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End of Year HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM REVIEW & Wrap-up
Jun 19, 2024
What curriculum will we continue using next year and what are we changing? I'm sharing my end of year homeschool review and ALL of my homeschool curriculum picks for my 5th and 6th graders. RESOURCES FROM THIS VIDEO 🌎 My Father's World ECC – https://www.mfwbooks.com/item/95101/ (referral code W059321) 📖 BJU Press Curriculum – https://www.bjupresshomeschooling.com/site/include.php?id=88 📚 Learning Language Arts Through Literature – https://www.commonsensepress.com/store/c2/Learning_Language_Arts_Through_Literature.html ➕ CTCMath – https://www.ctcmath.com/ 🕮 Window on the World – https://amzn.to/3NlJ8Tq ✝️ Bible Study Fellowship – https://www.bsfinternational.org 📓 Not Consumed Devotionals – https://store.notconsumed.com/?aff=489 🎨 Creating a Masterpiece – https://creatingamasterpiece.com/ref/sara.radginski/ 🔤 First Form Latin – https://id.memoriapress.com//idevaffiliate.php?id=272 🌎 World Watch News – https://worldwatch.news/friends/sara-radginski 💻 Homeschool Hall Tracker – https://homeschoolhall.com/activity-journal?aff=blessedhomeschool ✅ Homeschool Planet Planner – https://homeschoolplanet.idevaffiliate.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=242 ********************************************* Hey there! I’m Sara, and I’m a teacher-turned-homeschooling mom to 4 kiddos (including a set of twins!). I balance homeschooling while working full-time from home, and am so thankful you are here.
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Hey guys, welcome to my channel Blessed Homeschool. This year I'm going to be making some big
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curriculum changes for my fifth grade twin daughters and my son who's going into sixth
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grade. So I wanted to hop on and do a quick video sharing some of those changes and just giving
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some updates to you guys. All right. So every year, usually beginning around February
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I like to take a good look at the homeschool curriculum that we've been using and decide
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if I want to make changes as we start to look forward to the new year. We look at what worked
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well for us, what didn't work well, what we might want to change, what do my kids want to learn that
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maybe we haven't been incorporating as much, things like that. So I feel that the choices
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that we've made so far have worked out really well for us. And we are going to make a few tweaks for
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the upcoming school year. As I mentioned before, I've got twin daughters that are going into fifth
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grade and my son will be moving into sixth grade. So I know that each family has to make their own
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choices about what's going to work for their own unique kids and their own unique styles. But I
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know it can be helpful sometimes, especially if you're a new homeschooler to kind of hear what other people are doing and the reasons behind their choices. So I hope that some of this will
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be maybe helpful for you. Okay. So first let's talk about what's changing for us. Our first three
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years of homeschooling. So when my oldest son was in kindergarten and then first grade and second
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grade, we mainly used My Father's World. And then we also supplemented with Sing4Math and All About
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Reading and Spelling. I used those for him during that time as well. And when my son began third
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grade, we switched to BJU Press Homeschool, their distance learning online. We really love that
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curriculum. We've been using that for the past three years. I love their biblical worldview
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integration. And I do have a post on my blog that you can read to kind of learn more about why we
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switched to that curriculum and how we used it, how it's been working for us. So the first year
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we used their distance learning online option pretty much exclusively. For the past two years
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we've used the DLO for math, reading, English, spelling, and I've done teacher-led for heritage
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studies, science, and handwriting. So we've kind of used a mixture of those things. In case you're
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curious, I'll be honest that many days handwriting got skipped. We made it through about a third of
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the way through the book and then we just kind of practiced handwriting in other ways as we did our
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learning. And we were able to work in the heritage studies and science about every other day with our
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schedule. So that's how we integrated those. And then for the rest of the subjects, my kids worked
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on those mainly independently while I helped them with anything that they needed help with
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There are two main reasons that we will not be using BJU Press for our core curriculum next year
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Not because I don't love it. I do. But because number one is time. All right. So this year
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my kids got involved in a few more classes at our local co-ops. We rejoined Bible study fellowship
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We were just busier with our math, reading, English, spelling, social studies, and science
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courses all taught and completed separately. Some days it became very hard to just fit everything in
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Now, I know it's okay if you don't get through all of your curriculum, but this year especially
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just seemed harder for us in regards to the time if we wanted to get through every subject on most
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days. So I began looking for a more integrated approach to conquering language arts and some
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different options for us. So that was the first reason. Second reason would be accountability for
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us. The first couple of years that we used the DLO, it really helped teach my kids some digital
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learning skills. It also helped them be a little bit more independent in their schoolwork. This
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year, I felt that my kids personally would benefit from a bit more one-on-one teaching
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and more accountability, especially in math and English. I'm not sure if it's because we're headed
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into the tween years or not, but I noticed a little bit more slacking this year from one of
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my kiddos, not pointing fingers, where they would either not pay as much attention to the teaching
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videos or they wouldn't ask for help when they needed it. There were many days I did have to go
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back and kind of re-explain concepts when I realized that pages of their work texts weren't completed
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or they were completely wrong. So that also added time to our already busy day and probably could
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have avoided if we had taken a different route from the beginning. So I learned that language
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arts was a bit more of a struggle for my kids this year and we just needed some extra attention on
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writing mechanics and spelling. And I also wanted a bit more literature in the curriculum than we
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had this year as well. Like I said, it worked great for us in the past. This year just felt like we
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needed to change it up a little bit. So that being said, here's what I've chosen for our curriculum
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next year for my fifth grade girls and my sixth grade son. All right, so for language arts, I'm
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trying something completely new for us this year. I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm also excited
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We're going to be using learning language arts through literature with my kids. I'm going to
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be using the purple book with my girls and the tan book with my son. What's most appealing to
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me about this program besides the literature is its integrated approach to teaching. So with one
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single program, we are going to cover multiple subjects in the context of the literature
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which I know research shows help kids make connections and create deeper understandings
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in their learning. So no longer will our English reading, spelling, handwriting be separate, but
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with learning language arts through literature, we'll be studying spelling, reading, grammar
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composition, research, study skills, higher order thinking skills, creative writing, and penmanship
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in an integrated manner. You can check out their website to learn more about it. Like I said
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it's going to be new to me too, so I will have to share more about it as we go, but I'm looking
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forward to trying something new and seeing how this goes. Their curriculum is a 36 week program
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It is five days a week, but I'll share more about that as we get going. That's what I have planned
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to try out so far. Okay, for math, with BJU Press Math this year, my kids would watch their lesson
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video online and then complete their work text assignment independently. Even though I love math
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I do delegate this because my kids are working at different levels. And with our crazy schedule
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this year, some weeks there may have been a couple of days before I could check everybody's
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math work. So they would do their math and usually I try to check it right away. Some days it just
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took me a day or two. And when I would check it, I would find they've been doing it completely wrong
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You know, part of that was on me and I needed to kind of be more on top of checking their work
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things like that. But sometimes things just get crazy. And I realized that again, with our
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schedule and just where they were at, that they might benefit from an online program that had
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shorter, more succinct videos, something that would automatically grade their work. So if I couldn't
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get to it right away, they would get immediate feedback and a program that had the ability to
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really target any weaker areas that they struggled with. I wanted a bit of both spiral and mastery
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and something that was adaptive. So as they were learning, if they missed something, it would kind
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of go back and have them redo some problems, things like that. So I found all of that in CTC math. And
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we actually began using that program a couple of months ago and we're going to be sticking with it
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for next year. I've enjoyed it so far. The kids have liked it. We're going to see one more year
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how it goes. I love that all my kids have access to all the grade levels and there's one family
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membership fee. So I'm saving a lot of money on my math, to be honest. So again, we'll see how it
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goes, but that's what we're using this year. Okay. For social studies and science, we really did enjoy
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our BJU Press Heritage Studies and Science this year, but I decided to go with an integrated
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approach again, and we will be using My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures with my
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fifth and sixth graders together. From what I've learned or what I've heard and what I can tell
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there's not a lot of history with this curriculum package and it's mainly geography. I don't plan
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on adding anything additional right now. In fact, we've done a good deal of US history the past
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couple of years and not as much geography. So I'm really looking forward to this study and doing
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this program with my kids before we dig into ancient history in upcoming years. The science
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component of this program focuses mainly on ecosystems and habitats and corresponds to
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different countries that we'll be studying. Exploring Countries and Cultures also includes
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a Bible component. So my plan is to use this daily with my kids. We will be reading and memorizing
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the Book of Matthew and also studying true missionary stories and learning about specific
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prayer needs of different ethnic groups. We've used the book that's included with this. It's
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called Window to the World, and I'm looking forward to revisiting it now that my kids are
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a little bit older. In addition, we attend a local Bible study fellowship that meets for an hour and
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a half once a week, and my kids get a short Bible study assignment that they complete from there
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But I also like to supplement with the not consumed Bible studies for their morning time
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devotionals. You guys, there really is so much good stuff out there. I found a curriculum from
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BJU Press. It's called Basics for a Biblical Worldview. I'm actually going to be doing a flip
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through video about this soon that I want to try to incorporate into our studies. I'm not sure
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how that's going to look if we're going to do it every other day, once a week. We simply may
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just read through the lessons as we're able to. There are eight units, and it's geared towards
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sixth grade level. So I'm not going to stress about it too much, but if we can get to a lesson
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or two a week and just take our time through it, I think it's going to be a great study for
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our entire family, really. All right, for art, there is an art component, an art and music component
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included in the Exploring Countries and Cultures, but I'm honestly not sure how much we'll utilize
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them. We've really been loving creating a masterpiece for our art lessons, and we try
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to do at least one project a month. Sometimes it's every other month, but I continued our subscription for that this year. So we're going to keep it at least one more year and continue
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doing those projects. I do have a review of that program up on my blog that you should go check
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out. We've really, really loved it. Okay, for foreign language, we participate in a homeschool
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co-op that meets once a week, and I actually teach a Latin class there. We use Memoria Press
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their Latin curriculum. So we have already completed Prima Latina and Latina Christiana
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and this year, well, the end of last year, we started First Forum Latin, and we're going to
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continue that this year. So that's going to be our foreign language component. We meet once per week
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and then my kids have a short little assignment each day that they will complete at home to do
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on their own. And just a couple additional subjects or notes. I feel, you know, really
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fortunate to live in an area where we have so many great opportunities available to us as homeschoolers
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So through our co-op, my kids will not only take Latin, but they participate in a drama program
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there, and they'll typically take one other class. Not sure what that is going to be yet because we
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don't have the full schedule posted, but we'll do that. We also meet once a month with a sweet lady
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who teaches these quilting classes out of her homes. My kids love that. They're just learning
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how to hand sew, some different techniques, and I love the skills that they're picking up from that
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class. For music, my kids do take lessons. They each play a different instrument, so they'll do
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lessons for that. And then we do a sport, which I've been counting for their P.E. I'm not planning
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anything extra for a P.E. or health curriculum for this year. That may change, but for this year
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nothing extra except for their lessons. And this is just something extra, but at lunchtime, we like
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to turn on World Watch News and watch their 10-minute segment. I do have a subscription to
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them, and we get our daily dose of news from Christian Journalists. It's a great program, so I
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highly recommend you check them out if you aren't familiar with them. All right, so in addition to
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curriculum, this year I'm going to be continuing to use Homeschool Hall to keep track of our
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homeschooling state requirements, and I also use Homeschool Planet for my lesson planning. So my
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kids can log into Homeschool Planet each day to see what their assignments are, which is really
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helpful. So I do use two tools for that. I thought about just using one, but Homeschool Hall doesn't
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have a great planner yet, even though they are working on implementing one. And I don't love
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Homeschool Planet's functions for keeping track of the hours that I need to do. I just prefer
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Homeschool Hall's functionality for this. So maybe in the future I'll consolidate and just use one
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but for now, I've got a good rhythm going, and I like the functionality of both of those tools
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So that's what I use for my planning and my state requirement records keeping. So there you have it
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my curriculum picks for my fifth and sixth graders, the changes we're making, and why we're making
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some of them. As I mentioned earlier, every family and every child is different, has different needs
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different state requirements, and different resources. So your curriculum choices might be different than mine, and that's okay. Will we complete all of this perfectly? Will I get
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every subject in every day that I plan it? Maybe for the first month, but keep in mind that even
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with my ideal choices for now, things happen and we do the best that we can every day. I can't see
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the future to know that all of this will work for us, and I may need to make changes mid-year, but
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that's the beauty of homeschooling. I say that just as a gentle reminder that one way is not
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better than the other. And as you're making your own curriculum decisions, just take what you see
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from others with a grain of salt. But I do hope that maybe you found something helpful and useful
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here, that you heard something that could benefit you, or that you want to check out, look into a
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bit more. If you did or didn't, feel free to drop a comment below with any questions that you have
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or anything else that you want to know about. Thanks again so much for watching. Don't forget
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to like and subscribe, and I will see you guys next time
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