MARCH 2024 HOMESCHOOL UPDATE *Let's Chat!*

Hey you guys, welcome back to my channel for another video. Today is going to be kind of a chatty video. I'm doing my March homeschool update. We are a couple days into April right now. So I figured I would hop on and get this done. Just kind of share with you how everything went for us in our homeschool in March, what things went well, if anything didn't go well, and what we were up to. So just kind of a life, homeschool

update. So if you like this kind of thing, like hearing homeschool updates, hearing me ramble and

just kind of chat a little bit with you, grab a cup of coffee, put those earbuds in, and listen

as you are, you know, folding laundry or working on a chore or something. And let's jump right in

All right. So March was actually a really busy month for us, and it was a really good month

You know, we are nearing the end of our homeschool year, which is crazy to me to say, because I feel

like we just got started. But it was a good month to have some downtime, but also be really

intentional about the work that we're putting in and making sure we're kind of finishing up and

getting done with what I wanted to get done with during this year, what I want to accomplish

at the beginning of the month, if you saw, I did a planning video where I kind of really mapped out

the last 12, 13 weeks or so of our school year. And that really helped me to focus and see

okay, this is where we are at. And I know we want to be done with school by mid to end of May

It's looking like it's going to be the end of May. But if that's the goal, what is everything going to look like to

us to that point. So I really took some time to go through each of our curriculums, figure out what

parts we wanted to finish, what we were not going to finish, and actually get those lessons

set in homeschool planet. So I know, okay, I've got the rest of the year planned out. This is what

we need to be doing each day to accomplish those goals. And that worked really well for me, because

for a while with some of our curriculums, like with language arts or with our

heritage studies, even with science. I was kind of just, okay, let's open up and we're going to do

the next lesson on the list. And I didn't necessarily pay attention to, you know, how much we were

going to get through. Well, as we're nearing the end of the school year, I need to start planning on

what do I want to finish? Do I want to finish this entire curriculum, which for the record

I don't think you need to finish all of your curriculum. But what do we want to accomplish? And it

helped to just look at everything and pick out the units, pick out the work that I wanted to do

and get that planned out. That has helped me stay focused and stay more motivated for these last

couple of months because this time of year is challenging sometimes. We are nearing the end

Sometimes it can be hard to have the motivation to want to get school done during the day

but I find that having a plan really goes a long way in helping me stay motivated and for us to

get things accomplished. So we did have a spring break during March. We do not follow like a

public school schedule or anything like that. Typically when I'm setting up my homeschool year

I know about how many days that I want to schedule and I will go into homeschool planet and I will

set our start date. I will set the date that I want to end. And then you can go in there and start

selecting different days that you want to take off. So usually at the beginning of the year, I'll go in

and I'll plan out like holidays or if I know that there are certain vacation days that we're going to

have, I will mark those off as our school days. And that'll give me a good idea of, okay, these are the

days we need to schedule school. We need to get our lessons in. So when I scheduled our spring break

it actually, I didn't plan it this way, but it worked out pretty well that it fell during one of the

weeks we were going to be traveling for one of my marathons. So we did kind of like a half week that week

We take random breaks throughout the year and have random days off or field trip days. So I was okay with

not doing like a full week of nothing. So we took kind of Wednesday through Friday of that week off

And when I say off, we took off of like our bookwork and our main

curriculum because certainly if you guys watched my video on our homeschooling and traveling, we actually

did a few educational activities on that trip that were a lot of fun. So we were still learning

but we took a break from our regular daily program. And if we had it been traveling, we probably

you know, we just would have hung out at home, gone and done some fun things around town

but still taken that break. Because I think that that is definitely needed. But it was interesting

this year because my kids are involved in a lot of different things and all of their activities

seem to have a different spring break. So every week it felt like we were off from something

which was actually really nice because it gave us that breather that we needed and it gave us time

as I was feeling super motivated and had my list and had my plan of everything we wanted to do

It gave us a little bit of extra time during those days to get those things done. So that ended up

working out really well. For our vacation, we went to Asheville, North Carolina. That's where my

marathon was. And we actually visited the World Watch News studio. They have two studios. One of them is

in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the other one is in Asheville. And I didn't even know that when I

had scheduled the race, but I happened to be on their website one day, and I was looking for a specific

link, and I saw at the bottom that they had a studio in Asheville. So I reached out and, and

just ask them if we could come take a tour of the studio. My kids love World Watch News. We

watch it many days. Some days if we're out for lunchtime or out busy, we don't get a chance to

watch it. But we'll usually put it on over lunchtime. And my kids really like it. And they were

super nice. They allowed us to come in, see the studios. It was smaller than I pictured that it

would be. But it was really nice to see behind the scenes where all the magic happens. The kids

got to meet a couple of the people who they see every day on World Watch News, and that was really

cool. So we got to do that. We went to an art museum. We kind of just explored downtown Asheville

which was really cool. We did an escape room, which we love to do. We love escape room. So we try

to do one whenever we travel someplace new. And then on the way back, after the race

we left that same morning and drove up through Pigeon Forge, which was only

about two hours, maybe a little bit less away. And we stopped there because we really wanted to go to

the Titanic Museum. My little five-year-old Oliver loves the Titanic right now. And we thought since we were

kind of close, why not? We had heard about this museum before at one of the Teach and Diligently conventions

and it was really, really cool. We loved it. If you guys have a chance, they have this museum in

Pigeon Forge or they have one in Branson. And I don't know if there are any

other ones but it was really neat You got to um everybody got a card when we first started out and you kind of told the story of a certain passenger So as you went through the ship

you kind of, you know, were to be in the mindset of that passenger as you were going through

looking at all the different artifacts, seeing all the different displays, which there were a lot

And they were, they were very well done. They had kind of like little self-examined

or little walkie talkies that you would press the button on when you got to certain things

hold it up to your ear and they would explain what you were looking at. And they had one for adults and one for kids

So even my little one, you know, got to listen and it was more appropriate for little kids

kind of more cartoony, different sound effects and things like that. So we just love the whole thing

So I would highly recommend going to check that out if you're ever in one of those places

and have the opportunity to do that. Overall, this month, I have just been extremely grateful for the fact that I am able to homeschool my kids

It's been a good month. It's been a month where I've really enjoyed just learning with them, getting to do new things, having the flexibility to travel, seeing my kids develop some of their interests and grow in those interests and just feeling really lucky that I get to be a part of it

it. So yes, some days are challenging. Yes, it can be hard and confusing at times to figure out what we

are doing. But if you are considering homeschooling, I know a lot of you probably already

homeschooling, but if you're watching this and you're considering homeschooling, I just cannot

recommend it enough. You will not regret this time that you get to spend with your kids and

with your family. And I just encourage you to really consider it to, you know, utilize your resources

research what you can and just know that you can do it. So I've just, I've been so thankful this

month for the opportunities that we've had. And I just wanted to share that encouragement

Okay, so let's get more into the actual homeschool updates. So like I mentioned earlier, the plan is to be done

by the end of May, we will take the month of June pretty much off. And I say pretty much because

there are some things that we're going to do over the summer. And so that will be June and July

And then we will start officially with all the new curriculum in August. So I've been thinking a lot

about our new curriculum. I have been planning it out. And I'm going to be doing some more videos

sharing the curriculum that we're going to be using. I just posted one on our language arts

curriculum for sixth grade. So if you're interested in that, definitely check it out. But in our

state in Missouri, you can actually start tracking homeschool hours starting in July. So even though

we don't start a full course load in July, we do start tracking any kind of educational stuff that we're

doing because it can all count towards the thousand homeschool hours that we have to keep

get. So usually around this time of year, I start also kind of checking in with a program I use

called homeschool hall just to make sure we're on track with all of our hours and seeing where

we're lining up and making sure it's going to be doable to hit those hours and those goals by the

end of the year. And I love homeschool hall. This is what I use for tracking our homeschool hours

So I'm going to see if I can pull it up on my laptop and just show you what it looks like and how easy it is

I know that homeschool planet also has an option for tracking homeschool hours, but I don't

love it as much. There are certain things that I don't necessarily like about it. It's not as

user-friendly and it's not quite as easy. So I love homeschool hall, even though it's an entire

separate program that I have to use. I'm going to continue to use it until homeschool planet

it, you know, maybe it'll change to where I like it better, but for now, I'm going to continue to

use both of them. But very visual. So it'll show me how many core hours we have completed. So this is

a graph of like our core hours. We have 86.70 percent done. And then we've got noncore and then all

of our hours. So all the hours being the thousand hours that we have to complete. So and then it'll

break it down telling me, okay, we've got 861 hours completed and 138 hours remaining. And I can

easily switch between my different kids and it will pull up their graphs and show all of their

stuff too. So I love, you know, this time of year, we've got a couple months left. Just checking in

with this and making sure that we're on track. I try really hard to keep up with entering all of

our homeschool hours and I usually do that at the end of every day. And homeschool hall makes it

really easy with a click of a button. I can enter in those hours. I can type a really quick

description of what we're doing. So for me being in a state that requires that, it gives me a

great peace of mind to know that I have all of my records. And yeah, it's good to know that we're on

track as well. I probably, there's probably a lot of educational things that we do that I don't track

or that I could track. Mainly, I track the stuff that we are doing during the day, like just our

curriculum and things like that if we go on a field trip. So I know that, you know, as far as counting our

hours, you can really count anything educational. So sometimes I'm not always as good as at tracking

all of that stuff. But if we get to the end of the year and, you know, the hours look like they're not going to

up and it's time to start thinking, okay, what, what are we doing that? It's educational, you know

what extra reading, what extra field trips, things like that. But right now we are on track with

everything and it looks like everything is going to be good for us as we wrap up the year

All right, preschool. This month, we are going to finish up our preschool curriculum. We are

the first weekend April and we only have one more week left of my father's world voyage

of discovery. And my preschooler is super excited to be done. with this not to be done. He's excited because he knows he's going to be in kindergarten. He has

loved this preschool curriculum. He loves the activities. I feel like it has gotten him into a really

good routine. We have built some really good habits, some good character traits and just some good

routines as far as helping out around the house because that's kind of built into the curriculum

We've read some neat stories together and he has just really liked it. You know, some people go back and

fourth between whether or not you should use a curriculum for preschool or not use a curriculum

I am the type of person that I love having a curriculum. Yes, it's a little bit more expensive

We have to budget for it, but it gives me a peace of mind to know that I'm covering the things

that I need to cover. I don't have to plan anything out. I don't have to spend time just

searching for things and pulling pieces together. Right now, I just don't have a lot of time to do that

So to have a curriculum, to be able to open it up and it tell me, this is what you're going to do today

These are the materials you're going to need. This is what your kid is going to learn and what they'll need to know by the end of this

It is such a relief to just have that all. So I've loved this curriculum

We focused on a new letter every week. The letter sounds. We focused on shapes We have done numbers And it has definitely gotten easier as we gotten through the year It very kind of repetitive So you see the same types of things every day

And I also will have a video coming out in a couple of days kind of taking you through a lesson

with us so you can see what the lessons are like. But pretty repetitive. Your kids will get used

to the activities. They will know what to expect, which I think at this age is a really good thing

We did end up kind of skipping through some of the activities as we got to the end with them being so repetitive

Some of them got to be kind of boring or my son just didn't need to do them anymore

And when our schedule gets busier, those are some of the things that we dropped. But I absolutely am happy that we use this curriculum

It's been really beneficial for us. And my son is excited to be in kindergarten

I'm not sure that he's going to be able to wait until August to officially start

So we will see about that. I'll talk to you guys about my kindergarten curriculum picks coming up

going a little bit different route than I thought I was going to do originally. So stay tuned and watch out for that

Okay, for math, we are still using CTC math. This has been the first full year of us using this curriculum

I still really like it. I made some changes that last month that I'm really happy with. I kind of started to implement

more checks into the curriculum. So I could have my kids really make sure that they were

reviewing concepts and that they were understanding what they were learning, not just, you know

missing a problem and then moving on. Sometimes it is easy to do that when you're running

short on time. So I had to make sure that I was really focused on staying on top of their work

and checking in with them because with CTC math, the computer is going to great

a lot of things and you know sometimes they will they'll get a grade and maybe it's an 86% or it's a

90% but those things that they miss sometimes it can be hard to go back and touch base and see okay

why are you missing this is it something we need to go over and they have a what's called a weekly

revision set in CTC math and this is their way of kind of spiraling in the learning and so I had

those assigned for my kids every week and they would take their weekly revision which covers

stuff from, it depends on where they are in the course, but it'll cover stuff from the previous

course or just the previous semester. So I would have them do these. They would work through the

problems. They would get a grade. But when you do them online, there's not a great way to

see and go over the problems that they have missed. They do get a report that shows like it'll

break down. Let's say there were 30 problems. There's like 30 boxes and some of them will be blue

The ones that they missed will be red. And you can hover over that. and see what their mistakes were

But that is always kind of laggy for me. And it's also very hard to then go back and review with the kids

because I don't think it tells you what lesson it's from or anything like that

So what I started doing is I started printing out the weekly revision sets

You live and learn, right? So you were trying new things and I feel like constantly learning something

that's going to be helpful to us. And CTC Math has a lot of different options

and different ways that you can review and work this into your curriculum, into your homeschool

So it's just a matter of finding what's going to work best for you. But I started printing off the weekly revisions and having my kids do it on paper every Friday

I will then grade them. And then when they miss something, we can sit down and we can go over it together

And then that, so that has been really good because I can better see what they're missing

and then if they make a mistake, sometimes it's as easy as handing it back to them

and they can figure it out because maybe they rushed or maybe they wrote something down wrong. But if they really aren't understanding a concept

it's a good opportunity to then go back and really retry the lesson

or see what we need to do to fix that. Because I really don't want any huge gaps

especially as they move forward. I used to teach high school math. And so I would see kids that had, you know

just gaps or things that they missed in their learning and how, you know

maybe they struggled with things when they were older. So I don't know

I just really am trying to make sure that my kids are working on things that they need a little

bit more work on. And also that they're retaining their information, which I think going back and doing

these weekly reviews really helps. The other thing that I've been doing is every time my kids have finished a section

I will go in and I will assign kind of like a quiz, but it is their diagnostic tests

So the tests that your kids might take when you're determining where to place them in CTC math

I'll go in and I will assign those as a final test

And with those, it's nice because they can actually save their work as a PDF

before they submit it or before they leave the page. So then I don't have to print it, but I can pull up the whole worksheet and see exactly

what their answers were. And then kind of the same thing we can go over stuff from there

it's immediately from the lesson that they just did so we can catch anything that they might be

struggling with right then instead of later on down the line. So those were things that I wasn't really

doing before. I was, I think, you know, in being so busy and having this online program, it became

easy for me to kind of rely on it a little bit too much. And trust that, okay, you know, they're getting

you know, high B's, you know, low A's on. different assignments. They're doing great and I needed to do a little bit more follow up myself

So this has been good. We're going to keep doing these types of things as we continue with the

course and move into next year. All right, with spelling, you guys know we started back with

all about spelling. I am really, really loving all about spelling. We are in level two. We are

maybe about halfway through level two. I don't know if it's halfway. Maybe not quite halfway yet

but the goal is to finish it this year. My girls are having success with it so far

We're maybe fitting spelling in about two to three times a week. I will say that it is definitely more time consuming for me

because I'm actually having to sit down with them and do their spelling lesson

Whereas before, when they, let's see, when they did BJU Press, they would watch their lesson online and they'd have their list of spelling words

that they'd be kind of working on throughout the week. That was pretty hands off for me. When they did learning language arts through literature

which they're still doing, we're just not using the spelling portion. Again, they would have their lessons that they would do daily

They would be keeping a list of words. They practice those lists during the week

and then have a test at the end of the week. So this is more work on my part

but I think that that was needed. And I probably should have made this change sooner

But we are, like I said, two to three days a week, able to fit it in. What has been working really well is, you know, there is my, both of my girls are

doing it. So usually we are, I'm not doing them at the same time. You know, they're typically on the

same lesson or one, you know, one ahead or one behind. I do them separately. And one of my daughters

will work on a math facts app. I'm trying to work with them on really memorizing their math

multiplication facts and things like that. One of them will work on that. That

while I work with the other one on their spelling lesson And the spelling lessons only take you know 15 to 20 25 minutes It kind of depends on if you doing the whole lesson or if you breaking it up but we spend maybe about 15 to 20 minutes on a spelling lesson So while I

doing the spelling lesson with one of the girls, my other daughter will be on the math

facts app. And it kind of takes them through different levels with their math facts. And they like

to have a little competition to see how far through the facts they can get while the other one

is working on their spelling. And then who can get further? So it's a little friendly competition. That has been working out well. And so far, I'm glad we made the switch and we'll see where it continues to go. With science, you guys know if you watch my video review on Science Shepard, you know that my son has been using Science Shepard and he is loving it. He is learning about like atoms and molecules and compounds. And this is something that we haven't studied yet. And it's really interesting him. He loves the video lessons

video lessons are short, they are clear. He loves being able to get the work done on his own. He likes being able to work independently. There have not been a lot of experiments or projects yet. We haven't really come up to those yet, but he's loving the curriculum so far. So I'm really happy that we try that out. We are still using the sunlight science E and we're doing that maybe three days a week. So three days are lessons. The fourth

day is supposed to be an experiment. And I figured, okay, with a four day a week curriculum

yes, we can get in the experiments. That's typically the first thing to go when we don't have time

which we often feel like we don't. And it has been really hard still for us to fit in the

experiments. I think with the Science Shepherd, that three day a week schedule has been

perfect. And with Sunlight, we've been doing the lessons three days a week. And I think we've

maybe done two of the experiments. They're great experiments are laid out really well. They're easy

to follow the ones that we've done. We've really liked. Some weeks, we just don't have time for them

So if it's something that my kids really, really want to do and it's something that's really going to be

beneficial to what we're learning, then I will make sure to do it. But so far, we just haven't

haven't made the time for them. But with the sunlight science, it is a short reading and then my kids

have some questions to fill out on their worksheet. I am having my son kind of sit in and do that

with us too just to get a little bit of extra science hours in. They are really liking it. It has

been challenging to teach from the book because it's kind of one book with a lot of details and

information on the pages and I only have one of them. So I try to hold it up so they can all see it

and point to the different pictures and things like that. But then it could be challenging when they're trying to do their work

They all have to share it. And I probably could have bought another book

but I figured we're just going to be using this through the end of this year and I didn't want to spend the extra money

So we're making due. We do like it. But since I have other things that I found that I like more that we're going to be using

next year, we will not be continuing with this science curriculum for

next year. But we are going to finish out a few different units that I have planned out

All right, we are finally almost done with our BJU Press Heritage Studies 5. This has been a great

curriculum. We have really loved it. It's taken us two years to get through it. It's typically a

one-year course, but we have spread it out because, again, we only will do anywhere from two

to three days a week with Heritage Studies. And this year we used my father

world exploring countries and cultures, which was an extra, you know, geography component. So we just

kind of fit in this history where we could. And I wanted to continue it because my kids really liked it

and it's been really interesting. So we are on our last chapter and it has been just very

interesting to learn kind of more recent history. So with this curriculum, we started back with

early Native Americans and different culture groups was at the very beginning. And now we got done

talking about like 9-11 and Obama's presidency is what we had just wrapped up, talking about just

different problems in the Middle East and the war on terror. And it has just been been interesting

You know, some of the stuff that we're learning about now, growing up and going through school

myself, there were things that were happening that I didn't necessarily care about or know about

So to study them more deeply with my kids, and especially from a biblical worldview, has been

really cool. And my kids have liked all of it. They're really enjoying the more recent stuff

that we're studying too, because they're just seeing the relevance and seeing the effects of some

of that even now. So this has been really good. I'm excited. A little sad to be finishing that up

but we will finish that up probably within the next week or so

All right, you guys, I think that that pretty much sums up all of our March updates

Like I said, it was a busy month for us, not a ton of changes in our homeschool

just a lot more intention from me, a little bit of relaxing, a little bit of fun

and I just feel encouraged to finish this year strong. I've been really excited looking through curriculum and planning that out for the next year

So, you know, like I said, stay tuned for some of those videos. I have some other fun videos planned for you this month as well

I am still sharing my weekly homeschool prayer videos. So you guys can check those out if you haven't

I am going to be doing a week of workouts video. So I really want to try to share kind of one fitness related video with you guys every few weeks or so

It is something that I love, something I'm passionate about. So I will have that coming out soon

I mentioned the preschool day in the life lesson. I'm planning on doing a flip through of my father's world kindergarten curriculum

I have used that with my oldest son. That was the very first homeschool curriculum we had ever used

So I want to kind of show you guys and teach you what that. is all about. I also want to do a flip through of the new BJU press literature curriculum for

sixth grade that I'm really excited about. I am planning on doing a little tour of our homeschool space

so you can see just how I organize, you know, the different places we homeschool and things like that

And I don't know, just some end of the year reflections. I have some plans for the summer

although we take a break from the main curriculum. There are still some things that

we are going to and that we're going to need to do this summer. So I will share all of that with you

guys this month in April. If you guys have any questions at all or any video that you would

like to see from me, please drop a comment below. I love hearing from you. And hit that thumbs

up button if you enjoyed watching today. If you enjoyed hearing me give you just an overview

of life and our homeschool. And if you want to stick around for a few

future content, definitely subscribe to my channel. Those are just some simple free to you ways that you can help support my channel and the content that I put out at Bless Home School. Thank you guys so much for watching. I will see you next time