Well fellow homeschool moms, It looks like this week I am wrapping up my homeschool year. I am ready to make a transition into the next home school year. I want to share with you how I end my homeschool year in this blog. I am taking on the Gratitude Challenge started by ClarieSights. What a way to end the homeschool year! With an attitude of gratitude.

I end my home school year by being grateful. I am so grateful to God for keeping my family safe, giving us lots of grace, having mercy on us and providing for us all year long. I am so grateful for my husband who has allotted me the luxury to stay-at-home and homeschool our children. I appreciate the sacrifices he makes for us everyday. He is so super supportive, making sure the kids have all the learning materials they need to help them learn, helping me teach in subjects where he is stronger in his knowledge. My husband is super smart ya’ll, we go to him when we do not understand a concept. He remembers mostly all of what he were taught in school. I am grateful for his labor of love and the way he pours his love over me and our family.

I am grateful for our local library who provide rich books, videos and free events that helps me with teaching my children,

I am grateful for my local Church who provides community and helps build up our spirit man. On every other Saturday they attend Saturday School where they learn both spiritual and natural things like gardening, self-care, etiquette, business, scripture memorization, crafts and arts. They attend Children Church that teaches them about Jesus and the word of the Lord, my church has provided book bags and school materials, and free violin lessons for my children, a very sweat and special lady at our church blessed my kids with a free violin, I am super grateful for that! My church has a big Christmas production that my children get to participate in every year, that takes care of drama and music. I’ve developed amazing friendships for myself and my children at my church.

I am so grateful for my homeschooling co-op, this year we’ve done so many educational field trips, thanks to the wonderful moms at Urban Stars. I want to give special thanks to Mrs. Diana who labors in love to make sure we go on most of these field trips. My co-op has provided my family with fun, friendship, mom support, education, home economics like cooking classes, homeschool encouragement and sharing homeschool curriculum. My homeschooling co-op ends today and at the end of our co-op year, we come together and have a picnic or some kind of scheduled activity like a potluck, a movie or crafts & arts. We all say our good byes until the next school year, but some of us still keep in touch for mom meet ups, play dates and some of us frequent the same places like Saturday School.

This is the second week in May, and all of my super mom running around every week to scheduled activities has finally come to an end, at least for some months. My son is 3 years old and I enrolled him in our free early childhood program in my school district, 4 days a week for only 3 hours a day. That has really helped me to focus on my school age children. His school ended today. I am so grateful for all the programs that were offered at his school because I’ve seen my son grow by leaps and bounds. I was very cautious when I first enrolled him, questioning am I making the right decisions because we have always paid for a Christian education for all of our children, but I have seen the growth in him and growth in myself.

I am grateful for free therapy for my 5 years old. Her speech therapy program has ended for the year and her clarity of speech is amazing, I am grateful that she has met a wonderful friend in therapy. Every Thursday they can’t wait to see each other which makes my heart melt. I am grateful for her speech pathologist teachers who were patient with the girls and allotted playtime at their sessions. God always provides what each child needs. My 12 years old has built a community in her gymnastics class, I am so grateful for the connections she made in her class and I am grateful for her teachers who labored in helping them achieve a new skill. Faith told me that she is over gymnastics and would like to try something new like, horse back riding. The 1:30 minutes spent waiting in the car with 3 of my children, might have come to an end. I am trying to talk her into staying but she is still adamant about not wanting to continue. So gymnastics has ended for us, maybe after summer break she might have a change of heart. I am grateful that I get a break from most of my running around. I feel like I can let out a big sigh. So how do I end the rest of my homeschool year?

1. I take a break from all scheduled activities. It feels good to wake up and have nothing on your agenda that requires you to be somewhere. This gives me times to recharge, rethink, and re-evaluate my schedules, homeschool methods, and my homeschool goals. I have a child who will be in middle school this year and I want to make sure I really set her up for success.

2. I declutter all my homeschooling materials. I move every little keepsake to my homeschool bin and get rid of the rest of the homeschool related materials. This homeschool year, my biggest challenge was keeping all of the writing material in one place. The kids love to write, cut and draw, I was always cleaning up paper, scissors, pencils and crayons. So this year, I am going to put a better system in place for this.

3. Take a vacation! Although I homeschool year around, I do give the kids a break from school work for about 2 to 3 weeks and if they are learning, it is interest led learning. I also like to schedule fun family activities for my kids. They also need to let out sighs as well, from all of the hard work they sometimes didn’t want to do.

4. My husband and I are going to do something special for all my daughters but especially my 12 years old daughter. She is going into middle school and I want it to be special for her even though she is homeschooled. She is moving into the teenage years and will now be able to join teen ministry at our church and go to “The True Love Waits Banquet, ” this is a special time in her life, one that I do not want to ignore. We probably give them a small ceremony and a certificate passing them to their next grade.

5. I plan for my next school year. I take this time to plan, research, schedule and buy new curriculum for my children. I go to the library and get tons of books about homeschool curriculum and what my child should be learning for the next school year. I rethink my systems that didn’t work for me, rather that be chores, meals and cleaning, and come up with better systems. This is the time I research what programs are available to my homeschoolers and make a list of homeschooling activities, co-op groups we can join ect.

These are the 5 ways I end my homeschooling year, I would love to hear how you end your school year. Comment and subscribe to Breakthrough Blog 4 Women. Follow me on my social media links down below. Click here to follow me on Instagram.

Coach Angie!