um this one is by Susan kemer I heard her speak one time at the local home school conference and she was great um so I can't wait to look at this Pennsylvania keystones the history of a state and nation and then this is the Student Activity pack so this is going to be really fun I started working next on my daughter afton's checklist I skipped Brinley because she was in the middle of a sewing project and Aton was just reading a book so I stopped and worked on her checklist next if I don't get to all my kids checklists if I don't have them all ready by the first day of school I don't stress about it too much I try to make sure they have something for Reading Writing and math on that first day of school with which since we don't ever end our math program we just stop wherever we are and then pick up again um they they just pick up where they were last year will pick up their copy work and either pick up where they left off or they'll decide what copy work they want to do we just ease into a new homeschool year if there's anything I've learned in our 14 years of homeschooling it's that we worry about way too much we just start slowly and we pick up the pace as we go along we have a very relaxed approach if you're interested in learning more about this I highly recommend the course how to take the stress out of homeschooling by Kelly Crawford I'm going to leave a link for that below she's a mom of 11 she's been homeschooling for many years the relaxed approach that she shares in her course is very much where we have landed over the years of homeschooling our kids thanks for joining me as I am getting ready for a new homeschool year I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms