 How do you feel about the good and the beautiful's homeschool curriculum? I feel like I see a lot of homeschooling channels use just that one but I came across your channel and noticed you use a lot of different lessons and curriculum. Oh my gosh you guys. Hi you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys today we are going to be doing my 10k Q&A and giveaway. I am really really excited about this video you guys. I'm nervous because you guys asked me some really really good questions. So yeah we're going to go ahead and get on into this thing you guys. My giveaway entry is going to be really really simple and sweet. All you have to do to enter into the giveaway for this Q&A is pop this emoji inside of the comment section below and tell me what your word of the year is going to be for your upcoming homeschool year. For this Q&A and giveaway I will be giving a hundred dollar Amazon gift card to one winner here on my channel and I really hope that this will help one of you guys really support your homeschool and get like those last minute little tidbit things that you are going to need for your homeschooling year. So I'm really really excited about this giveaway and I'm excited to give back to you guys. Thank you so much you guys for all of your support and for helping me build this community here on this platform. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel I am Brittany. I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 10, 5 and 3 and I am finishing up my third year of homeschool. We started homeschooling due to the global pandemic so my oldest daughter she actually has some public school experience. She was public schooled from K and then half of second before we officially began our homeschooling journey. So you guys we are in this thing and I have been really enjoying just this journey that I have been having with my kiddos. We definitely have had some ups and downs but I really can say I have learned more about myself in this homeschooling journey than anything. So you guys yeah I really hope this video is not too long. I'm kind of nervous. I will be open and vulnerable like I always am in my videos but I have my questions and what I did for my sake is I kind of like staggered them so I have an easy question and then a harder question to follow it. So I'm excited but I am a little bit nervous because some of you guys' questions I mean you guys you got me. So let's just go ahead and get on into this thing and I really hope it's not too long like I said but if it is oh well you guys just stick around with me in today's video. So first things first it says what do you consider your homeschooling style to be? Charlotte Mason unit studies classical etc. You guys as much as I do want to be like that homeschooling Charlotte Mason you know free-flowing type of homeschooler I really can say I'm definitely not that homeschooler. I definitely lean more towards the traditional side when it comes to homeschooling. My kiddos they kind of like to get it in get it done and be done and they really like to focus on their specific passions and passion projects. My oldest daughter she definitely loves just kind of getting her work done and then going off to do her creative writing. She likes playing a piano. She loves art and she just likes to get in and get out. So I definitely would say we do lean more towards like traditional style of homeschooling. However we do do a lot of unit studies especially when it comes to science and we are a literature heavy homeschool like I love reading. I love using audible books. It definitely saves my voice you guys. I love reading the picture books to my younger kiddos. So I definitely will say if I had to classify myself it definitely would be eclectic but overall I do lean more towards traditional and literature based learning in my homeschool. So the next question you guys and this question has been asked several times on my channel and I never addressed it. I always kind of like ignore this comment so I'm kind of like putting myself on blast right now but I am going to answer this question just because I always receive this in my comment section and it is how do you feel about the Good and the Beautiful's homeschool curriculum? I feel like I see a lot of homeschooling channels used just that one but I came across your channel and noticed you used a lot of different lessons and curriculum. Oh my gosh you guys. I'm going to be really honest. I don't necessarily understand and know why it is so much controversy when it comes to like the homeschool community when it comes to the Good and the Beautiful but I will be honest and open. I can definitely make a separate video about all the reasons why I don't use the Good and the Beautiful in my homeschool and my personal experience using it. If you guys want to see it I'll make it. I'm so nervous to make that one but if you want it just let me know put it in the comment section below. But I definitely will say when it comes to the Good and the Beautiful you definitely will continue to hear three main things. You will hear that it's beautiful, it's open and go and it's affordable and I feel like that's a lot of reasons why a lot of people typically go towards the Good and the Beautiful especially as you know new homeschooling families. I will say this um the number one reason why I am no longer using the Good and Beautiful curriculum is because we use the Good and Beautiful curriculum in our first year of homeschooling. We did the language arts in the third grade and I did a standardized test for my daughter and she did horrible when it came to her standardized test in like that grammar, mechanics, vocabulary. She did awful in that specific skills after our first year of homeschool. When it came to like other things like her reading comprehension, her math skills, you guys they were like really really high and I really had to assess reassess my homeschool and reassess my curriculum choices. I did start off in fourth grade with the Good and the Beautiful for about two weeks and then we switched over to for the language portions. We switched over to Rotten Staff and Fixit Grammar and after I did standardized testing for Brielle, after completing the fourth grade her test scores like skyrocketed when it came to like her grammar, mechanics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, it was just really really great. So I definitely will say my number one main reason is that Brielle's retention when we did use the Good and the Beautiful for our language arts, it wasn't as high as I wanted it to. Now my favorite piece of curriculum from the Good and the Beautiful definitely has to be the science. When I first did their science curriculums, it definitely was too much for me because when I started off my homeschooling journey, I had what I had a one and a three year old when I first started. No, no, actually they were younger. That was my second year. My Alana was only six months old and Leia was two years old when I started my first year of homeschool. So the science unit studies there were a little bit two hands on for me in those beginning years. And I think now that my kiddos are older, I definitely can see myself using a unit study from them and beefing it up by using like my DK books because I feel like the science was my favorite out of everything that I did for them. But overall my my simple question my simple answer to that question is that my kiddos or at least Brielle, who I actually tried it with, she didn't retain anything when it came to us actually using that curriculum in our homeschool. Is the Good and the Beautiful a bad curriculum? Absolutely not. What works for a kiddo may not work for another one. But overall I definitely will say I do not feel like it is the most rigorous and the most I guess most rigorous and I don't feel like it's the most academically sound curriculum. That's just my opinion. You guys don't kill me. Okay on to the next question and this is um this is another hard question you guys you got me on this one but it says my question was about something you mentioned in one of your recent videos. I thought you said something along the lines that you might not continue to homeschool your oldest daughter through high school. With respect to your privacy first and foremost why is that or in other words what are your determining factors for whether you would homeschool your child or your children the whole way through school or send them back to public school at some point. Thank you. You guys um that was like a deep question but um I definitely want to clarify this in today's video in this Q&A is that um I think honestly my decision to potentially put Brielle in public school for high school would really just be because of my lack of confidence to homeschool through high school to really be honest. My niece is actually doing a program that is offered in the state of Georgia which is a free online public platform that you can do public school through. She has the option to do like AP classes dual enrollment. She's only actually doing like her virtual part sitting down like with a teacher three days out the week and the rest of the days is really self-paced and student led and um my sister is really enjoying that program with my niece right now and honestly just for the ease of high school that would really be the only reason why I would go to a program like that. So uh Brielle wouldn't actually be going into a physical school. We will actually be utilizing um our free online Georgia public school uh platform for us. So she still will be home. We still will have the opportunity to do like extracurriculars and other things. She still will have the opportunity to work on passion projects. It's just I wouldn't have to worry if I'm hitting all of the marks when it comes to high school and I really can just supplement her education. She still will have the option to do dual enrollment and she will get a high school diploma at the end of the day. Um so that is really like my only um reasons to do it is just for my comfort and knowing that she's getting everything that she can get when it comes to high school. You guys I may change my mind and I may just go ahead and uh continue out my homeschooling journey with her through high school but I think a lot of it has to do with just my confidence and I'm just I'm scared you guys just to really be honest uh that's my short and sweet answer. Um but other than that um I definitely don't see any other reasons why I wouldn't just go ahead and start all of my kiddos off from K all the way to the end of our homeschooling journeys. Okay the next question I have is I know you have recommended I know you have recommended books for us mamas in the past but what books do you recommend for homeschooling mamas to kind of get out of that funk we get and sometimes at the end of the homeschooling year and then another question I got is um kind of that correlates with it is what are your go-tos when it comes to self-care. So you guys I have a stack right here of all of my books that I really really enjoyed um reading like my homeschooling books and all of these books you guys they have been recommended to me from Tori from the Oglesby Ohana. Now Tori she is no longer here on this platform YouTube but you definitely can follow her along her journey on Instagram or the womanhood uh because I know that's like her two main communities but I definitely will say her book recommendations have always been gold and I always have uh gone to her book recommendation so uh these are not any things that I have come up with myself but these are just recommendations that I got from her. The number one book that I read when I first started off my homeschooling journey that really gave me the confidence to continue because after my first year of homeschool you guys I was really hesitant to continue the journey I was feeling doubtful um and I just didn't know if I could do it and the book that I read over the summer was the call the call of the wild and free. I definitely would recommend this book for new homeschooling families um this definitely goes over all of the method methodologies when it comes to like homeschooling um it really just lays everything out there on the table um it does give you encouragement motivation it talks about all the different homeschooling styles and this definitely was a breath of fresh air. I can definitely see myself rereading this book over and over again because uh while I read a lot of the information and I really just took it in for the age groups that I am now that I am in now as my oldest daughter she is getting into middle school and soon high school um I definitely can reread this book and take in some more nuggets from it so this definitely was one of my favorite ones that I always recommend for new homeschooling families which is the call to the wild and free for like homeschooling mom like self-care self-doubt like when you're kind of like in that funk and you really just need to feed into your mama soul this book has definitely been a great one I have read this book twice already I did a reread in January which is um rhythms of renewal trading in stress and anxiety for a life of peace and purpose and this book actually has like journaling at the end of each chapter and this is really going to feed your mama soul um and I really really enjoyed this one this was a great recommendation from Tori I read it to um I read it the first time and the second time I listened to it on audible and um this was such a great great kickoff for the start of this new year for me personally so rhythms of renewal uh my other homeschooling mom books that I definitely love and enjoy the brave learner if you want to get outside the box and teaching your kids this definitely is a great one another one for homeschooling mom encouragement and this definitely is more of like a biblical one is a homeschool bravely when I first read this book I wasn't really feeling it but when I was in my season of doubt this definitely was a great book for me to read and you guys honorable mention love this book this book definitely challenged my thinking in just in general a place to belong by amber O'Neill johnson you guys like I love all of her stuff that she has on her blog her book she poured her heart into it and I love this one got you guys this really really has challenged my thinking and the way that I want to go about just uh everything you guys this is a great one you see I don't even have the words to say about this one but uh great read these are all of my homeschooling favorites and I will go ahead and put the list of these books down below if you guys want to check them out some more now for my personal self-care things that I have been doing recently uh to start of this homeschooling year is you guys I actually joined the woman hood from Tory and I really been enjoying um being a part of a community um and it's really really been great for me I haven't been as active on that platform but going into the lives and really challenging myself with all of the uh journaling journaling and all of the thought provoking uh questions that she asked um it's really been amazing it's really been uplifting like my mama spirit and I have been really being I have really been enjoying being a part of that community so I definitely can say that that has definitely been a part of my overall self-care something else that I started doing you guys is I started doing a simple gratitude journal I actually picked up this from uh five below and it just uh is a great way for me to just document like my mood for the day what was my high what was my low what was I grateful for and it's really great to go back and read over what I wrote in my journal entries um really just instilling that sense of gratitude and um sometimes when you're down you do forget uh those moments and um I really really have been enjoying uh my gratitude journal and I also started off some new like uh devotions and this is from uh deli grace co and this one that I just started off is it as well walking away from anxiety and into God's word and I really have been enjoying deli grace co I actually caught them on a sale so I actually got this um one for only five bucks so I'm really really excited to continue off this devotion as well so uh those are some of the things that I have been doing I also been uh taking walks on the weekend so early in the morning while my kiddos are still asleep I have been going to like a local park and really just uh walking and taking in like the breath of fresh air and really um just taking that time away from my actual physical house because like when I'm here I feel like my list is just or my head is just going with all the to-do lists that I have to do the cleaning the cooking the homeschool planning and when I actually physically get outside of the house I really feel like I begin to get more clarity and uh just the cool air especially since um we're just now entering spring just that cool air in the morning you guys it's just been doing something for me it's definitely been rejuvenating me so my daily walks have been amazing I definitely want to get into more um walks with the kiddos throughout the day and kind of like incorporate that into like our routine uh here soon especially since the spring time but um walking has definitely been a mold for self-care um okay you guys let's go to the next question uh the next question I have is my daughter is about to be in the fifth grade and definitely and definitely considering IEW but wondering if I can teach her am I soon to be third grader at the same time what did you use for writing in the third grade so you guys this is like my number one question that I always get on my channel is what did I use for Brielle and teaching her writing when she was a younger in a third grade um so I'm going to go ahead and answer the first part of this question for IEW um my personal opinion and just from my personal experience I definitely would wait to start IEW until the kiddos are at least in like fourth or fifth grade just because I feel like because I waited to start IEW with Brielle in the fifth grade I really feel like we are able to dive in deeper with this IEW I can really challenge her in her writing curriculum I feel like the basis of writing when it comes to like simple punctuation and uh complete sentences and all those type of things I feel like um we can kind of like not we don't have to really focus on those things we're really focusing on the styles that Andrew Poudewa is teaching and structuring style she's really focusing on the band words adding in her ly adverbs um her who which clauses her because clauses she's really able to focus on all of the mechanics that they're teaching outside of the regular structure of like writing if that makes any sense hopefully I'm making sense so um I definitely would recommend starting IEW more so in the fourth grade um fourth to fifth grade is my actual recommendation um if you do do it with your third grader I definitely will say uh definitely take your time with it and um if I was to do this curriculum with a third grader I definitely will only do the first half of the IEW and then in fourth grade I would do the second half that's kind of like how I would approach it but if you do want to pair your kiddos together I would just say just have lesser expectations for your third grader that's just starting off writing versus your fifth grader you can definitely bump it up and uh challenge them more if they may ask to write one paragraph and your kiddo may want to write two you can definitely allow them to do those things especially for your fifth grader now for writing for a brio what I did starting off writing was I actually pulled out some of her third grade work was I actually started her off with a little composition notebook and we just did daily writing every single day so it first started off with her just like drawing a picture and then I would just ask her to like uh write like a brief how was your day and she would just start like she would start to write off things like how her day was and she would like draw a picture and this you guys was just away from me to just let her write I didn't check her spelling her grammar her periods her punctuation like this was just a way for her to know that she had a safe place to just write all of her thoughts um and just put them on a sheet of paper and that was my main goal was just for her to be able to get everything that was in her head onto paper um without her having to feel the pressure of really getting like that structure part of her uh paragraphs so um this was what we did every morning some days I would give her like a little journal prompt for a journal entry and I'll ask her a simple question and then you guys she kind of like just took off from there and just really started to uh write little stories and little poems and it was really really fun uh that was her best or her favorite part of the day in the morning when we started off um our homeschool was her daily journal so uh we actually used a combination again in our first year of homeschool of master books language lessons for a living education and then we completed the good and beautiful level three the uh teaching that I liked the most about writing was definitely from master books and they did this little thing right here which was like a paragraph sandwich which they taught her how to start off her paragraph with a topic sentence and then to do three detail sentences and a concluding sentence and it was like a paragraph sandwich uh is kind of like how they taught them the writing and I took this same format and teaching Brielle how to structure her paragraphs throughout the whole year we would write our topic sentences her three detail sentences and her concluding sentence and um that was how I began to allow her to structure all of the rest of her assignments like for um history for black history month this is the end of third grade this is how her writing looked where she would follow that same mode where she had her topic sentence her detail sentences and her concluding sentence and I always would have her like write a paper so this right here was a little paper she wrote on uh ruby bridges and then for book reports and things like that we followed the same structure so here goes some of the book reports and then like her little paragraph right here at the bottom so um these are just some ways or this was the main way that I did teach her how to structure her paragraph if you guys want me to make a separate video of other ways that I actually taught Brielle how to write in third grade I definitely will because we necessarily didn't follow uh like tried and true a curriculum I really kind of just piece things together I use teachers pay teachers when I was teaching her like opinion writing and expository writings and I definitely can go into more details of all the things that I did to lead her up to learning how to write with IEW okay you guys the next question is and this one right here is actually from Rachel from seven and all um I remember this one specifically and she said what do I like best and least about being a homeschooling YouTuber so um the best part about YouTube you guys is definitely like sitting down creating these videos um trying out new curriculum this is definitely like a creative outlet for me and um I always have different ideas and different things that I want to film and do and um it's just really really fun and it's a great way for me to like just kind of get everything out uh that I'm thinking and really share good resources with you guys is uh my favorite part the book calls you guys the curriculum uh all of those things is like the best parts of being like a homeschooling YouTuber my least favorite part you guys is uh I think the curriculum reviews especially when the curriculum is not working for you I feel like making those reviews uh you're really being vulnerable and um it's really sensitive to some people because the curriculum that may not have worked for you maybe someone's tried and true and you definitely don't want to discourage anyone in their homeschooling journey um when making those curriculum reviews but that's like um the scariest things for me and the least favorite things for me is the curriculum reviews and uh really being open and vulnerable in my homeschooling journey um I will say this I definitely have gotten more comfortable on camera and I definitely have been more open and vulnerable when it comes to me speaking my opinions and things like that because I don't want my channel to be a cookie cutter channel and you're just hearing the same thing you know over and over again uh because we all have different opinions and we you know we view things in different ways and that's perfectly fine and I think I really have been challenging myself to be more vulnerable and I think that's like my least favorite thing is because it makes me feel uncomfortable but it is needed and um I am finding the more open that I am becoming on my channel the more you guys can really relate and see that you know you may feel like you're the oddball but you're really not because it's other people that are oddballs uh like me so uh yeah okay so the next question that I have and this is a question um that I get a lot which is can you elaborate more on your uh weekly and standardized testing for your kiddos and a lot of you guys had questions about where do you do the map testing so uh for a map testing you can actually do map testing from um I believe it's called uh the homeschooling mom boss or homeschooling boss I'm going to link it down below is where you can actually do the map testing for your kiddos in your homeschool um for standardized testing I have utilized the cat exam for our first two years of homeschool which is just the California achievement test you can do it here at home you get the results instantly I actually always do the premium grading so I'm able to like get a more detailed report for grading however this upcoming homeschooling year I will use the homeschooling uh boss homeschooling mom boss you guys I do not remember what the website is called but I'm going to actually do the map testing when Brielle was in public school we did do map testing um for they did it quarterly in public school and I think I want to start from now on doing the map testing at least yearly with her now for my younger kiddos I think I'm probably will start standardized testing with them probably in the second grade to prepare them for uh the standardized testing that they will take in the third grade I think we will continue to use the map exam is the one I want to use the map exam is more detailed in the report versus the cat exam uh from what I seen and I definitely feel like it's so beneficial to be able to target those specific points that your kiddos need more help on and it really has been beneficial to me in my homeschool because um I was able to see whether a curriculum that I used whether Brielle retained the information or not um that was the easiest way for me to see whether um I will continue to use a resource or not um it definitely is very beneficial to target all of those things um you guys like I don't know what I may be missing or what I may not be teaching that she needs to learn um and I definitely want to make sure especially when it comes to the core the math the language um the writing I want to definitely make sure it's solid and uh she has a good foundation uh Brielle definitely wants to go to college I'm not too sure about my younger ones because I mean they are five and three but if they also want to go to college I definitely want to prepare them for that and standardized testing is really for me it's not necessarily for the kiddos it's for me to see uh what I need to do as a homeschooling parent and that's my responsibility is their education um if you guys want me to make a separate video about standardized testing uh and more details my experiences I definitely will make one that is like my number one requested video I always get is about standardized testing especially because I do live in a state that we do require standardized testing so uh I definitely will make that video towards the end of this homeschooling year after we have done our standardized testing to kind of like give you guys um a more in-depth view of how it works so yeah that's for that question I had another question is do I um do I have a long term or do I have long term homeschooling plans or do I just plan year by year yes I do have long term homeschooling plans if you guys want to know like my big picture as far as my homeschooling plans I definitely will make that video for you guys um I actually have started planning high school for my oldest order you guys like yes I uh I have options like I said I am considering doing our free online public school that is offered in the state of Georgia however I do uh I do have somewhat of a plan at least for her ninth and tenth grade for high school um I am entering middle school and I feel like these three years I mean they're going to go by fast and I definitely feel like uh while we can hold long term homeschooling plans pretty loosely it is pretty good to be able to kind of like see a bigger picture um and not necessarily look at it year by year um so yeah I definitely have long term homeschooling plans now for Leia my kindergartener who's coming up I actually have a long term plan for her for her whole elementary year I actually have it all mapped out so if you guys are interested in seeing my long term homeschooling plans I definitely will make a separate video because those are really really cool to watch okay you guys my next question is is um I am pretty confident as to why you don't use much Christian curriculum but can you tell us your experience and why you decide to go with secular sources mainly so um you guys in my last video I actually talked about how I have been using more secular resources and curriculum in my home school and I am definitely making that video for you guys you will see that video next month um I am planning to uh really dive in deep into this topic I feel like it's too long for me to put all of the reasons why I have chose to use mainly secular uh curriculums in my home school but the number one reason is because I really feel like I was relying on my curriculum to teach and to do all of the biblical discernment in my home school and um I really didn't like that I was really skipping out on like our bible and morning time and devotions because I was like oh yeah we're gonna read about a bible passage in our science so we're gonna read it about in our language arts and I really was relying on my curriculum to do all the hard work for me and that's like one of my reasons I do have several other reasons why I have chosen uh to use more secular resources another one is honestly uh don't kill me but I do and I have found out that um secular resources are more diverse and regular rigorous than Christian resources or at least the Christian resources that I have used in my home school so those are just two little nuggets I will make a separate video for you guys and kind of like we'll go in deeper into that topic and you guys uh for the sake of timing for this video I'm only going to answer one more question and my last question is is where do I find like all of like the cool books and the resources that we read in our home school and the main two sites that I use to find like our diverse and fun readers is the heritage mom blog and stories of color I will go ahead and link both of those websites down below because those are my go to when it comes to uh history read alouds my daughter's fun literature that she reads um so um I'm not coming up with these books all on my own uh these are definitely curated lists that you can find on their website especially when it comes to history and history read alouds so you guys this is the end of my q and a um you guys please don't forget if you do want to enter into our giveaway make sure you pop in this emoji um in my comment section down below and go ahead and write your word of the year for your upcoming home school year you guys I am so excited to announce the winner for the giveaway I will have um the date that I will announce the winner will be in the description box below and I'll go ahead and pop it in right here uh which will be the date to uh that I will announce the winner for our giveaway you guys I'm like all over the place I'm so excited but um thank you guys again for staying for me watching the video thank you for all of your support thank you for being here on my little teeny channel on this big platform uh so you guys as always I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye