Mid-Year Homeschool Review, 2025-26

We’ve entered the third semester which means we’re more than halfway through the year; time for a mid-year review! You can read my 2025-26 curriculum post to see what I selected at the beginning of the year. You can read my other mid-year reviews here.

what’s working

The English materials I chose for both boys seem be working out well. Teddy didn’t like reading the Iliad, but I made a point of choosing ancient and modern literature, and he appriciated the chance to read Enders Game before starting Sophocles. I’ve had some good discussions with Fulton on his literature books, especially The Golden Compass, and he’s done really well writing his own essays using the digital resources I purchased and his iPad’s speech to text feature. He’s definitely doing more work independently this year.

Teaching Textbooks is still technically working, but math seems more challenging for both boys this year. I was grateful for the option to go into the grade book from the parents dashboard, clear out a bunch of less than stellar lessons and have Fulton and Teddy each do a couple weeks of review. It really made a big difference in helping them master the concepts. One of the best things about Teaching Textbooks is I get an email every morning with their grades from the previous day and their class average, so I always know how they’re doing.

Both are doing well with their co-op classes (though they say I’m a “cringy” history teacher) and have made good process in their respective foreign languages (Teddy – Latin, Fulton – French) though Fulton is strictly using DuoLingo as he really didn’t like the Mango Languages program. From my end, co-op is still going well and I know I’m cringy but who doesn’t get excited talking about Sargon, Hatshepsut, the Assyrian Renaissance, and the Dorian invasion???

I wound up needing to add some better music theory resources to Teddy’s music composition class, but this website really helped fill in the gaps. He’s focusing more on learning Garage Band now which he seems to enjoy.

Fulton’s had a lot of fun designing t-shirts. We’ve heat pressed a few of his designs for him to wear, and he’s currently taking his time designing a website (using Canva) to sell them.

Morning meeting is back and I’m loving it! However, after reading two lesser known Shakespeare plays, Fulton and Teddy were like, “Can we read one of his better plays? How about King Lear?” I also love King Lear, so it wasn’t really a hard sell.

We’re also back to a consistent physical therapy routine at home. So lots of good things happening!

what’s not working

While morning meetings is a huge improvement over afternoon tea this year, we’re still not listening to our composers and at this point, I don’t really know what to do about it. Maybe I’ll pick up some new classical records and hopefully put them on at dinner time.

Overall, our whole schedule underwent a major change after winter break and I’m still making tweaks. So, for several years now, Tony and I have split the boys morning and bedtime routines. Rather than both of us sharing the duites of mornings and bedtimes, we each pick one. Because I am a morning person, and for many years Tony was leaving the house in the morning for work, I got the boys ready in the morning and he did the night time routine. With my older kids taking care of themselves, I had a few years where, I saw the boys onto the bus then, went to daily Mass, and/ or the gym and in general took a little time for myself. When we started homeschooling again last year, I didn’t want to give that up. Tony is also a night owl, and he liked the idea of getting to use his evenings to do his own thing and take his time in the morning since he now worked from home. So he started getting the boys ready in the morning, while I got up, did writing or scripture study, went to the gym, maybe Mass, showered and then made them breakfast and started school. At night Tony got to do his activities while I put the boys in bed. It worked well for awhile, even if I was a bit grumpy putting them to bed and Tony was a bit grumpy getting them ready for the day. But Fulton and Teddy are now 15 and 17 and they wanted to stay up later, especially Teddy, and that was hard on me. I wasn’t going to force them to go to bed early, but that meant I was staying up late and then struggling to wake up in enough time to do my thing before we needed to start our day. I was also back to passing out on the couch during family prayers or movie night. Since the boys were up later, Tony wasn’t getting the uninterrupted time he was used to and so he stayed up even later for quiet time to work which made it harder for him to wake up on time to start their morning routing. We were both feeling pretty run down by the end of the year and over Christmas break we decided to switch back and see how it went. Thankfully, it’s gone pretty well. I wake up between 5-530 most days and drink my coffee in peace, study German and work out at home. The boys can sleep in and I get plenty of time to myself. Tony wakes up when he’s ready, and I get the boys up and ready usually quicker and more cheerfully than Tony ever did. We say prayers after dinner and I can pass out for the night whenever I’m tired. Fulton and Teddy like to stay up, watch Tony play video games, or watch sports or do whatever. He gets the boys in bed when they’re tired, with less frustration than me. He can still do what he wants and stay up later knowing he can sleep in.

Our school day is starting a bit later as a result and with math taking more time, things were getting crunched up right before lunch but I think I’ve worked out the biggest kinks, even if I’m still in my workout clothes at lunch.

The only other change is to Teddy’s science. I bumped him up to Biology this year, which my other kids did in tenth grade, because most ninth grade science programs I was considering covered a lot of the same stuff we did last year. However, bio is no easier for him than the other kids so I decided we’ll do half of it this year and the other half next year. That does mean he’ll need to do a lab science his junior and senior years, but taking bio at a slower rate has helped. I uploaded the chapter questions and study guide into Google Classroom and he types in the answers then checks them before taking the test. I did purchase the video lessons which also aides his comprehension and they’ve been great for the labs. Many of the bio labs require viewing slides with a microscope. It’s really hard for both Teddy and Fulton to use a microscope and the video labs show the magnified image which is awesome. Also, since Teddy can’t do the labs independently anyway and was just watching me doing them, it’s really not that big a deal if he watches the teacher on the video do the experiments instead. (Plus, she doesn’t curse at all because she has all the correct supplies and everything works the way its supposed to.)

All in all, it’s another good year! I haven’t thought about enrolling the boys back in school once- not even in February! Our co-op is already planning for next year, which is crazy, and I know Fulton’s graduation will be here before I know it. These days seemed so far away only a few years ago and now I’m racing towards homeschooling my last child.

I hope your school year is going well! Let me know what’s working, or not working, in the comments below!