 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be our 2023-2024 homeschool choices. This is for MLA's sixth grade year or somewhere thereabouts. That's what we're going to call it. And before I start with our curriculum choices, in case you are new here, I wanted to let you know that we are very, very eclectic. We lean towards unit studies if you're going to put a name to it. And we do not necessarily do curriculum in its entirety. We dabble in things. We use what works for us. We leave what doesn't. So just kind of keep that in mind as I'm showing you everything. We're very, very interest-based and so we try to follow MLA's interest as much as possible. And with all of that said, I actually do have a plan. So I am going to try to tell you for the most part of what we are going to be doing for sixth grade. But please keep in mind that this is just a very, very loose plan. Things change. Her interests are going to change. Whatever I plan is going to change. So make sure you're subscribed and click that bell notification because I do come back every semester, fall, winter, spring and summer and update you on what are kind of more dialed and specific plans for that time period. Okay. So we are just going to jump in because I'm like surrounded by stuff right now with language arts. The biggest portion of her language arts is going to come from an out-school literature-based book club. It's actually taught by a really good friend of mine, Mary Hannah Wilson. We absolutely love her. Emily has taken book clubs with her for, I believe, three years now. This should be her fourth. And she's actually taking two separate different book clubs with her. She's going to be taking the eight to 10 year old fiction book club, which meets once a month as well as the 11 to 13 year old fiction book club, which meets once a month. What I love about these book clubs is that Mary not only just lets the kids discuss them. She also really heavily relies on like a specific theme each month. So it could be setting, it could be plot, it could be the hero's journey, it could be there's just all these different like literary analysis things that she weaves in to these book clubs that she does. So it really takes like book club reading, literary literature, all of those things off my plate. And Emily loves it. Now, Emily is 11. So she is this probably will be the last year. She's going to be able to do the eight to 10 year old book club. But she really, really loved the books that Mary picked. And so she is going to go ahead and do both. So the books that they're doing this year, and I don't have them sorted by which one, but I will link it down in the description and you can see which book titles go with which class. But the ones that they're going to be doing are framed, the mouse and the motorcycle, the girl who stole an elephant, grounded, a knight divided, sweep the story of a monster girl, the very, very far north, the insignificant events in the life of a cactus, the boy who harnessed the wind, the birch back house, sorry, the birch bark house. Mr. Limoncello is very first game. This is literally the book that sold Emily on the eight to 10 year old class because she was so excited to read that one. Pie, a rover story, manatee summer, El Defoe, and the silver arrow. Now in addition to that, let's see here, we will also be using, it's called editor in chief. It's from the critical thinking company. I bought it digitally because Emily likes things to only be on one side of the page. Anyway, basically what it is is there's some sort of context, writing picture, and you have to try to find the errors in it here. She actually just did this one today because she was excited when I printed it out. She has been wanting to try her hand at editing. I actually have, you know, print our stuff out and have a friend who helps me edit our curriculum, and she's been looking at it and she looks at, you know, the little red marks and she's like, I would love to do that. And so I thought this would be a fun way to practice some grammar and spelling and punctuation and to kind of channel that her wanting to be able to edit. And so we will be utilizing some of it. Again, I'm not going to be like, do lesson one, two, three, four. I'm just going to let her go with it. If she decides to only do like one or two of the writings per lesson, that's going to be fine with me. It's because this is what she's interested in right now. So I'm running with it. In addition to that, she absolutely loves Mad Libs. So we will be incorporating Mad Libs for grammar. And then we will be doing Night Zookeeper. That's some of the writing that we do when we are on the go. So that's like writing and spelling and punctuation and all the things. And I love that we can do it and not have to take anything with us. So we will be using that. And we will also be doing like fun creative writing type of things. We'll continue to journaling and mail time and poetry tea time. And then some of the things that I picked up are this writing magic, as well as she's been working through this poetry notebook. That's an interactive notebook. So those are just kind of two ideas. For vocabulary, we are going to be using this word of a day that has 366 just different words like nothing crazy, just something simple for us to kind of either start or end the day with. I'm not sure where it's fitting in yet, but we will make it work. And then I also have on hand the everything you need to know for middle school English and language arts, as well as the how to survive middle school English. So those two will be reference books that we will be utilizing throughout the year as well. Okay, for math, that is probably the one thing that we stick to a curriculum as close to like using it in its entirety as it comes in our homeschool. And what we have used for that for the last few years is teaching textbooks. Again, if Emily knows it, I don't make her do it. If she needs more review, we bring in other things. It is not the only thing we do for math, not because I don't think it's enough because I do think it's enough. But I really like to make sure that she like is doing some real world math and having fun with it. So in addition to teaching textbooks, which is going to be the main thing we're using for math, we will also be using prodigy. She's really, really loving that on her tablet right now. She's just having fun, you know, fighting the monsters and I'm loving that she's sneaking in a little bit of extra math. So that's a win. We will also be continuing. This is part of the mill science line, but it's actually their mill math. So this is one of the mathematical bridges. We also just got an math art in math or math and art one. So we're going to continue getting these as a subscription because it's a really fun way to see art from a different perspective, especially since art isn't, since math isn't her favorite. It's a great way to see math from a different perspective. In addition to that, we have generation genius, which now has some math videos and addition to science videos. And she enjoys watching them again, a different perspective. And then some of the other resources I have for reference are how many guinea pigs can fit in a plane. This is your answers to the most clever math questions. And then the big book of math for middle school, as well as the how to survive middle school math. And for science, for the majority of what we will be doing, it will be interest based unit studies. For example, the ones that I create for her. So last year we did an ocean unit study and a mini beast unit study. This year I can go ahead and tell you that this is like your big announcement because I haven't even announced it yet. The thing we will be kicking off our school year with will be a weather and natural disaster science unit. I am in the process of creating that for her right now. And so that's what the majority of our science will be will be unit based, whatever her interest is. So I know for a fact that she's interested in weather, natural disasters. She's mentioned birds, some other things, but that will be what the majority of that will be. She'll also be taking in person homeschool classes at our local ish zoo. So that'll be a bunch of animal based science. In addition to that, we have subscription boxes like generation genius for science, as well as my zoo box, which is some more animal science. And then we also have some more male science, which this would be chemistry. In addition to that, she will be using generation geniuses videos on their website for science. She likes to do those in their car, just watch them enjoy them, learn new things and crash course science videos. She's been obsessed with the zoology playlist from them. And so I know she'll be watching that. And then for science, I also have the big book for science for middle school as a reference and the how to survive middle school science as a reference to for geography and history. We will be focusing on traveling the states as well as traveling the parks. The plan is for us to travel to a few different national parks throughout this school year. We're not sure which ones are how many yet, but what we will do is right before a trip is coming up, we will do whatever state national park it is in traveling the parks and then whatever states we will be traveling to that we haven't already traveled to in traveling the states. So again, we will not do them in their entirety. We will just pick and choose ones we haven't already done and we will go through those. In addition to those, I picked up these, they were less than five dollars. So I picked up these like really small math books or map books. Yes, I know one is grade four and one is grade five, but they were just simple. And I thought they would be great additions to car schooling, just to kind of throw in there when we were traveling, since they were so small. And both of them mostly focus on the United States. So those are mostly for car schooling for geography. And then for history, we will be using who was and what was unit studies, depending on her interest at the time. For example, one of our road trips hopefully is going to include a visit to the Alamo. So that would mean that we would be doing the who was Davey Crockett and what was the Alamo, which those will be coming to the shop soon. So stay tuned. Or, you know, if we're doing weather, for example, there will be some who was or what was that maybe would tie in with those. So that will be for the most part our history. But I did also pick up because I thought this would be fun on this day in history. And so for each date in history, here's an example, there's just like three or four different things that happened throughout the years on that date. And I thought when we were doing our word of the day, this would be a fun thing to just kind of talk about the different things. And then I also grabbed a new history timeline notebook. And I thought we would use it to kind of maybe make note of our who was and our what was units that we're doing, as well as something interesting that she found in here. If she's like, Oh, that was a really cool one. She could add that to the timeline. And so for subscriptions for geography and history, we have one of our favorites, which is Universal Yums. This is our family favorite. We look forward to this every month. And then also we will be continuing with history unboxed because we've really enjoyed these. We're still currently working our way through ancients. I don't think ancients is going to last us the whole school year. Once we get through with them, we'll switch over to probably the American history, but we'll see, I'll let Emily pick whatever she's the most interested in. And then I also have the big book of American history, as well as the big book of world history, and the how to survive American or sorry, US history for middle schoolers and the how to survive middle school world history. And again, these are all just kind of for reference if she wants more information. Okay, now let's talk electives. So for some of the electives that I kind of have planned again, some things are going to happen without me having planned them, our nature study, because that is our one thing, which I will actually be back here in a few weeks to show all of the nature study resources I'm planning to use to like really make this happen for us this year. The one like curriculum type thing that I'm going to be utilizing will be no sweat nature study classes. We will not use them like all the time, but if it is too hot or too rainy or the weather is just not happening for us, those will be a great supplement when we can't get outdoors. So that is nature. Also something that happens a lot that we really make a point to do is steam. So Emily takes an Lego class every month. It's three weeks out of the month. She absolutely loves it. She's taken that for years. This will definitely be her fourth maybe even her fifth year taking it. And then also her and Kevin do a steam lesson or class or day even once a week. So once a week, basically Kevin plans the day. He will sometimes tell me purchase this. I want to do this and I'll like help him with resources or supplies or provide him with subscription boxes. But for the most part, he kind of plans their day. And so that might sometimes look like math word problems or building a Lego together or also using the subscription boxes that they really love, which are Crunch Labs and the Huey Eureka crate. This one just came in today and they're both super excited to get their hands on it. So those are kind of the things that they do during their steam days. We also have squilt for music. Emily likes taking those classes with Miss Mary. And then for art, what we like to do for art is tie it into whatever unit study we're doing or whatever we're learning about. And so some of our favorite resources for doing that are chalk pastel, art hub for kids, masterpiece society, deep space sparkle and yellow spot sun. For Spanish this year, she's going to be doing Duolingo. That is something she decided on her own. She just was wanting to learn a little bit of Spanish. And I said, Hey, there's an app for that. And so there we are. If she decides she wants a little bit more than what the app provides, then I will probably look into some outschool classes because Spanish is not my thing. And if she sticks with it, I have Rosetta Stone on my site. If you have something better for Spanish, let me know in the comments. I would love to hear everything you've got for that. For logic, which is something we are going to be continuing on with. That was our one thing last year. I picked up just a few things. Now I already have a ton of logic games. And I will even be showing you a few more logic games that we're adding this year in my back to school haul. So stay tuned for that. But a few things that I picked up to kind of like really make sure that we're getting it to use for logic are the next level of mind vendors. This hands down has been a favorite for logic for years, but this year she really took off with it. So I grabbed level five. I also picked up this another logic book. Now we haven't used the other ones because she would have been too young. This one specifically was for ages eight to 12. There's a lot of different varying activities in here. So I'm excited for that for her. Then I also picked up the two truths and a lie series. There's three different books in it just to kind of like train her to know that not everything you read is true and you used to kind of research on your own to figure out what's true and what's not. So that is like the next level in logic for us. And then she loves like mystery and spy things. So I also picked up these little mystery books for her. They are 15 short stories for young sleuths, and then this one is the 15 young stories, but it's history based. And then for life skills, which is something we're going to work on, I grabbed the life skills for tweens as well as the workbook that goes along with it. It says that it is how to cook make friends, be confident, healthy, all the things, everything a preteen should know. And then for PE, we will continue to go on daily walks together as a family for at least the remainder of 2023. We will still be doing monthly 5ks together. I have not what not me because it's not just my decision, but we have not discussed whether we'll be continuing that in 2024 or not. That was our 2023 goal. So we'll see if we're going to keep doing that. She also has the option of doing Ring Fit on her Nintendo switch, which she really likes, especially when it's hot outside. She loves my rebounder and there's a fun, there's a lot of fun YouTube videos that go along with that that help with like math facts. So I love that we can get some math and PE in at the same time. So those are a few of the things she'll be doing for PE. And then also she will be doing archery with our local 4-H chapter. She is finally at the age where she can like compete and she's been doing archery in our family for years, like since she was old enough to hold a bow. My dad makes recurves and so he's been making her a bow since like literally she could hold one. Her first one was made out of a broomstick, I think. Anyway, so she is finally at the age of competing. They're both very excited about it. My dad's already made her a bow. She is so ready to compete. So that is something I'm sure we'll be doing a lot of. And then of course, we will be reading a super engaging books about any and every topic. We'll be watching educational shows and documentaries about, you know, whatever she wants to learn about. We'll be playing games for every single subject and then some and hopefully as many experiences as possible because those are our favorite way to learn outside of books and games. Now I really, really just want to reiterate that I just showed you a lot of stuff. Again, this is the plan. This is if everything went perfect. This is kind of how it's going to go. But does it mean that we're going to read all of these books in their entirety or we're going to do all of the stuff in its entirety? Absolutely not. Like some of it is just for reference. So I have it on hand as a resource if she has questions. I really prefer for us to go look in a book versus having to Google it. Not that there's anything wrong with Googling it, but I just try to be as screen free as possible because so many things are screen dependent. So there's that. And then I like to create a lot of things based off of her interest at the time. So again, we'll be doing who was and what was and whatever science she's interested in, but we will make it work. And even our own curriculum that I write and create, we don't sit down and do in its entirety at the time. We take whatever works for us and we leave what doesn't. Again, if you want to see a more real time homeschool plan, make sure you stay tuned for the fall, winter, spring and summer plan updates. And make sure you're following me on social media because I try to share as much in action real time as possible. Now I would absolutely love it if you would tell me down in the comments, what are your homeschool plans for the upcoming homeschool year?