Top 10 Posts of 2015 {and What That Means}

It always helps me in my blogging, when wrapping up the old year and setting goals for the new, to take stock of which of my posts have enjoyed the most popularity over the last twelve months. That’s my goal in tabulating these top 10 posts of 2015. Knowing what has been most helpful to readers in the past helps me to better be able to serve you in the future.

As it turns out, the majority of this year’s top 10 list made last year’s list, too (although they’ve shuffled positions somewhat):

My Top 10 Posts and Pages of 2015:

1. Free Printables
2. Ice Breaker BINGO
3. Christmas Word Scramble
4. Free Printable 2015 Calendars
5. Our Christmas Letters
6. Home School Report Cards
7. Age-Appropriate Chores for Children
8. 12 Days of Christmas Party Games
9. Number Writing Practice Sheet
10. Kids Eat Free

Eight of the top ten involve some sort of free printable — five very practical, three just for fun — so I’ll be sure to keep those coming in the New Year.

Interestingly, none of my most popular material has been written in the last twelve months. If I consider only the blog posts that have been written this year, my top 10 list reads like this:

My 10 Most Popular Posts (Written in 2015):

1. 21 Tried & True Tips for Frugal Living

   

   This one is actually an old post that I updated this year, but the money-saving tips are timeless. It saw lots of traffic when the Penny Hoarder linked to it several months ago.

2. Sermon Notes Printable for Children

   

   This little printable was inspired by all the note-taking I saw going on when we visited the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham. Want your children to pay closer attention in church? Give these a try.

3. Mailbag: Scrapbooking Calendar for 2016

   

   These hand-drawn calendars have been very popular with many of my readers. I use them in scrapbooking (fill in one master copy, then make enough colored photocopies for each child to have a record of what the family has done in his/her memory books), but they are also great for micro-journaling or to simply post on a bulletin board to keep track of family appointments.

4. Free Patriotic Printables {including Bill of Rights}

   

   I print these out around Constitution Day or on the Fourth of July to use for coloring and memory work with my homeschooled students.

5. Free Printable Envelope Seals for Christmas

   

   I made these to use for our family’s Christmas card assembly line this year. Judging from the download rate, it looks like lots of my readers used them, too. I offered several different designs to choose from. Click through to see the others.

6. 8 Ways to Cultivate Friendship between Siblings

   

   Our children, who now span ages 5 to 27, really are the best of friends. Sure, the younger ones have occasional squabbles, but overall, they get along incredibly well and truly love one another. Here are our secrets for helping that happen.

7. Mailbag: Adult Children Living at Home

   

   How is an adult child, still living at home, supposed to treat his parents? What expectations should we have of him? That’s what one of my readers wanted to know. Here’s how I answered.

8. Mailbag: High School Transcript Help

   

   This is the same homeschool high school transcript that I’ve had on this site for years, only better — because this one is fully editable. It looks very professional. I’ve used it with all our graduates (five so far) and never had any trouble with college admissions.

9. Mailbag: Kindergarten Recommendations?

   

   Teaching kindergarten ages at home? Don’t let it stress you out — and please don’t confine your 4-5 year old to a desk doing workbooks for the majority of the day. There are much better ways for a child that age to learn.

10. Where to Find Books for Free

    

    Our family is (mostly) full of bookworms. Here are a few of our favorite ways to build our library for FREE.

Breaking those down, we still see that half of them involve printables — no surprise there. Four deal with parenting, three with homeschooling, two with saving money, and four of them were from the “Mailbag Monday” column I started this time last year. (Got a question? Submit it here.)

Good news is, my old posts obviously have staying power. Bad news is, not many people are seeing my newest content — despite all the effort I’ve put into creating it.

You can help with that. Whenever you find a post you think is especially useful or insightful — here or on any other blog — please share it your friends (via Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, whatever) so that they can benefit, too.

In the meantime, I’m going to limit myself to three posts a week this year, and really make them count. I’ll keep posting Q&A in the Mailbag Mondays column and sharing the best of the printables I create for my own family.

This year’s Word on Wednesday columns haven’t gotten much traffic (although they have generated a lot of comments — thanks Elsie 🙂 ), but since that one was my husband’s brainchild, I’m not ready to scrap it just yet. I do plan to scale back to posting every other week on that one, though — alternating with the weeks I share Scripture coloring pages on Sunday.

If there is a particular sort of post you’d like to see more of here, let me know in the comment section below. We view this blog as a ministry and sincerely want to bless as many families as we can through it. Thanks for reading and best wishes for an awesome 2016!