2011-2012 School Year Review…From My Kids

After all the reflecting I’d done on our homeschool year, I thought it might be interesting to get the perspective of my students, too!  I remembered a post I had read last spring about getting input from your kids on Heart of the Matter.  Jimmie’s advice was to ask your children questions as you evaluate your homeschool.  Armed with her questions I conducted a little interview with each of my children (separately so they wouldn’t be influenced by each other).  Some of the answers I completely expected, a few surprised me, and one just made me laugh.

I know math is not my daughter’s favorite subject, so I expected it to top the list on any question about what she doesn’t like.  Based on the sheer amount of times she mentioned math negatively I know I have my work cut out for me.  I am determined to help her see more of the value in math, and I’m hoping the book my husband and I are both reading, What’s Math Got To Do With It by Jo Boaler, will help.

Both kids listed read aloud time as their favorite part of the day, and their favorite subjects were things we do together.  I wasn’t surprised by those answers, but it did reinforce for me what is already in my plan:  working together on subjects whenever possible and more reading aloud.  Both kids talked about wanting to spend more time studying history, which I’m excited to do as well!  It is one of the subjects I am learning right alongside them.

Surprising answers included my daughter’s goal of better grammar (I’m glad I have exciting plans for that for next year), my son’s goal of learning to cook and speak a foreign language (I wouldn’t have guessed those two goals at all–and I definitely want to work on them with him).  It was great to get them involved with goal planning and find out what was important to them.

The answer that made me laugh:  whenever I asked my son about something he didn’t like, he asked that I “just draw a smile” because he couldn’t think of anything he didn’t like!

While our family was on a long car ride I took the time to discuss the answers with the kids and their dad.  We enjoyed a nice, open discussion with everyone together.  I think the biggest benefit from this exercise was showing the kids that their thoughts are important.  They’re young now, but I hope we’re laying a good foundation we can build upon as they get older and take more of a role in directing their own education.