 Hey everybody, welcome to the Lotak Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be our end of the year review. Woohoo! You guys, we completed a school year. Goodbye third grade. Hello fourth grade. So in case you have forgotten, I just want to stick it right up here before we even get started. If you want to go see what we had said we were going to do at the beginning of this school year. There is also a mid-year update because I like to check in with you guys in the middle of the year. So I will link that up here too. But I just want to say before you go watch those before I go any further. This was a crazy year. This was probably the home school year that had the most changes for us not just in curriculum or what we used or how we did things but just in our life in general. So on top of the pandemic this also happened to be the first school year that Kevin was home with us full-time. So that was a big adjustment for our family and our home and in our home school. Not in a bad way just different. It was just different. It was something we've never had before. So blessed, thankful, we loved having him. But it was definitely a big change for us. And then obviously all of the stuff that the pandemic brought was very effective. Our home school was very affected by it because there was a lot of field trips we couldn't take. There was a lot of co-ops and meetings and group things that we couldn't do and just all of the things. What we had intended for this year to be was most definitely not how it ended up. I'll just go ahead and put it that way. So I know that I originally said we were going to do Evan Moore's Daily Fundamentals and then Language and Math Fundamentals and we did for the first portion of the year and it worked fine. Then somewhere around the middle of the year, maybe even the last third of the year, we had had a little bit too much together time. If I'm being completely honest, we had just needed a break. Me and Emily were batting heads. It was just too much. We had had too much together time. So luckily, there are some fantastic programs that offer online classes and so that's what we did. She did Night Zookeeper for Language Arts and teaching textbooks for math. Both of them were phenomenal. They were exactly what we needed for that time period. Whether we continue to use them or not, I don't know yet, but I know that in that period of our life and that season of our life and that season of our home school, it was exactly what we needed. Emily actually enjoyed doing math, which is something that she almost never enjoys doing. Night Zookeeper helped her writing soar. It helped her kind of get over this plateau that she had hit as far as creative writing went. So all things aside, even though it was not at all what I planned, it turned out really well. They were the perfect programs for us. It was the perfect change for us. It saved our relationship as well as our home school year. So that was one of the biggest changes that we made. Another change that we ended up making was I had said that we were going to do Traveling the World and we did do some of Traveling the World. I wish we had done more. I love that program. We will probably continue that in the fall. We'll see. I'm not sure yet. But what we ended up doing instead was digging deeper because I expanded holiday fun around the world. And I will say that was probably the best decision that I made as a home school mom. Not as a business person, me expanding. I had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with business. It was 100% for our personal home school. And that was because if there was ever a time, a home school year, whatever you want to call it that needed more celebration, it was this home school year. And holiday fun around the world did that for us. It gave us the ability to learn about other cultures, other religions, other people, how they celebrate what they observe. And we got to celebrate. We got to observe it. We were able to do as much as we could eat the food, do some of the traditions. No, I know we couldn't do everything. It's an entirety because obviously you can join with other people. But we tried to do as much as we could to show Emily what it would be like to celebrate that holiday. And it was, like I said, it was the perfect thing for this school year. I'm so glad that we did it. It was eye-opening and educational for me to learn more about those holidays and the festivals and the religious, just all of it. It was just, it was phenomenal. So I will say that while that's not at all what I intended when the school year started, I'm again very glad that that's where we ended up because it was really great. It was fun for us to cook the meals together, for us to throw color on each other, for us to hit the pinata together. I mean just all of the things that we were able to do with holiday fun around the world was a huge blessing. So I'm really glad that we did that. Now our one thing this year was art. You guys, that was the one thing we were going to do. And I thought when Kevin came home that it would be a no-brainer. He is literally an artist. I have to say we failed. We totally failed. Even though we were here all the time, art still didn't get done as nearly as much as I would have liked to have seen it get done. I mean we still love chalk pastels. So that gets, you know, weaved into our days all the time. And Emily did some phenomenal artwork within the holiday fun around the world because it has those coloring pages that Kevin makes. And so she went from coloring them with coloring pencil to using alcohol-free markers to using chalk pastels. I mean she played around with mediums, water paint, or watercolor, just all kinds of stuff. So that was really fun to see her do that. So we did, we did do some art. We didn't do nearly as much as I would have liked seeing as how it was our one thing for this year. So if I have to give that a pass or a fail, I would say we failed at that. But that's okay because we can always, you know, do some more over the summer or try again at another point in time. The biggest disappointment this year was probably the experiences which that is no surprise to anybody. But our homeschool is largely based on experiences and field trips and trips. I mean just like literally homeschooling at Disney was something that we did all the time. I mean we were going every other week if not monthly or every other week. Like we were always there. That, that hurt, that hurt a lot. It really stunk. We didn't have that escape as a family. We didn't have those experiences for our homeschool. I mean we were able to do a pretty large national park trip where we went to Congaree, the Smoky Mountains, and Shenandoah. I think if the three of us had to pick something that was like our favorite from the whole school year it would be that. It would be our national park trip. It was, it was fantastic. We weren't able to do everything because of some of the restrictions and there was still some you know things that we couldn't go see or some of the gift shops that were closed. But overall experiences are such a big part of our family culture, of part of our homeschool that that was definitely a highlight. I wish we could have done more but it is what it is. So that was probably I would say the most disappointing part of the year. But all in all I have looked at our third grade goals which you guys know I set every year. In fact I set them with you this year and you can watch that video right here. We have two math goals that are moving over and only one language arts goal that is moving over for the year. So I'm going to call that a very successful year. We have hit almost all of our math and language arts goals with the exception of three total. We have you know had a ton of holiday fun together. We celebrated, we learned, we had a blast. We traveled to three national parks and we managed not to kill each other which considering we were stuck home all the time all three of us homeschooling, living, doing life all during a pandemic I'm going to count that as a success. I really am. I mean I think this was probably our hardest homeschool year yet. I'm thankful that we are homeschoolers considering everything that happened and I am super thankful for homeschooling but this definitely was not a year that went anything as planned. So there it is. That is our year in review, a recap of everything. Again you can check out our beginning of the year announcement of what we were going to do, our mid-year update and then now here is our end of the year update. And I just kind of want to tell you guys the reason I started doing that is because I remember being the new homeschool mom and like watching all these curriculum choices videos or reading the blog post about you know like this is what we picked and then there was there was just never any follow-up or at least I never found any follow-up and I was like well did you like it? Did you not like it? Did it work? Did it not work? Did you complete everything? And because it just kind of left me having questions or it left me feeling like a failure because they had like all of the stuff and did they do it or did they not do it and if they did it then I was totally a failure. But I am here to tell you we literally did not finish. I take that back. No we did not. We did not finish anything this year. We didn't finish holiday fun around the world because we were not able to do all of the holidays around the holidays and like the November to December timeframe. We didn't finish her teaching textbooks, her Evan Moore. I don't think technically think there's a start and stop for Night Zookeeper but I mean we didn't do a full year of it and there is absolutely nothing that we started this year that we finished in its entirety. We still hit the majority of our goals but we did not finish not one thing and if I change my mind or I'm wrong about that I'll leave a note in the description box but I am like 98% sure that we did not actually finish with the exception of books reading being read like you know reading. We did not finish one piece of curriculum or you know that kind of resource this school year. So there you have it. If you finished anything you are more successful than us.