End of the School Year Reflections

As a homeschooling parent, there is nothing that brings joy to my heart than seeing one of my children complete their schooling and graduate high school.  It is not an easy road for my older students, but it is one that is fashioned cohesively by them and my husband and I as we created their high school curriculum.

(Sorry for the poor quality!)

Today, my middle daughter and fourth child graduated!  Our focus now switches from crafting a high school plan toward her overall future career goals to a college plan that positions her to take a hold of those goals in a more real way.
As for the other children, the end of the year for our family takes on a different feel as we take a break from our schooling.  We typically school year round, taking off the months of June and December as our summer and winter breaks.  This year we also anticipate the arrival of my husband's and my first grandchild and the children's first nephew.  So our schooling break will be more than just vegging for a month.  We will travel to Nebraska to see little Jackson when he makes his appearance!
As I look back on the year, I am thrilled with where my kids are academically and the progress they've made.  When we return to schooling, I will have a high school junior, an eighth grader and two sixth graders. The years of teaching phonics are behind us as are the years of addition and subtraction, traded instead for multiplication and division, geometry, and quadratic equations.  It also occurred to me that my homeschooling years are in fact winding down.  When my 6th graders start the academic year, I will have only 6 more short years of teaching them at home.  Academics, that is.  The reality is that as parents, we never stop teaching our children.

I pray that your summer break, however long or short, is refreshing and engaging.  And I would love to hear your schooling stories from the past year!!

Blessings!