Friday Meme: Biggest Triumphs and Challenges

This Friday's meme at Heart of the Matter is an End of the Year Reflection on the Biggest Triumphs and Biggest Challenges of our academic year. As the boys and I close out our homeschool year at the end of May, I believe we've had a good year overall. The kids continue to progress in the academic areas while growing in their God-given interests and abilities.

Something new we started last fall was keeping a prayer journal. The boys and I each have a notebook where we write down prayer requests, answers to prayer, and Bible verses that touch our hearts. This simple journal has given us incentive to pray more consistently in the mornings as we begin our day. It's neat to hear three prayers lifted up to heaven rather than just my own, knowing that "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (James 5:15b).

The boys and I are also reading through the Bible according to schedule, even though all our schedules differ. Our 8-year-old finished the Psalms today, while our 11-year-old is reading Isaiah.

Also included in our Bible time is work on the boys' Awana books, where they memorize verses and complete short Bible studies. Our 8-year-old was diligent in completing his Awana book in about two months time and then working to complete the silver and gold projects at the end of each section. After completing those, he went on to work on a packet of memory verses and has finished over 50 so far. A highlight of the year was the boys competing in the Awana Olympics with kids from two other churches. Their combined team took first place.
Our 11-year-old son has grown so much physically this past year, from a boy to a young man. He's grown several inches and is now interested in weight-lifting and athletic training. We enrolled the boys in YMCA basketball for the first time this winter and saw much development over the course of the season. With Little League now under way, we again see improvement in skills and abilities, with our 11-year-old pitching his first game earlier this week.
The biggest challenge this year was in working on the boys' speech. They are both quiet by nature, so we saw this as an area to develop at this stage in their lives. My husband, a professional teacher, started speech class with the boys once a week. This class involved reading Scripture and other speeches aloud, making phone calls, and watching their speeches on video to look for areas of improvement and correction. When the boys read aloud to me daily from their reading books, I noticed their voices going down rather than up at the end of sentences.

They've also improved their speaking skills with strangers and adults. During our garage sale earlier this month, I sometimes left the boys outside to run the sale. The boys had priced their own toys. A young man wanted one of our 8-year-old's toys, priced at $2, for $1. Our 8-year-old negotiated a price of $1.50, which was accepted.

Another challenging area has been attempting to instill more honor in our home. I recently finished the book, "Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids!" by Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller which focuses on this very concept. Before reading this book, I didn't realize how dishonoring certain behaviors were such as bickering and teasing. Now that I'm more aware of the challenge, I can work to improve it in our home.

How about you? What are your year end reflections?