I can hardly believe our first twelve weeks are finished! Term one of our 2025-2026 homeschool year has been full of routines settling in, lessons learned (by all of us), and plenty of sweet, ordinary moments I don’t want to forget.
For our Full 2025-2026 Curriculum Picks and Plans for Year 2 (take two), see this blog article
For our Full 2025-2026 Curriculum Picks and Plans for Year 5, see this blog article
Highlights From Term One
- Year 5 books were some of our favorites yet! My oldest really enjoyed Madame Curie, Great Inventors and Their Inventions, and Heroes of Asgard (AO’s schedule update for mythology literature as of 2025, in place of The Age of Fable).
- Year 2 books were a lovely revisit for me with my youngest. He really enjoyed Tree In The Trail and The Little Duke, which, funny enough, were both least favorites for my oldest and me!
- My oldest really enjoys Anatomy using Ambling Together’s free resource guide, and keeping a science notebook has been a fun addition to reading living books in this subject.
- My youngest learned to read this term!!! He will be seven years old in November, and I am incredibly proud of his hard work and daily practice that have enabled him to reach his current level of reading skills. His current reading practice books include The Story of Ping, Red Tag Comes Back, and The Fire Cat, which I picked up all at a local Goodwill last Summer. We have many more to read through this year, and he loves being able to add them to his personal reading tracker.
- My oldest memorized her multiplication times tables this term, which was a huge milestone for her, and her dedication to practice a little each day paid off! We decided to have math blocked for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, and that has given her huge strides in her mathematical skills from our original 20 minutes a day, 4 days a week that we had done all the formal years prior. We are still loving CTC Math for both Year 5 and Year 2.
- Doing Foreign Language, Shakespeare, Recitations, Songs, Artist and Composer Studies, Nature Studies, and Drawing/Handicrafts together as a family has still been one of the sweetest times for connections that we have in our homeschooling, despite the age/level gap between my two children.
Daily Rhythm & What Worked
Our days found their own rhythm over the last twelve weeks. A few things that really helped us were:
- Beginning the day around the same time every day- we love slow mornings in our home. While everyone is usually up and awake by 7:30 each morning, we don’t rush through the morning and race to the homeschool table. Mornings have become a time where my oldest is also learning to prepare breakfast a few times a week for everyone, and my youngest has taken over some of the morning chores my oldest used to do, so there’s a bit of a learning curve we have to be patient with. We eat together as often as possible, and once everyone has been fed a balanced breakfast, we work as a team to reset the kitchen before making our way to the books. This is usually by 9:15 in the morning. Everyone functions so much better when we do not rush through a hearty and healthy breakfast.
- We begin our homeschool time with the more challenging subjects for each of my children. This is math for my oldest, and handwriting for my youngest. This just made the most sense for our family, giving our best efforts first and foremost to the subjects least desirable.
- Since math is blocked for 30 minutes for my oldest, my son and I can work through a couple of subjects in that timeframe, which includes (give or take) 5-10 minutes of handwriting, 10 minutes of reading practice, and 10 minutes of either geography or a history read from the Year 2 schedule.
- Whenever my oldest needs assistance in math, we are all learning to share the time with mom’s help, and not be discouraged if it takes us a little longer to get through the work. Right now, a little assistance in math doesn’t take away too much time from my youngest when needed, but it’s just a reality we are working through with one of me and two of them, and it’s overall going well.
- We set a goal for my oldest to do two written narrations a week, and these have certainly helped her hone in on key ideas from her readings to share! She now does 3-4 written narrations because she loves doing them!
- Year 2 literature readings using audiobooks. My son listened to and followed along with the audiobooks for Understood Betsy and Burgess Animal Book. This gave me space to work with my Year 5, and a place for him to grow in some independent work, followed by oral narrations.
Moments of Refinement
Some days unfolded with ease, while others asked more of us. There were pauses, messy moments, missed lessons, and hearts (mine included) that needed softening. Yet even in the stumbling places, beauty could be found — gentle reminders that homeschooling is not about perfection, but about walking together through real life, where the hardest days often become the most shaping.
- About 5 weeks in, I realized my son was listening to Burgess Bird Book, not Burgess Animal Book. I had to laugh at this because this was totally a me-problem, realizing only weeks into the term that his narrations were about birds, not animals. Then I made the connection that we did this last year, and I am clicking on the wrong YouTube Playlist for Burgess Audiobooks. Oops! Some will use this as an example for NOT using audiobooks, but I would have still made the mistake of reading aloud the wrong book, as I grabbed Burgess Birds from the shelf every week without realizing my mistake.
- Going back to the basics of Charlotte Mason’s methods, I had to remember that the art of narration is an art to be tended to and learned over time. My son needed me to pause more frequently in his Year 2 readings for more thoughtful narrations, rather than me reading bigger chunks at a time. Once I was intentional about slowing down our readings and allowing him room to narrate in between, he grasped ideas and the stories a lot better. Again, another me-problem.
- We put a pause on our Theology book for another year or so. The concepts are so beautifully touched on in the series, but my Year 5 was not ready for them. In the meantime, I think I will continue to help her establish her own daily Bible reading and prayer habits, and continue to prayerfully answer the big questions when they arise, rather than hold them in the school schedule. I’m currently looking for a Bible study for her age range, and possibly do that together, just the two of us, one night a week.
- We attempted to listen to and follow along with an audiobook of Heroes of Asgard from YouTube, but after a couple of weeks in, the audiobook began to stray from the original text, so we parted ways. We are now reading it together ourselves, and I am using Anne White’s guide for each week, which has been tremendously helpful.
- Where did our Recitations go?! We were doing really well with them until about week 5, and I really don’t understand how they just disappeared from our schedule, but they were sadly forgotten. Those are getting moved to the front of our day in Term Two! Maybe I need to print some additional copies of our recitation pieces and place them throughout the house so we don’t forget this time!
What Awaits Us in Term Two
We are continuing our homeschool year with Ambleside Online, Years 5 & 2, *mostly as-is on their schedules. My Year 5 and I will be pausing Plutarch for a term, and (probably, but still undecided) begin part of The Young Citizen’s Reader by Paul Reinsch, which is not part of AO’s schedule or readings. For Year 2, we are just continuing Burgess Animal Book where we left off in term 1, a little “behind” on the AO’s schedule for it, but we’ll just keep going and be done when it’s done.
Everything else remains the same, no major changes. We introduce a new artist and composer in term 2, and are continuing to use Year 2’s Shakespeare schedule rotation as a family.
We took a week off between term 1 and term 2, and are ready to get back into our books before the holidays approach! Term 2 is our “longest” term, in the sense that we take time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas time and a few days off here and there for birthdays, but we won’t truly be done with term 2 until the new year!
Your FAQ’s About Our 2025-2026 Homeschool:
I put out a question box in my Instagram stories a while back to help answer any questions folks might have about our homeschool this year. Below, I will do my best to answer the top 5 common questions I received. Please feel free to ask any further questions in the comments at the bottom of this blog article.
Question: “How do you handle missed days or unfinished lessons?”
Answer: It really depends on the situation, but if my children were sick, they would just rest and pick back up the following day when they were better. In some situations, they were still able to read or listen to me read/or an audiobook. I really don’t fret too much anymore about missed days, because we can always tack on a day or half a day from lessons we missed on a Friday or Sunday when we are home with no plans. As I shared above about the Burgess Animals Book scenario with my Year 2, we are just carrying on with it into term 2, a little behind our AO schedule. If there was a situation where we were missing an entire week or more of school time (that didn’t happen this term), I would have reevaluated our school schedule for the year, and probably expected us to be done with school a week or so later than expected.
Question: “Do you do any extra activities, mapwork, or pictures with AO Year 2?”
Answer: Sometimes. Not always. My son wanted to know what a medieval trencher looked like from his Little Duke reading, so I pulled a photo up from Google or Anne White’s Vikings and Vows guide. I don’t typically have too many additional resources out and prepared, other than my laptop when needed. For Year 2, and this being my second time through, reading and having him orally narrate has been more than sufficient for living ideas to be grappled with. People sometimes wrestle with that answer (I did, at first), but it really is plenty for a living education.
Question: “What are you using for Year 2 History, Geography, Year 5 Biography, etc.?“
Answer: I have two detailed blog articles on all our subjects and resources we’re using for the year, linked at the top of this blog article!
Question: “How long do you spend on school for Year 5? How about for Year 2?”
Answer: Because my Year 5 is mostly doing all of her readings independently now, she can easily be done by lunchtime. Some days, she saves a book or two for after lunch if we get a later start. She can get through all of her subjects within 2.5 hours or so, broken up with breaks here and there. For my Year 2, we can be done in about 1.5 hours.
Question: “How did you schedule all the Year 5 readings?”
Answer: I’ve actually answered this question in a blog a few months ago! 2025-2026 Year 5 & Year 2 Timetable Template I love answering scheduling questions in blog form because it really is easier to lay it all out in an organized format, and with images. You can find other scheduling and planning blog articles from me in the past at the end of that blog article, as well.
If you made it to the end of this article, thanks for sticking around! If you have other questions, leaving a comment will be the fastest way to get a reply from me, as I am still currently not as active on Instagram at this time. I am always happy to talk about all things Ambleside Online, Charlotte Mason methods, and general homeschooling topics!
