The homeschool year is coming to an end but you still have tons of curriculum left unfinished… What do you do?
First off, let me just tell you that it’s completely okay to have unfinished work. The beauty of homeschool is that you can be flexible with how much work you do, when you do it and how you do it. So don’t think in anyway that you did something wrong. Next, I’m going to share with you four ways you can handle any unfinished curriculum. And then I’ll talk a little about how we handle it in our own homeschool.
How to Handle Unfinished Curriculum
Finish During Summer Break
We take multiple breaks during the school year and don’t always finish all of our curricula before June. As year-round homeschoolers, this really doesn’t impact us negatively because we have time to finish the curriculum during summertime. You can take the same approach even if you aren’t year-round homeschoolers. Summer break is a great time to finish what you didn’t get a chance to during the school year. It’s not always ideal for those who enjoy the two month break from academics, but it is extremely helpful. It’s pretty much like summer school. You still get to enjoy the beautiful summer months, while staying consistent with academic skills.
Pick it back up in the fall
Another option is to just pick the curricula back up in the Fall. Most curricula, if you haven’t noticed, tend to start with a review of the previous year. Basically, you start the new school year going over material for the previous grade level. That is something to expect if you’re using the same curricula back to back for multiple years. Because of that, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to pick up the unfinished material at the beginning of a new school year. Once you finish with that, then you can jump into the new curricula.
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Supplemental Resources
Using unfinished curricula as supplemental resources is another great option. As teacher mom, I’m constantly looking for ways that I can reinforce my child’s learning. A lot of times, if we don’t already have something on hand, I’m having to spend hours researching and even at times, spending money, to get more resources. Unfinished curricula is something you already have. Why waste it? If your child is struggling with a grammar concept in fourth grade, you can open up that third grade grammar curriculum and get some extra practice on that concept.
Relaxed Unschooling Days
Before being intentional with any curriculum that we didn’t finish, my kids would grab them and use them to “play” with. Except, what they considered play was actually a form of unschooling. For example, our old Spanish workbooks. I decided to make a switch in our Spanish curriculum which left our workbooks about half way done. One day, I caught the kids playing school and realized they were working through the Spanish workbooks on their own and they were “teaching” each other in the class room. (1) I loved seeing them play school. And (2) they were really learning and doing the work. I really think that keeping unfinished curriculum is great for unschooling days or even just regular play for the kids.
How we deal with it
You’re going to hear me say, time and time again, that we homeschool year-round. Sorry about that. But as year-round homeschoolers, we do a mixture of all of these. We spend the summertime working through any material that I deem important, such as math, language arts and bible study. If we don’t finish that material before August, we just continue to use it in the new school year until we complete it. Some might say that we are “falling behind” by doing that, but we’re not. The great thing about choosing a home education is that we get to go at our own pace.
Early on in our homeschool journey, I began planning for the next academic year in March. That’s five months before we even started the new school year. I would stress when I didn’t have all of the new curricula by May and get even more frustrated when summer came and we weren’t done with our current material. For the first half of our homeschool journey, I had tons of left over material that I chose not to finish because I already had new material waiting to be used. I’m talking workbooks that were more than halfway unfinished. Honestly, that was not good stewardship of our homeschool budget.
Entering our 5th year of homeschool, I decided not to be so wasteful with our curricula anymore. Any materials that we haven’t finished will be worked on throughout the summer. And if it’s not done by the fall, that’s okay too. We will continue to work through all of our curricula until it’s complete. As for buying new curricula for the next school year, that’s on hold. We know what we’ll be using for each subject but as far buying anything new, we’ll buy as we need it. Doing this really helps us get the full worth out of what we have.
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