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2024-2025 End Of Year Review

We’re nearing the end of our school year and I can’t believe it’s almost summer! While we haven’t finished all of our curriculum quite yet, we’re getting really close. The kids and I are really looking forward to summer break and to the start of a new school year!

First, let’s talk about summer plans.

We consider ourselves year round schoolers. So as of right now, we’ll continue to work on our workbooks until they get done and then we plan to take part of June and all of July off. We have a couple of vacations planned this summer and we’ll be using that time to rest and recharge. During our time off, we plan play lots of games and do lots of reading!

In the past I’ve had my oldest do a reading log over the summer. This year he’ll be doing the Barnes and Noble Summer Reading Challenge. For this, kids can read any eight books and receive a free book from the list.

Along with this, we’ll be starting some new family read alouds. I’ve had the book Mercy Watson to the Rescue in my cart for awhile, knowing my kids would enjoy it. It seems like such a fun story and I think this will be the perfect time to start it. We also plan to read My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.

Another thing I’m looking forward to doing with the kids this summer is the Safety course from The Good and the Beautiful. My kids love to ride their bikes around in the summer and play with kids in the neighborhood, so I thought this would be the perfect time to review safety together. In this course, kids learn about everything from fire safety to water and technology safety. It is suggested for grades 3-8, but I think it can be easily done together as a family.

Before we dive into summer, I always like to take some time to reflect on what worked and didn’t work this year for our family. Today, I’m sharing all about our 2024-2025 school year. You’ll find everything we loved and didn’t love below!

If you didn’t see what our curriculum picks were for this year, you can find them on this blog post: 2024/2025 Curriculum Picks.

*Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links. I only share products that we have personally used and recommend.

Preschool Wrap-up:

This was the first year we’ve used The Good and The Beautiful Preschool.

What we loved:

  • Easy to use (open and go)
  • Short lessons
  • Letter sound and movement activities in the app
  • Additional Practice worksheets
  • Activity folder games were fun and engaging (probably our favorite part of the program)!

Overall, we really enjoyed this course! However, there were some things that didn’t work for us. I knew going into it, that this would be more supplemental for my preschooler. While I think TGATB’s Preschool program is fun and engaging, I do think it’s better suited for preschoolers who have a firm grasp on their letters and sounds. My son didn’t go into the year having a good grasp on his alphabet and he needed to spend more time learning his alphabet. We ended up focusing on one letter and a week and completed 2-3 lessons a week from the The Good and the Beautiful Preschool book. We spent the others days doing alpha stories, practicing writing, playing games, and doing letter crafts!

I also added in these fun alphabet flashcards after finding them at The Great Homeschool Convention. They really helped my son!

1st Grade Wrap-Up:

We continued to use The Good and the Beautiful for math and language arts this year for first grade.

Once again, I can say I’m really impressed with how TGATB incorporates everything into their program. We love the spiral approach and I love how easy this curriculum is to use!

Math Level 1: This is my son’s favorite subject! He loves TGATB math and can do most of it independently now. He really enjoys the games built into the curriculum and the review pages are a great way for him to get his brain going before we dive into lessons.

Language Arts Level 1: Language Arts has gotten a little bit tedious for him at this age, but I know that all the thing TGATB incorporates has really helped him with his reading. The booster cards are really beneficial and my son loves how he can earn stickers. We also really love the reading booster games in the app. Towards the end of the year, I found myself skipping over things that didn’t feel necessary. A lot of people say there is a lot of “fluff” with this curriculum, but I truly think TGATB is trying to include everything in one book instead of multiple. We personally love all the art and stories that are apart of the curriculum. My son especially loved listening to Haddie’s Hidden Garden this year.

What didn’t work for us: Spelling

Spelling is included in The Good and The Beautiful’s Language Arts course. I personally don’t love the spiral method for teaching spelling. My son did not learn well this way, so next year we’re making a switch! We plan to use Evan Moor’s Building Spelling Skills. I’m hoping this well make spelling a little easier for us!

Extracurriculars:

  • Swamp Days. The boys attended a homeschool class once a month at our local swamp. During the classes, they spent two hours outdoors learning about nature and science! They often tell me about all the fun critters they see while they’re there. This year they learned about Abiotic animals and how to take care of our Earth. They also took a field trip to a water treatment plant. We really enjoyed this program and plan to continue it next year!
  • Ruth Patrick Science Center. Another science homeschool class Rhett (1st grade) did once a month was at our local science education center. The center has a planetarium, animals, and lots of cool things for the kids to explore. This program was more STEM focused and that was perfect for my science kid. This was a drop off program and Rhett really enjoyed it!
  • Baking classes at our local bakery.
  • Nature Club. Our area has a homeschool nature club that meets every other week. It is our FAVORITE group! Every time we meet somewhere new and the kids get to explore nature and enjoy a picnic together. We’re also still doing the 1,000 Hours Outside challenge and we’re hoping this year we’ll finally make it to 1,000 this year!
  • Crunch lab boxes. My kids love science and building things, so a Crunch Lab subscription was a no brainer! They really enjoy getting these boxes every month. I love how there’s a video from Mark Rober that explains the science behind each box.
  • Outschool. This was our first year trying some virtual learning. Outschool has a large selection of classes to choose from with real life teachers that teach them! We’ve only done a few, but my boys really enjoyed them.
  • Prodigies: This year, I wanted to introduce music to the kids. We decided to start with desk bells! We decided to use a company called Prodigies. They teach kids musical rhythm and introduce kids notes through interactive videos. We watched a few lessons a week and my kids really enjoyed it! My only worry was that it did seem a little all over the place at times and I was worried about the structure, but the kids had no complaints. Sadly, we stopped doing it when we became busier and it wasn’t a priority in our homeschool day towards the end of the year. We plan to pick it back up again next year.
  • Presentation Days. This year we joined a group of homeschoolers to do a monthly presentation day. Each month the kids were given a topic to present on in front of their peers. For example, “Would you rather fly or breathe under water?” The idea behind it is to get homeschool kids used to public speaking. Both of my kids really loved having the chance to get up and talk in front of a crowd!


Family Studies:

  • Space and Science. My kids have been super curious about space, so we dove into a study this year. We ended up using The Good and the Beautiful’s Little Hearts and Hands Sparks and Stars and Little School of Smith’s Me and My Place in Space. I love TGATB’s Little Hearts and Hands story book and the audio narration activities. I think this curriculum is a great starting point, but if you want to make things more hands-on I’d definitely recommend My Place in Space! We really enjoyed learning about each planet and making a book for us to look back on later.

    Last week, we wrapped up our study with a trip to the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It was really neat seeing what we learned up close and personal. There were so many cool things that we saw, but some of the most memorable moments were getting to walk inside a space ship and seeing real space rovers. We even got to watch a show at the Planetarium. It was the a really great experience!
  • Human Body Study. We started a human body study in the middle of summer and finished it late fall. It was probably one of my favorite studies we’ve done so far! We ended up using Me and My Amazing Body from Little School of Smith’s. All of her guides are super hands-on and engaging, which is great for young learners.
  • Presidential Study. We also did a Presidential Study before the election. We ended up using Little Patriots: The Presidential Election from A Living Learning Co. It was a great way to learn about Presidency and the importance of voting.

Family Read Alouds:

For fun, here’s what we read as a family!

That’s a wrap! Have any questions? Let me know below.

I’ll be sharing next years curriculum picks soon, so stay tuned!

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