 Hey you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video I'm going to share with you what I learned in my second year of homeschooling and what are my biggest regrets in this second year. So you guys um if any of you are new to my channel I'm Brittany, I am a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 10 four and two and you guys I just finished my second year of homeschooling. Um I'm so so so proud of myself and I'm proud of my daughter just for everything we have accomplished this year. I really feel like this year was the year I really learned a lot of um lessons and heart truths about homeschooling. Um I didn't want to end off this homeschooling year without bringing you guys this video because I feel like we can always take away all of the I guess the high notes from our homeschooling year but sometimes it's really hard for you to go back and really reflect on those areas that you really feel like you could have did a lot better in or areas that you really struggled and you have overcome and in today's video I'm going to share with you guys like all the things that I have struggled with and I really feel like I have overcame this year and hopefully some of these things that I have learned in my second year of homeschooling can help any of you guys whether this be your first uh your fifth you're like way ahead of me in this homeschooling journey hopefully uh you can just glean into some hope just knowing that uh none of us we have it all together we're still learning as we are going through uh this homeschooling journey so I have some notes right here in my phone and I'm going to go ahead you guys and talk about like my two biggest regrets of this homeschooling year my first one is a curriculum regret and my second one is just like my biggest regret of all so my first regret just in general is not believing in myself and I really feel like I have struggled a lot in homeschooling with confidence and just doubting my ability and my capability to be a good homeschooling parent for my kiddos I really have struggled with not feeling like I am enough or that I am adequate to teach and prep my kiddos for this lifelong journey that they are uh ahead in and I really feel like that's something that a lot of homeschooling parents face but they are not open about it enough and that was something that I really really struggled this homeschooling year uh just really having faith within myself and it's just so crazy how uh you build up your kiddos and you always talk about having confidence and believing in yourself and here I am I feel like I'm just like the biggest fraud because I'm not believing in myself in this homeschooling journey and I think that that's like my biggest regret is not snapping out of that sooner and to really just uh have faith in me um I made plenty of mistakes this year but I think my kiddos turned out okay um my biggest curriculum regret for this homeschooling year has to be I regret giving up on Singapore Dimensions as early as I did uh we did it for about the first month of our homeschooling journey and Singapore Dimensions was such a great math program it was hands-on it had like the maniputives it just was kind of teacher intensive and I really feel like I gave up on that curriculum a little bit too like sooner than later like if that's one of my regrets I really wish that I would have uh figured out a way for me to uh like maybe break up the Singapore Dimensions because my daughter's math skills were uh really really growing in using that curriculum and I really feel like I switched math curriculums on her really for me and not necessarily looking at the whole picture and that's like one of my biggest curriculum uh regrets now let's go on into some of the things that I learned I wrote a list of my phone because I don't want to forget any of these pinpoints so the first thing that I learned this homeschooling year is that slow and steady always wins the race um I feel like when you are on Instagram and even here on this platform on YouTube I really feel like you're only seeing the end results you're not seeing the day in the day out phonics lessons that these parents are doing with their kiddos to get them to read you're not seeing the day in day out sentences and uh the work that these parents are putting into teaching their kiddos how to write um I feel like on YouTube you're kind of just only seeing the end result and um I think that that was one thing and I definitely got caught up into especially when I started off my second year of homeschooling was just always watching all these Instagram bros and YouTube's and seeing like the end results but not realizing that those parents didn't get there overnight it was a slow and steady race for them to be able to uh see those milestones that their kiddos was like hitting and that's one thing that I definitely learned this year uh when I felt like I was behind in my homeschool I really wasn't and it's like who am I measuring you know against uh so I really learned that just every day are little teachable moments even if I didn't get through like everything that I wanted to accomplish that day we got through something and uh that pace over time it builds up and you know at the end of the year you realize you ended up accomplishing more than what you thought so slow and steady always wins the race the second thing that I learned and this was something that I learned very early on in my second year of homeschooling was that trendy and popular curriculum does not always equate to a better quality of education and I'm going to say that one more time the most trendiest and popular curriculum does not equate to a better education here on this platform I feel like you are just consumed especially as a homeschooling mom with just like curriculum pick and curriculum choice and the next new thing just over and over again and I feel like um as new homeschooling moms you run to that next best trendy curriculum because you feel like it's going to equate to a better and rich education for your kiddos and it's really not um at the end of the day a curriculum is a tool and it's really there to be used to help you navigate you know this journey I really feel like when curriculum authors like write these curriculum they're not writing them for us to use them check by check list by list I really feel like it's a guide and as a homeschooling parent especially a new one we hold on to that curriculum for dear life because we feel like that's like our life jacket this is our safety net and it really isn't it's just a guide it's just a map uh just like we lose our way even when we have a map and we have GPS but somehow we ended up finding our way we figured out a new route that's how we need to use curriculum and that's one thing that I learned fairly on um and hopefully I can like take that on with me um I was really feeling like kind of like self doubting myself because all of the like the new trendy curriculum was not working for my daughter my daughter she really thrived off of just like regular black and white plain jane curriculum just that's just what my daughter uh really wanted she just wanted it straight to the point um we use a lot of traditional curriculum here in my homeschool because my daughter started off her uh education journey in a public school system and I really feel like uh by her using just traditional homeschooling curriculum it was the style she was most familiar with and it was the style of learning that she flourished in the most I realized that my daughter wants to like get her lesson done and just be done with her day and then move on to doing creative things some people use their curriculum as their creative form of homeschooling while others use their curriculum to get their work done and then they have different enrichments and outlets that their kiddos like to do outside of their schoolwork and that's what I found that works best for my daughter another lesson that you guys that I learned this homeschooling year is that it's really okay to have curriculum fails I really feel like having curriculum fails does not you know mean anything it just means that you haven't found the right pick for your kiddo and I feel like here on this platform a lot of people don't uh really talk about their fails as much as we should I highlighted a video about all of my curriculum fails and you guys I was so embarrassed to post that video but I'm so happy I did because so many of you guys have mentioned that even as you guys are going into your 10th 11th year you still are having curriculum fails and um it just really gave me comfort in knowing that I wasn't the only one and I was so happy to be able to touch a lot of you guys out there so um curriculum fails does not equate to a failure in your homeschool okay the next thing that I wrote down you guys is that to always follow your gut and your heart you know what's best for your kiddo I feel like a lot of times I was wanting to do something or wanting to try a new thing but I was just scared to and I really feel like when I let go and I followed my gut especially for like natural learning for my daughter was really when I really felt free my daughter you guys she really enjoys like creative writing and she really enjoys having her time uh working on her iPad on uh Procreate where she likes to illustrate all of the uh creative writing pieces that she was writing and sometimes I was telling Brie like no Brie we have to get to our school work no and I was really making her creative writing not be a part of our homeschool when in actuality it is she's learning she's writing she's illustrating she's drawing uh she's learning different perspectives when she is uh doing that uh creative writing is a part of our homeschool and I'm so happy that I let go and if she was taken a little bit longer on that I wasn't worried about if we finished that history or that science lesson in the afternoon we will get back to those things and I'm so happy that I just let go and I allowed that to really be a part of our homeschool another thing is that taking as many breaks as you need in your homeschooling day I really felt like at the beginning of the year after we completed each subject I was telling Brie oh come on Brie let's get to the next subject let's get to the next subject and I was getting like a lot of kickback from my daughter and when I wasn't realized and like what am I rushing for you know I need to slow my behind down so really just allow my daughter to have at least like a 10 to 15 minute break per hour we worked on school it really just allowed our day to flow a lot better and uh she did a lot better within like the different uh subjects that we were doing just being able to have that break and I don't know why I wasn't giving her those breaks to begin with in the beginning of our school year so from now like my rule is for every hour of work she gets 15 minute break and we take a long lunch break before we come back and do like read alouds and history so I really like giving her those breaks and they are very useful even though she's upper elementary she still needs those breaks and I really feel like as she enters into middle and high school I'm still going to give her those breaks and that freedom I mean that's what homeschooling is for um another thing is that there is a power in simply reading good literature um just on those rough days that I was having within my homeschool you guys picking up a good book I felt successful in our homeschooling day um and I really us I really slept on the power of just reading and this homeschooling year um I really have incorporated like a lot of literature in our homeschooling year I'm really leaning towards like a literature-based learning just overall for my daughter especially because I'm kind of seeing the path in what she wants to go in her life and uh reading is just one of them and I definitely know a literature-based study would not only work for her but for me as well because I love books too now so um just the power of reading it's just amazing how many like rapid trials you can go on by just reading one simple book another thing that I learned this second year of homeschooling is that you guys I love unit studies I love spending that specific time focusing on one thing a lot of our sciences that we did this year were unit study base where we did like the human body for one unit and we did um what else did we do we did uh animals we sat on animals for a while this year and I'm so happy that we did because my daughter learned so much about animals so just sitting on those different science and history topics just even if it's just for like a week or two six weeks I really love that unit base approach when it comes to learning because your kiddos can really learn a lot uh in those times that you are focusing on that specific thing and I found that I love it as well and um the last thing that I learned in my homeschooling journey is that every new interest that your kiddo has should not equate to a unit study I know there's like a plethora of unit studies and uh just things online for every topic and every interest that your kiddo might have but that does not necessarily mean it needs to equate to you doing a full blown out unit study sometimes it's just as simple as going to a library checking out some books that they're interested in and whenever they're ready to close that chapter of that new interest or topic just to let it go uh and exploring nature with the children uh we were doing our butterfly week and I went to a library you guys and I checked out all like these books on butterflies and we had our caterpillars and we watched them turn into butterflies it was such a beautiful process and I really thought that my daughter was going to sit on butterflies for longer but you guys for that week that we studied butterflies after that she was done and I'm really happy that um I just allowed her to sit in that topic of interest just for that time period and kind of just like to move on and not necessarily make a unit study out of every interest so you guys like these are all the things that I learned within my second year of homeschooling I really feel like uh I've learned a lot and hopefully I can take all this knowledge that I gained this second year and really bring it on into my third year of homeschooling I'm really purpose purposefully like making this video so I can personally look back at it when I feel like I'm making these mistakes I really uh want to go into my third year of homeschooling intentional and I really want to just like let go and I really want to be confident in myself and I really want to know that I can do this thing and that um I have the best interest for my kiddos and I'm going to make mistakes but that's really uh like okay so you guys thank you so much for watching today's video I hope you enjoy and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye