Evaluating the School Year

Positives:
Madeleine got accepted to all colleges to which she applied, she earned scholarships from all colleges to which she applied and earned a BIG scholarship to Mississippi University for Women where she will be heading in less than 3 months. James did well on the pre-PSAT and is getting lots of mail from top notch colleges.
I love our religion texts; both the Didache series for high school and Faith and Life for elementary/middle school. Tapestry of Grace is an excellent history and literature program especially for high school and middle school. Math-U-See is a great fit for Theresa since it's in workbook format; while John has been excelling using Saxon. I'm thankful for Teaching Textbooks for Algebra and Geometry. Madeleine did well studying Calculus at Calhoun Community College. Apologia Science worked well for Chemistry and Physical Science; will be buying Biology and Physics for next year.

What can be improved???
I got a bit lax on organization and scheduling this year and need to crack down next year. There were occassional Mondays where lesson plans were incomplete, worksheets/quizzes were not printed, supplies were not available for science experiments and we even missed some parts of books due to my lack of attention to detail. Abigail will no longer be permitted to babysit in the morning as it breaks up a major block of learning time and throws off the day.

I need to devote more time to reading the TOG teacher notes especially for history; otherwise I'm going to need to beg Scott to take over weekly history discussions. I need to focus more time on teaching writing; time will be spent this summer in 'teacher training' with DVDs I purchased from the Institute for Excellence in Writing. I want to incorporate more prayer and traditions into our Faith formation which of course involves planning ahead. I plan to do more science experiments with John and Theresa as they need to 'experience' science as much as they need to read.