What was great:

* We really had a good time just being together, reading books together, and learning/ playing together.

*  Violet's reading skills grew by leaps and bounds, and she read a TON of books!

*  History sparked Violet's interest... she loved learning about the ancient world!

*  Our bonds with grandparents were strengthened.  We had "Grandma Day" twice a week most weeks, and Grandma came and played for a few hours those days.  They did cooking and art projects together, and got so close.  It was wonderful!

*  We made a few good connections with other homeschoolers.  Violet found a few homeschooled friends in a homeschool dance/voice class she was taking, as well as through choir and American Heritage Girls.  And I connected with my next door neighbor, a wonderful homeschooling mom, and a couple of the moms of Violet's friends. 

*  Violet loves learning. 

*  Violet is growing tons in her faith  She accepted Jesus as her Savior and is learning so much about the Bible, prayer, and memorizing Scripture.

What I wish would improve or change:

*  I didn't feel very consistent.  In fact, I wasn't very consistent.  There were lots of times we skipped something for a long time or didn't make time to sit and "do school".  My efforts to get some sort of schedule didn't work very well.  (I tried MOTH, but just couldn't get it to work well.)

*  I didn't like Singapore or Miquon Math the way we did it.  Neither one really came with a teacher's guide.  While I am very good at math and enjoy it, I would have liked some clue as to how to best teach the concepts to a first grader.  For this reason and the fact that I loved the sample DVD they sent, I am thinking about Math-U-See for this upcoming year.

*  Handwriting was very difficult.  I want to make it more pleasant, but also focus on it more this year.

*  The Sonlight LA was a bit confusing, and I think I would prefer a more clear cut LA program. (Or figure out how to better use Sonlight's!)

*  I need some kind of plan for what I am going to do with Dash and Jack-Jack during school.  Dash will be involved on a preschool co-op two mornings a week this year, but I need a plan for the rest of the time and for Jack-Jack.  I have all kinds of ideas, I just need to decide what I am going to do and do it.

*  I need to do a better job of organizing our calendar.  Violet ended up with an activity 2-4 nights a week (too many!).  And, my business really suffered from neglect last year. 

Now, as to how I am going to do that...???  Your thoughts are welcome... and I will post some thoughts on how I am thinking of doing things this year next philosophically.  (I have since read the Well-Trained Mind and thought through some other things.)

What I would LOVE is some advice on scheduling our day in a way that will help us to get things done and have kids know what to expect, but still be unstructured and flexible enough most of the day to allow for my more spontaneous nature to be ok.