New Year’s isn’t the only time for evaluation, homeschooling mamas (and papas) know.  There comes this certain time every year when our hearts and minds turn towards what is coming next.  Examining and critiquing the past year of lessons, I’ve found, is a great resource for planning and preparing for the next.  Here are some of the pivotal questions my husband and I look at when we are faced with planning for the coming year of learning.  Grab a pen and paper, have a date night out or at home with the specific goal of evaluating and discussing each child.  This may sound harsh or critical – it is not.  The majority of your discussion, you’ll find, is on how you, as the parent, are doing on nurturing the God given giftings in each child.

1.) Character is the most important thing – so what area of our children’s heart training do we need to be more consistent with or pour more attention into?

We truly believe that if our child can ace math but she/he has a lack of godly character, they will be worse off in life than if they can’t multiply.  Our first priority in teaching our children is to model the behaviour we want to see in their lives.  This is a hard lesson for both mama and papa, but Sean and I see God working in our lives as a side benefit to teaching our children.

Address each child’s weaknesses and strengths.  Are there heart issues we need to give attention to?  Giftings that we need to encourage and provide areas of opportunity for growth?

2.) Address each child’s learning language

Are they an auditory learner? Need to see something to understand it? I’ve mentioned it before, but a great book on this subject is Every Child has a Thinking Style by Lanna Nakone. Understanding the learning style God has gifted your child with makes a world of difference in how you present their lessons and how well they assimilate them.

3.) What resource did we use in the past year that was a flop?

Be honest here. Better yet, ask your kids what they didn’t like.

4.) What really worked?

Was it a phonics game that tricked a child into thinking this wasn’t “work”? Was it a math curriculum that boosted your child’s math retention from lesson to lesson?

5.) What do we need to teach this coming year?

This may be mandated in your state’s homeschooling laws, as it is in our state, but still I find a lot of room for improving upon what the state wants my child to learn. Like many parents, we consider character to be the most important lesson to be taught/modeled on a daily basis and will drop all other lessons planned for the day to chase a rabbit trail that teaches a valuable life lesson.

Do we want to introduce a language this year? Does someone need some cursive writing practice by writing a weekly letter to an elderly relative?

6.) What do our children want to learn?

We make sure to tell and model to our children that we LOVE to learn, as old as we may be and as many years school is behind us. Asking our children to list five things they wanted to learn about or learn how to do was very insightful. It nurtures the love of learning and lets them have control over some of their lessons.

Those are six of our important evaluation questions. What other ones do you consider in your home?

Hannah Hagarty is a relaxed homeschooling mama of five. Her and her family are big on the outdoors, big on family days, and big on making memories in everyday small ways. She loves handcrafts, iced lattes, re-arranging furniture and counts falling into bed exhausted a sign of a really great day. She and her husband make a home in upstate New York with their energetic children and a menagerie of animals. Hannah blogs at Cultivating Home.