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Hi, you guys, welcome back to another video. This is going to be an unboxing video. I have a lot of new
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curriculum in and actually it's been sitting here for a while. So I'm really excited to actually
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dig into something. This is something that just came though. So I'm going to open it up for
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you guys right now and what is it? So if you don't know me, my name is Sarah. I am a homeschool mom to four kids. My oldest son is 12. I have twin daughters that are 10 and then a preschooler who is five. I've been feeling a little out of sorts this week. I am in my office, which we are trying to fix up a little bit. So if you watched my video where I flipped through the creation book, you might have noticed it was a different color, some different things in here. So we got it painted this weekend. We built the first
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there's not a lot in here yet. I still have to move everything back in. I had all these curriculum
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boxes just kind of sitting around. You can see some in the background and it turns out that my
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procrastination on opening the boxes paid off because they are really good at flattening rugs. So I have a rug that, you know, you unroll it and it has all the lumps in it
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While all my curriculum boxes are just kind of sitting around the carpet trying to flatten it out. So they're being put to good use
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But today I really wanted to open up this box because the level three
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color edition of All About Spelling is brand new. And so I wanted to show it to you guys and talk to you a
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little bit about it. This is the brand new all about spelling level three color edition, which I haven't
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talked too much about on my channel. So I'm excited to open it up and share with you just a little bit
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about it. All about spelling is something that I've kind of gone back and forth using in our homeschool
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And it's actually something that I kind of regret not sticking with and following it all the way through
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I used all about reading with my son when he was first starting
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So we went all the way from level one to level four with all about reading
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And I love that. I started him on all about spelling and we went through level two with his spelling before switching to something else
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Well, when he was in third grade and my daughters were in second grade, that's when my
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My youngest son was being born and I decided to make a switch to use BJU Press and we did a lot of the distance learning online
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So for about, let's see, third, fourth, fifth, three years we did their distance learning online and we used the full curriculum package for those
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So that included spelling. So my son then went to spelling with BJU Press and he did fine
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My daughters were about halfway through all about spelling level one when we made that switch
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And they, I think, just always kind of struggled with spelling. And I don't know if we would have
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stuck with all about spelling, if it would have been different. But we switched to do BJU Press
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which is a very traditional way of teaching spelling. Every week they would get a new list of words
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and they would do some exercises. They would practice some of the different rules. But they would have
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a list of words that they would have to memorize. They would have a test at the end of the week
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and then the next week they would move on to another set of words. They just struggled with it
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I was finding that, you know, they would be missing all these words on their spelling test
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and I wasn't quite sure what to do. I had found some websites where I made some games out of
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their spelling list and had them practice it that way. But it just wasn't getting better
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At a certain point, I kind of just stopped and we would stay on a certain list until they got it
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And then I was feeling further and further behind and we weren making any progress And for them it just wasn working For my son it was a good fit But for both of my girls they really struggled with it So last year actually about halfway through the year I went back to all about spelling level one with my girls And I figured okay we just going to start at the beginning We going
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to make sure they are learning what they need to learn. This approach had worked with my son
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and we're just going to give it another try. And we did that for about the second half of the school
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year. It was going just fine. And I was worried about starting them with something that was level
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one, but they didn't really care or know any difference. And this doesn't necessarily correlate
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to the grade level. It's just the first level. So I wanted to make sure as we were going through
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they knew everything that they were supposed to know moving forward. They had a good foundation
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So they were doing really well. They were flying through the lessons all about learning press
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with their reading and their spelling. They take a real multisensory approach. So they've got
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letter tiles that you can use where the kids are actually manually moving the tiles to spell. They've got
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step-by-step lesson plans for the teacher, so it's very much open and go. You know, it did take
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extra time for me to actually teach them spelling, but the lessons are pretty short, so it wasn't
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taking a ton of time every day. So it started going really well, and that was what we did for the
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rest of the school year. Okay, so you think I would learn my lesson, but at the end of that school year
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I learned about learning language arts through literature. It is an all in one program for language arts and within that you are learning grammar writing some literature
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you're doing your reading and you're learning spelling through different literature passages
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The all in one, the comprehensive cohesive approach really appealed to me and the more I read about it
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the more I learned about it, it really sounded like something that I wanted to give a try
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And so I set all about spelling aside again in lieu of this
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curriculum. And the curriculum overall has not been terrible. If you watched my mid-year review
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video, I talked about it a little bit. It's not necessarily my favorite. I don't hate it and I don't
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love it. But yet again, I'm not super happy with how the spelling is going. Every week, we basically
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create their own spelling list based on words that they are missing. So as they're going through
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their work that week, as I'm grading it or as I'm noticing their misspelling words, we
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add those words to their spelling list. The benefit to that is there are words that they're actually using every day or at least in whatever unit that we're on. Therefore, it's more
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relevant, but it still doesn't necessarily help it to stick for them. We're not necessarily
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learning a ton of spelling rules or they're not seeing those patterns. I'm not sure. I don't know
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why I thought that it would work out any better than the spelling class before. Maybe I thought
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because they were older and that all in one curriculum just appealed to me and I figured we
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give it a try. Well, so here we are. I wouldn't say that they haven't not improved, but there's
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still a lot of work that needs to be done with spelling. They still make a lot of what I would consider
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mistakes that I think as fifth graders, they should kind of know by now in how to spell. So that being
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said, a couple of weeks ago, I pulled back out our level one and I decided, you know what, we're just going
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to pick right back up where we left off. And I'm going to stick it through this time and we're
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going to see this approach through because what we're doing right now isn't working. That's what
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homeschooling is a lot of times. It's a lot of trial and error. It's a lot of me realizing that
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okay, I think this curriculum looks really great. I see all the benefits. But maybe that's not
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working out so well for my kids. You really have to consider what your child's learning style is
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And that's something that I'm not always the best at doing because I can have I will
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evaluate it from my viewpoint and how I like to teach it
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And I really need to do better at looking at how they are learning and is this going to work for them And so that where I trying to grow So that being said I have level one They like one or two lessons
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away from finishing level one. And then we will move on to level two, which I already have from
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when my son did it. I may get an extra set of cards because that is one thing. The first time I did
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all about spelling, you have, these are their boxes. I did buy two boxes, one, four
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each of my girls because what I tried to do, and maybe this was another reason that I got frustrated
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because I only wanted to use one set of cards because it's what I had and it's what my son used
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but there were two girls. And so it was, I was kind of juggling, well, which cards did one need
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to practice, which did the other need to practice. And when I decided to go back to it, I just said
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okay, I'm just going to buy an extra set of cards and an extra box. So each of them has their own
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the box because what they do is they have different sections where they will review, I don't know
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how well you can see, but they've got phonograms, they've got sound cards, key cards, and then
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their word cards, which are the actual words that they practice spelling. So each girl could have
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different cards behind each section. So I wanted to make sure I could keep that really straight. So I do
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have a separate box for each of them. And there's lots of room in here to where when we add the
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different levels, those will be able to fit in here. So when I saw that level three was going to be
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released and it was going to be a color version, I was really excited. Since I have all the old
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all about spelling and all about reading stuff, it's all black and white. Since we're going to be
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using level three, and I am committing to it, I wanted to grab it so I could get a hold of it
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take a look at it, share it with you guys. Let's see what is inside this box
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All right, so the first thing that I see are the letter tiles
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We've got a set of letter tiles. So in here there are letter tiles for all levels, tokens, syllable tags, magnets, and two zip storage bags
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And you can use these with all about reading levels one through four and then all about selling levels one through seven
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Have magnets that you can stick on the back. So if you want to use them on a whiteboard
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or I've seen some people use them on cookie trays or anything like that, that they can easily move
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They do have an app now, which we do use. You have to pay for it
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I think it's like 20 bucks, but then it's right on my phone and the kids can move the tiles that way through the lessons
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So that is really nice. Okay, extra box right here. You get a box in the set
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Okay, we have a lovely, Level 3 Teachers Manual. This is a pretty thick book. All right, step-by-step lesson plans
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Kind of flip through it here. So even the teacher's manual is in color. I like the color
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I mean, I don't mind the black and white, but the color definitely makes it look a little bit nicer
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I'm not going to go through too much right now about how the lessons work and how you actually
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use the program or what the days look like. If you guys are interested in that, I would be more
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more than happy to do a video on how this curriculum actually works in what it looks like
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or maybe even doing a lesson with us. So if you guys are interested in any of those things
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please let me know. As with all their other lessons, it looks very, very much scripted out
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very much open and go. That is the one thing that I love about this is they're pretty short lessons
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They don't take a lot of prep and they're all scripted out for you. So teacher's manual in color
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Okay, and then we have student packet here, and that's all that's in the box
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Let me open this up and show you guys look inside. In here we have a set of stickers so this will go on I assuming they have similar charts to what we have now There are suffix tiles and this says this is an extra set and they been provided for customers who purchase
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letter tiles kit prior to April 2023. This is how the tile or the letter cards come. You kind of
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punch them out and then you stick the magnets on the back. So that's how you make the letter tiles
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If you want to use the tiles instead of the app. In the student packet, this is where you
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you get all of your different cards. So again, they're color-coded like you guys saw in my box
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These are the phonogram cards, and they're all perforated, so you just have to tear them apart
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That's really some of the only press that you have to do. We've got phonogram cards. You have
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sound cards, rule cards, so different spelling rules that they will learn. And then the green ones are
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the word cards. So these are all the different cards that they're going to learn to spell. Okay, and then this is kind of new
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have older versions of all about spelling. I don't know if the activity book is included
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now in one and two. I would have to go back and look at this, but we don't currently have
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an activity book for our all about spelling that we are using. So this is new. So this is an activity
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book for the kids. I really like this feature. My kids like doing worksheets and workbooks
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and we like using them in our homeschool. We definitely lean more towards
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traditional type materials. And just looking at it looks like something that my girls are really going
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to like cutting things out, sorting, making piles, making different pictures. And I love that this is all
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in color. So this is going to be good. This is going to be something that they're going to enjoy
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and that will help them. And as I look through words that they're going to spell some of the
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different letter sounds and blends, I think this is going to be good. I think my girls might fly through
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level two, but I want to make sure that we cover all of our bases. We don't have any gaps. I'm okay
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if it's a little bit easier for them at the beginning because spelling has been tough. So to have
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a little bit of success in spelling is going to be good. So that is everything that you get with
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the all about reading. Sorry, I keep saying all about reading. All about spelling level three
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the new color edition. When I was going to look, I thought the chart must be in here somewhere
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Oh yeah, here it is for the sticker chart. So that's fun. That's in color too. So you
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put a sticker on there every time they finish a lesson. But if you are interested in learning
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more about this program, I will leave a link in the description below so you can check it out
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Please feel free to leave a comment and I'm happy to answer any questions or do any other videos showing you how this works. I don't feel like we're starting over with spelling. I feel
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like we are starting in a place that my girls are going to have success with it. We're going to
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be able to move at our own pace and really there is no rush. They're going to be in sixth grade
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next year, there's no rush for them to be all the way through every single level of this program
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They can be working on it alongside whatever else we do and their spelling is going to strengthen
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and they're going to grow and keep learning. I'm excited to give it a try. I will give you guys an
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update because we are going to stick with it. No more changing in the spelling department. I think
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that's going to be the best option for us right now. All right you guys, so I hope you enjoyed this video
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I hope you enjoyed seeing what was in this curriculum. Hopefully next time I will maybe have a little bit more of an office put together
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I will, I have a lot of other boxes that I need to open up. So I've got some my father's world
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I have some Memoria Press, our Latin curriculum, and I have essentials in writing
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I think that is it right now. I feel like I'm forgetting something, but pretty sure that's what I have right now
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So I'll be opening those up in future videos. Make sure you subscribe to my channel if you would like to do that
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hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on any future videos. Thank you guys so much for
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watching. I'll see you next time
