Mid Year Homeschool Curriculum Review // What I'm loving (and what I'm not)

Name: Mid Year Homeschool Curriculum Review // What I'm loving (and what I'm not) | Open Video
Uploaded: 2024-06-19T01:24:12+00:00
Duration: 25 min 47 s

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Hey friends, welcome back to my channel. We are a couple of weeks into 2024 now and I can hardly believe it
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This school year is flying by. We are halfway through and today I'm going to be giving you my mid-year homeschool review update
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I love to share with you about the curriculum that we're using what I think is going well and what I think is not going so well, where we might be making some changes
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So if this sounds interesting to you, keep watching and we'll go through my mid-year homeschool review
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If you're new here, my name is Sarah. I am a homeschooling mom of four kids. My oldest is 12 and we're using mostly sixth grade curriculum for him this year. I also have twin daughters that are 10 and in fifth grade and I have a preschooler
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that just turned five. I am a Christian. I love Jesus. And although we don't use all Christian-based
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resources, I do strive to teach my kids from a biblical worldview. So that might be important for you
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to know. And before I go any further, I want to share that I'm doing this video as part of a collaboration
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between a few other wonderful homeschool moms. Davine from Calm in the Chaos Home School and
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Shauna from Homegrown homeschool are hosting this collaboration. And I'm going to link a playlist
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in the description below. So you can check out some other mid-of-your-home-school reviews
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if you're interested. Okay, let's get started. Before I start talking about curriculum
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I want to give an update on two of the tools I'm using this year to help my kids and I stay
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organized, be able to navigate our lesson plans super easily, and also keep track of my state
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homeschool requirements. I still am using both homeschool planet and homeschool hall for these things
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Homeschool Planet is an online lesson planner, and I use this to plan out our daily lesson
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schedules and any other tasks. I've been using it for about a year now
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and it has really, really helped me be able to quickly plan and also rearrange things easily
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when things don't go how I did plan them. Typically, at the end of each week, I'll look ahead
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to the next week's plan and make notes for my kids, edit lessons, or move things around if I
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know we have changes to our schedule. And with homeschool planet, I love how my kids are able to
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log in to their own accounts each morning and see exactly what they need to be doing and check it
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off as they go. It's a great visual and a great way to help them stay on track. And then with
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homeschool hall, I do have a video on this resource, but it's my favorite one that I found for
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tracking homeschool hours, which we have to do for our state requirements. There are other tools
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that track hours and even homeschool planet can do it, but this is the best one that I found that
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works for me the best for many reasons. So if you have to track state requirements like
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home mainly hours is what I use it for, but I know there are different things like
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grades or attendance, do transcripts, lots of things like that, definitely check out homeschool
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hall to see if it's a good fit for you. I always check in with the graph stat board around this
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time of year because it's a really good visual for me to see if we're on track with our hours
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and how we're doing there. Okay, let's get on to the curriculum updates. I'm going to talk about
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my three older kids first because they use a lot of the same resources and we do a lot together
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and then I will talk about my preschooler at the end and how things have been going with him. First up
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is My Father's World exploring countries and cultures. This was our first year back to my father's
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world. We had used them for many years when I first started homeschooling. Then we used B.JU Press
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distance learning online for a while when my littlest was born. And I was really excited to come
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back to it. I missed a lot of the learning that we would all do together. And I missed the curriculum
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I had heard that this curriculum was mainly geography. And yes, it is. But that was a
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was fine with me because we really needed it. I've done a few videos where you can see exactly
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what the curriculum looks like, how the weeks are structured, and things like that if you want
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to watch those, if you're interested in learning more about how that works. My overall thoughts
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I do really like this curriculum. We've had a lot of fun with it, and I definitely recommend it
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Remember, my kids are fifth and sixth grade, and I really do think that this is a good age for them
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to be going through it. We could have done it last year, and I think it would have been fine as well
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it's actually recommended that third grade is the youngest to start it
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And I think that's fine too. If you have a third grader, there might be some parts that are a little bit harder
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like the geography book and some of the science reading. But overall, I think their age recommendations are pretty spot on
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And we've had great success with it this year. The curriculum did feel like a lot for the first five weeks because we were jumping around
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to a lot of different books, learning about maps, atlases, getting a feel for things
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but it calmed down so much after that and we are taking it at a very relaxed pace right now
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When we first started, we were doing this every day and now we maybe do it about three or four days a week
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and still can get through everything that we need to. We are not doing the entire curriculum as planned
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The curriculum includes Bible, geography, science, music, and art, and read alouds, and a little bit of language arts
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but then you add in your own English, spelling, math, reading, and foreign language if you want to
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And the parts that we skip are really just their language art section and the music and art portion
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Everything else has been really manageable. It does not take up a lot of time during our day
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And I do think it's given my kids a greater understanding of geography and expose them to learning about a lot of different cultures
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There are a couple of things to point out. If you are thinking about using this curriculum and you want to go more in depth
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with each country and culture that you study, you do need to do some prep work
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So some weeks I've been able to get this done and sometimes it's harder for me to stay on top of
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It was definitely easier in the beginning when our schedule wasn't quite so crazy
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but it's getting harder now. What the curriculum does include is a fact sheet
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for each country and a map activity, but otherwise most of the learning that you'll do
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about each country is through the books that you pick up from the library, any extra activities you plan or videos
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that you pick out to watch. Don't get me wrong, I think that there's enough information in the curriculum as is
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but I do wish that there were more things included to kind of guide us in our learning about each country and culture especially you know I not so naturally great at piecing together
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resources like this, especially when I'm short on time and things are just so busy
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So we're, we're enjoying it. We're enjoying what we are learning. We love the read alouds that have been included
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We've really enjoyed kingdom tales and the different missionary books that we've read so far
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Science has been the only part that I haven't really loved. And I mentioned in one of my other videos that it just felt a little bit too light for my kids and their ages
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We weren't really enjoying any projects or experiments, mainly because I didn't personally choose to do the one suggested, and I just wanted a little bit more
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So we're still going to be doing some of the reading, the science reading, one day each week as it relates to the countries that we're studying
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So typically with their science, they have a studying ecosystem or something that's related to the country
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we're learning about. So we'll still do a little bit of reading on that. Otherwise, we're going to be
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trying out sunlight science E for the rest of the semester. I have an entire video on that that you can
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check out if you want to learn more about the curriculum and see what it's like. We are only two weeks
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in, but so far it's been okay. It's been a good addition and we'll see how it continues to go
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So wrapping up the My Father's World Talk, I'm happy that we use
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this as our spine this year, even though I am modifying it a bit and don't use it exactly as
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it's planned out. We are going to continue with Creation to the Greeks next year, so I will talk
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more about that in an upcoming video. For Bible, we are following the My Father's World suggestions
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and reading through the Book of Matthew together, but my kids and I also attend BSF, which is
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Bible Study Fellowship. They have a small amount of work from that each week. This is going
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really well for us. I'm actually a leader in the student program this year, which I will admit
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has been both a blessing, but also a little bit harder on me because there's an extra time
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commitment. But my kids and I really love this program. We've been doing it for years now
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and we've seen some great fruit come from it. We also recently added in some catechism work to
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our daily routine, and I would love for you to check out my video on that to hear why we are
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adding that in, and I will link that video down below. Okay, let's talk about history. My father's
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world doesn't really have much history this year, but we didn't get through all of our history
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curriculum last year. So we decided, well, I decided to continue using it and finish it this year. So
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it's BJA Press Heritage Studies 5 and we honestly only do this for about two days a week. It's going well
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There's not much that I would change. It's definitely more of a traditional style curriculum, but my kids
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are doing well with it. This covers, you know, America's first people all the way up to the present
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I think it ends with the Obama administration and it actually covers some pretty controversial topics near
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the end of the curriculum, some moral issues, gay rights, abortions, things like that. As with all
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BJU press materials, I've loved the biblical worldview focus, and my kids and I have had a lot
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of great discussions while studying history this year. I love that we can all do it together
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Their heritage studies six, so the next class, I believe, covers ancient civilizations. So if my
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father's role doesn't seem to be going well next year for some strange reason, it will always
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consider coming back to this. Speaking of BJU Press, we have have also been using basics for a biblical worldview and I love this one too. I'm not going to talk
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too much about the curriculum because I do have a whole video on it that you can check out, but
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it's going really well. We are taking this one very slowly. I'm not in a rush to get through it
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mainly because of our schedule constraints, so we only do it two or three days a week. I will say
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that the activity manual that comes with it is a lot, meaning it's a lot of writing and can take
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my kids a long time to get through some of those activities. Sometimes I have them write everything down
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Sometimes we just discuss it together. As with anything, you make it work for you and your kids
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But I highly recommend this curriculum if you have middle schoolers because it's just so important
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to have these worldview discussions in this day and age that we are living in. And this curriculum
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really does a great job of covering that. All right, on to math. You might know that we are using
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CTC math this year. I do really like it. As with anything, there are pros and cons. But
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but using an online math program is just the best fit for us right now
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All three of my kids are in different places. They're working at different levels
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And when you are just so busy, it can be really helpful for them to have a program like this to work through
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Otherwise, it would just be another 30 minutes to an hour each for me to teach
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and work through math with them each day. So the pros, they can work at their own pace
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And for the most part, it's pretty hands off for me as far as the teaching
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goes. I go in each week and I schedule their tasks. I put them in homeschool planet, so it's very
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clear what I want them to do. When we originally started using this, I was kind of letting them
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go at their own pace. I told them what section to work on and just kind of said, go had it
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But I quickly found that if I didn't intentionally check in on them, they weren't working on it
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as much as they probably should have. So, I know, I probably should have figured that would happen
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but you live and learn. So that's something that I've been doing this month. I've been intentionally
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planning out their assignments and scheduling them in the planner. And I think it's been so far helping out
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a lot. I don't love the grading aspect of CTC math in the sense that it doesn't allow for partial
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points. This was something that was always important to me as a math teacher, allowing partial credit for
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problems because oftentimes my kids will understand the big point of the problem, but they'll miss one little thing
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type it in wrong and then there's no going back so right now I think we're fine
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because I don't really have to count the grades for anything but once we get
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into high school range I'm gonna have to think about this a bit more maybe
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reevaluate if this is still the best program for us and being a former high
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school math teacher I think that part of me is getting a little bit excited
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about the opportunity to teach my kids algebra and geometry and things like that
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so we'll see what we do when we get to this point but overall I think see
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CTC Math is giving my kids a good foundation and the math concepts that they need to know
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It not going to work for everyone but it working for us right now It doesn take them too much time most days to get through their math and I feeling good about it We are going to continue with this next year My goal for my son is to be
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able to get through their eighth grade program next year. It's similar to pre-algebra, and this will be my
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son's seventh grade year. So the hope is to start algebra in eighth grade and count it as high school
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credit. We're on track to do that as of now, so that's the plan. I will also share that CTC math has
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weekly revision questions which help kids review previously learned concepts. So I have these
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automatically assigned each week. And what I've been doing is if I notice them not scoring well on
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them, I will print those out and have them complete the work with me so that I can follow through
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their thought process and help them out a bit more where we needed. So this is just something that
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has been going well and helping us out with our math. Next step is language arts. This year
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we tried something completely different and gave learning, language arts through literature a try. So my son is using the tan book and my girls are using the purple
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book. Last year we used BJAU Press and we had different curriculum for reading, English, spelling
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and handwriting. And it was taking a lot of time and the all in oneness of this curriculum really
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appealed to me. And I heard some great reviews on it. I really wanted to love it and I'm just liking it
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I am a little underwhelmed. I think it was going okay for the first couple months and there's
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nothing inherently bad about it. I'm just realizing that it's maybe not the best for us to continue
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moving forward in the next year. We are going to finish it out for the year, but I'm going to be
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using a different option for next year. The fact that this curriculum is all in one, meaning it covers
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your spelling, reading, slash literature, your writing, grammar, handwriting. It's not necessarily
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bad thing. It saved us a lot of time this year and it's very inexpensive so I can see where it would be a
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good option for many families. But for example, I'm finding that my son needs more writing instruction
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and more practice with this and not necessarily as much spelling, grammar, and reading comprehension
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My girls need more on the spelling end. And I think that all of my kids need a little bit more
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literature and I think I was expecting a bit more on the literature end from this curriculum since
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that's part of the name, but really it's a lot more comprehension. Not as much literary ysis in the
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day-to-day work or in the actual student workbook in the plan or the schedule. The literature pieces
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are short little bites that we read and we use those to answer questions and learn spelling
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grammar, and things like that through those little passages, but it's very disconnected. So for example
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we spent five weeks on passages from Mr. Popper's Penguins, but we were never assigned to
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the entire book and the passage has chosen had no real connection to each other. Yes, we could read
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the entire book on our own. That could be something that you want to do if you want to add that in
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but it's just not part of the curriculum. Now they do include a few book studies, which is where
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some of the literary ysis comes in. And my kids have enjoyed reading these books, but I've
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been, again, less than impressed by how they actually incorporate these into the curriculum. It's
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kind of a do-on-your-own-own-thing, add them in when you can on top of the rest of the curriculum
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which is okay, but then you just need to be intentional about doing it. That was hard for me this semester
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I want something that's planned out, that's scheduled, it tells me when I need to do it, what I need to do
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That's just how my brain works. So also for those studies, the student workbook does not include
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the pages where they answer questions about the book or anything like that. Those are all in the
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parent guide. So it just makes it harder for the kids to be able to work through those lessons. I would
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love it more if these book studies were scheduled in, like I said, or even better, if the rest of
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the pieces like the grammar, the vocab handwriting were worked into the novel studies, I think that
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would help a lot. So anyways, not a terrible curriculum by any means. I don't think we're doing
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any harm in continuing it as my kids don't necessarily mind it. I just think we could use a little
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bit more and I'm just going to be switching it up next year. We are going to be using essentials in writing
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and essentials in literature for my older son, and I'm going to be using essentials in writing with my girls
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I'm still working on what I'm gonna do for lit and possibly spelling, so stay tuned for that
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One of the other big things that we do in our homeschool is our weekly co-op
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Last semester, my kids took Latin, which I teach, and they did drama and J.A. BizTown
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We loved all those classes, and we'll be doing the same classes this semester
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They start up again in February. For Latin, we've been using. Memoria Press. I started teaching this with Prima Latina and then we did Latina Christiana and now we will finish first form Latin this year. Super easy to teach. I do not have a Latin background. I've never learned Latin. I'm learning it along with the kids and this curriculum. I have no plans in switching. I really, really love this curriculum and it's been working really well in a co-op setting. It's a small class, but I think it's more fun for the kids to learn their main lesson together and then they have
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workbook lessons that they do during the week. Co-op days can be kind of tough, mainly for me
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the kids love it, but it takes four hours out of our day. So we try to get a little bit of work
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done before and then finish up anything absolutely necessary afterwards. But I do also try to
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keep our schedule lighter on those days so that we don't get overwhelmed. But we've been doing this
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co-op almost since the beginning of our homeschooling journey. My kids have made some wonderful
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friends there and they get a lot out of the enrichment classes that we do there. So even though it's hard
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for me schedule-wise, because I get stressed thinking we're not going to finish all of our history
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or language arts today or whatever, I have gotten better about letting that go, simply rearranging
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our schedule and homeschool planet, click of a button, and just seeing the value in what we are doing
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right? We can't get everything done every day. We have limits. And I'm learning
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that homeschooling just offers so much flexibility and freedom. It important to learn to relax a bit and enjoy our days together enjoy our time together especially if our kids are having fun and learning So that something that I working on this year and slowly getting better at
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Okay, that's that I think for our main curriculum. We also have some extras that we will continue to do
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We take a quilting class once a month every, it's on Friday, once a month on Fridays. And
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typing is something that I also have my kids do every day for about 15 minutes. We are using typing.com
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and they just log in and complete their lessons. They are getting pretty good at using this
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but they are still looking at their hands. I was telling them the other day
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that I was gonna make some cardboard stands to put over their hands like I had to use in school
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So they're gonna keep working on learning typing. Once they're through all those lessons
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we will continue to improve speed and things like that. But right now typing.com is working really well for us
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Oh, and art, that was one of my New Year's goals to do better at actually doing our art curriculum
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It had just fallen by the wayside during the first part of this year, but we are going on two weeks now of working on our art projects
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So, so far, so good. We use creating a masterpiece and so far my kids have enjoyed the projects
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I am not 100% sure if we are going to continue using it next year or not
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I kind of want to look more into the art that's included with my father's world, creation to the Greeks, and still need to make some decisions about that
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So that's it for my older kids. Let's chat about my preschooler real quick
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There's not as much to stay here. It's been a good year so far. We are using my father's world voyage of discovery
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and he really enjoys it. It's a very, very gentle curriculum. Lots of repetition each week
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which, to be honest, we do at this point end up skipping some of the activities week to week
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because some of it he's a little bored of by now. I think the curriculum has been great
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for helping him learn his letters and their sounds. we've both loved the Bible readings and many of the activities
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We love the books we've been reading. And he actually still asks me to do school halfway through the year, even on the weekends
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So I think that that's a good thing. I've been very relaxed with this curriculum this year and don't feel bad about that
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We do the parts that we love and what works for us in our schedule and we skip the things that
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we don't like or we don't have time for. I definitely recommend it to moms who need ideas, who need or want structure
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for their preschooler. I said before that a box curriculum like this isn't necessary, but it can be such
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a big blessing. And I'm really happy with it this year. So I think that just about covers all of the
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curriculum stuff. Mostly, I am really happy with how things are going this year. And I think it's always
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good to check in about halfway through and reflect on what's working, what's not, how are the kids doing
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do we need to make any immediate changes, things like that. I don't usually prefer to make big changes
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midway through the year unless something can really be improved kind of like our science or if the kids
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just are not doing well with something so although there are some things that are not perfect
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there aren't any other huge pivots that we're going to make at this point in time i'm also feeling
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really good about some of the fun field trips and activities that we've been able to fit in this year
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i am terrible at planning things like this and i always feel a little guilty about not having more
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fun things for us to do. Well, luckily, there's this amazing mom that I know that has organized
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a field trip group and she plans these outings every other Friday or so. And I have tried my best
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to go to the ones that we can make. Part of me just wants to hang out at home and chug through our
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lessons, you know, the box checker type A part of me. But the other part knows that my kids love
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this kind of stuff. And it's so important for them to get out and explore new things. So
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We've had a couple of neat field trips and some fun outings with friends. This Friday, we are going to the World Chess Hall of Fame
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I honestly didn't even know we live near a place like this, but there you go. And really, it's a great reminder to me that, again, we can't do it all
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Just because I'm not great at planning field trips doesn't make me a bad mom, and I don't
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need to feel bad about it. God gave us all unique gifts and talents and strength
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And part of being part of a community is leaning into that
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letting others be strong where they can be strong and use their talents, and showing up when it's
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something that I can do well for everyone else. It's a great lesson for our kids to learn, too
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that it's okay to delegate and lean into people that the Lord has placed in your life to fill those gaps
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So whether it's with field trips or using an online class in your homeschool or whatever
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it's okay that we can't do it all on our own. We are not made for that
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What I'm loving most this year, though, is seeing my kids grow and start to develop their own interests
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more and more. It used to really bug me that either, you know, they didn't love reading or they
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didn't have a thing that they were really interested in. And I had a step back from that and stop
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pushing so much. I realize now that there's a lot that I can't force, but I can provide opportunities
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for them to learn and love learning and trust that we will continue figuring this out together as we
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all grow. And I'm loving seeing their relationships continue to grow. This is something that I didn't
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really have with my own brother growing up. And I'm really thankful for this time that homeschooling
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is providing us to spend together and for them to get to hang out and get to know each other as
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siblings and just become friends. Things are going well this year and going fast. I literally can't
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believe we are halfway through January right now, but it has been a good school year so far. I hope that
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you enjoyed this update, enjoyed listening to me, ramble a little bit about our curriculum
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and sort through my thoughts on some of it. If you follow me on it, Instagram, you might have seen my reel with all of the unpacked boxes. I definitely do have new
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curriculum rolling in that I need to get unboxed soon. So make sure to subscribe to my channel and
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hit that notification bell in case you were interested in seeing those unboxing videos and learning
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more about the curriculum that we're going to be using next year. Finally, don't forget to check out
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the collaboration playlist. There are a lot of other homeschool mamas excited to share their mid-year
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reviews with you and I think you'll love them. Thanks so much for watching
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I hope you have a blessed day

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