 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be a plan with me video. We are going to spend today planning Emily's upcoming home school year, which for all intents and purposes will be her sixth grade year. Now, before we get started, I want to tell you the things that I have at my disposal that I kind of always have when I'm getting ready to plan the year, and then I'm gonna tell you what my steps for planning the year are. Now, first, keep in mind that when I say planning the year, this is a really, really big picture. It's just kind of like, what maybe I have in mind for the year because we follow Emily's interests, things are always likely to change. Okay, what I have, I have a notepad full of some notes, and also for me to take notes. I have my favorite erasable pens. I have my favorite highlighters, which are the mild liners. I have my updated 2023-2024 planner, and I have our grade level skills checklist. This is a free download. I will link it in the description. This is a huge part of my planning. Okay, so when I start planning the home school year, the big picture planning that I do consists of six steps. The first step is to figure out our goals. So a lot of that comes with us sitting down, talking, asking Emily what she's interested in, what does she think she might want to learn, and then I keep a list of that. It also means me referencing our grade level skills checklist. Like I said, she's going to be in sixth grade for all intents and purposes. So what that normally means is me referencing fifth grade, so the year before referencing sixth grade and referencing seventh grade. The reason for that is, number one, I wanna make sure that she's mastered the fifth grade stuff first, and if not, that goes on my list first. Then I look at sixth grade to get an idea of what we need to do that year, but then I also look ahead to seventh, because a lot of times some of the skills will bleed over, in which case I make a note that I need to introduce her to those skills versus her mastering those skills, because those are two very different things. Being introduced to something and just kind of being familiar with it is very different than mastering it. So I want to know what my expectations for Emily are. Do I need her to master this skill by the end of the year? Do I want her to master it? I mean, obviously, my grade level skills checklist are a guide and I use them that way. I try not to overwhelm myself with what I wanna teach her for the year. That is kind of where we start. What does Emily wanna learn and then what skills or concepts do I want her to master? Step number two is choose our one thing for the year. So every year, we choose one main thing to focus on. Over the past, we have chosen things like read aloud, game schooling, field trips, poetry, tea time. Last year we chose critical thinking and logic because it was really important to me that Emily kind of get better at that. And so what that means is we really, really focus on building that one thing into our homeschool day and making it a habit. And what I find is that by the end of the year it has become such a habit that it keeps kind of going on with us. So at this point we're pretty good at incorporating read alouds and game schooling and poetry, tea times and critical or logical thinking because we spent a year really focusing on them. So we sit down together as a family and we discuss what we want that one thing to be. And once we've locked it in then I start making ideas or a list of things that might help us make that a really, really good thing for the year. Step three is inventory the shelves. So I take the list that I made of skills that I want Emily to learn, of things that she might want to learn that she's interested in and whatever our one thing is and I go through our game shelves and our bookshelves and I just see what we have that will go along with all of those things. And that brings us to step four which is make a list. So once I see what we have I make a list of areas we're lacking resources in. So I will get there in a little while because you're actually gonna do all of this with me but let's say for example that I want to teach her about money and we don't have a whole lot of resources on money I would add that to my list of things that I want to purchase to have on hand for the upcoming year. Step five and the one that I absolutely don't like doing is to purge because if I have all of this new stuff coming in for the upcoming home school year I am always sitting at maximum capacity so that means it's time for stuff to go out or else I'm not gonna have any room for the new step. So that normally means that once I've done all the other steps it is time to go through our game shelves, our bookshelves, our resource shelves and see what is no longer serving Emily and our home school and it means it's time to get rid of it. And then step six is to assess our routine. So I kind of sit down with everybody and I say okay what parts of our routine worked well last year? What didn't work well? What do we want to do different this year? And by our routine if we do not stick to anything we just have like a rhythm to our day, a flow to our day. So for example, last year we kind of moved morning basket to later in the day. Used to we would wake up and we would start with it immediately. But I started working out first thing in the morning and then that meant that by the time I came in I still needed to eat breakfast or fix Emily breakfast. And so she had done some independent work and it was just a little bit weird, the timing of it. And so because she was kind of already in work mode it ended up being that by the end of the school year she had done her independent work. We had done our table time together and then we were ending our day with our morning basket or basket time is what we started calling it because it was definitely not in the morning. And so we just kind of sit down and we talk like what worked well, what didn't work well and what kind of flow do we think we want this upcoming school year to have? Obviously it's not set in stone because anything can change. But we kind of have an idea going in of what our days are gonna look like. Okay so now that you know kind of the overview of what we're gonna do let's get started. So step one is start with our goals. Now I have already sat down with Emily and I have a good idea of things that she is interested in for the upcoming school year. That list includes things like weather and actual disasters, birds, early American history because you guys know she's obsessed with Betsy Ross. She wants to learn more about the state of Florida. So there is a big less Minecraft because it's always at the top of her list. There is a big, big list of things she's interested in. So I have a list of all of those and I have also gone ahead and pulled the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade list out of the grade level skills checklist and I'm gonna go ahead and start just with a highlighter highlighting off the things that I might want to focus on. So I read through the fifth grade and highlighting anything that I feel like she's not mastered yet because I obviously wanna start there since we're going forward into sixth and kind of looking at it right now. I'm not seeing a ton of things that she needs to work on from fifth grade. Let's see here. Actually, I think we might be good from fifth grade, you guys, this doesn't normally happen. Oh, nevermind, just kidding. Plot point coordinates on a grid. That is one we're gonna work on but I already have a plan for that so I'm gonna mark that out to the side because I figure we are going to play a lot of battleship to practice that. So I'm gonna write that out so I can start already knew that in the back of my mind. Okay, so now I'm gonna compare sixth and seventh grade so that I can make a note of whether it needs to be mastered or just introduced because there's going to be some things that basically are going to repeat. For example, read a wide range of age-appropriate fiction and nonfiction is on both sixth and seventh as well as evaluating works of literature through discussion, debate, and written critique. Read a wide variety of poetic forms and classics. A lot of those kinds of things are gonna repeat and go on and on. So when that is the case, I just make a little star next to them so that I know that it's something that she doesn't necessarily have to master because it's something we're gonna continue to practice on over and over and over. So I'm gonna make myself a little star next to those. And I'm gonna continue to highlight the things that I think we need to work on, obviously. Okay, now that we are done with that part of it, we've kind of made our goals and set those. The next step is to choose our one thing, which we have already sat down as a family and chosen our one thing for the upcoming home school year. And it is nature study. We really want to focus on spending more times, more time outdoors, which hopefully will help us hit that thousand hours outside, as well as kind of using Kevin's artistic abilities to help Emily and I learn how to nature journal better. So we're gonna be working on sketching and watercolor and nature and just all of the things. And I'm really, really excited about that. I think we all are, because it kind of incorporates a little bit of everything that somebody that each of us loves. So Emily loves the animal nature side of it. I love being outdoors and active and Kevin really loves the art side of it. So I think it's something for all of us. And so that's gonna be really, really fun this year. Okay, so now that I have an idea of what skills and concepts and interests that in our one thing that we are going to be focusing on for the home school year, it is time to inventory the shelves. So normally I go look at our steam shelves, which is what Emily and Kevin do together one day a week, at least sometimes two, just to see if they need anything or if they want anything new. I inventory our game shelves, inventory our bookshelves and I just kind of look to see what do we have that will work with these, you know, interests and these skills and these concepts that we need to be learning and mastering and what areas am I lacking in? So now that I have inventoryed the shelves, I have also made a list of some of the things that I feel like we're lacking. And then I wanna look for resources on. And then really the only thing is left to do are to purge and then to sit down and assess our routine. So obviously, hopefully I will purge soon. That's my least favorite thing and I literally procrastinate as long as possible. Normally all of the stuff is in and sitting in the floor with no place to go before I finally sit down and do it. Hopefully I will get it done soon though. That's the one thing you guys will not be able to see. Now it is time to assess our routine and so we have already kind of talked about it. What we were doing towards the end of last school year was working and I think we're gonna continue to do most of that. And so that looked a lot like Kevin and I getting up and getting out to the porch to our gym to work out, me strewing something for Emily. Normally it was something logic or critical thinking based because that was so important to me. So a game, a mind bender book, something like that. She loves the puzzle and the challenge of it. So I will continue to show things like that for her. And then she had a few things of independent work. So for example, teaching textbooks. Sometimes it was reading because she had book club. So she'll have a little bit of independent work while we are finishing up working out, eating breakfast, taking our showers, basically getting ready for the day. And then after that, once we are kind of ready for the day, we are going to do basket time together first because we agreed that that was more important if that was all we got done. So we'll do our basket time together first. And then once we've gotten basket time done, we will do table time. But whatever table time I have for us to do together, her independent stuff will already have been done. Used to we did all of that at one time. But basically she'll do that in the morning while we're finishing working out and getting ready. And then four days a week she will work with me and one day a week she will not work with me and she will work with Kevin and that's when they do steam together. So he does some different types of math with her, like more critical thinking math and logical thinking math and like word problem stuff. And then they always do some sort of subscription box or some sort of like experiment things that are really, really fun for the two of them to do together. And then that's the other thing that I didn't talk about is I do also kind of assess as far as when I am inventorying the shelves, what subscriptions they're enjoying, what subscriptions that like are sitting on the shelves not getting done. So that's a mental note I make to myself but that is actually something that I do every semester so that I know because we do monthly on most of the subscriptions, which ones to continue and which ones to stop. So if you're curious about more of like the nitty gritty, like what are we doing each semester? What are we doing for language arts? What are we doing for math? What subscriptions are we still enjoying? I try to do a planned video for fall, the winter, the spring and the summer so you can see like what unit study we're doing, whatever her interest is at the time and really get to end up look at that. The few things I can tell you for sure are that we will be continuing teaching textbooks for math. She will be continuing to do book clubs with Miss Mary on out school because she absolutely loves them. She is actually going to stay in the eight to 10 year old class as well as the 11 to 13 year old class just because she really, really loved the book list of both of those. So she'll actually be doing two book clubs a month again this year, even though I didn't think she would choose to do so, she did. She will continue taking her liberal classes because that's something she absolutely loves and we've taken the summer off because we had so many vacations and she is missing it like crazy. She loves Miss Bethany and we will continue to do things like mail time and journal time, that's something she'll do with me on those afternoons that she works with me and that is really it as far as like the resources that are tried and true that I know we're gonna use. Like I said, there will be subscription boxes that continue, there will be unit studies that we do but those are the things. Oh, and Knight as you keep her as well because she loves doing that. So those are like the things that are not going anywhere that we've loved for years that are staples that we are definitely continuing into sixth grade. Other than that, if you wanna know more of the nitty gritty you will have to make sure you're subscribed and come back in a few weeks when I will tell you what our plans are for the fall. I would love it if you would tell me if you big picture plan for your homeschool and if so, what are your steps look like?