 Hi 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 my first quarter homeschooling update all the curriculum changes that I have made so far in my homeschooling year. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel again my name is Brittany. I am a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 10 four and two and I'm in my third year of homeschool. So you guys in today's video I'm primarily going to be talking about the curriculum changes that I have made so far in my homeschool. I feel like it's definitely a trend on youtube right now where a lot of homeschooling moms are sharing their curriculum changes that I that they have made like so far in their homeschooling year and I really feel that what is happening is that we as homeschooling moms we make all of these big and grand plans but when it comes time to actually execute those plans we find out very quickly what is working and what is not working in our homeschool. So just like everyone else I too have had to make some adjustments and changes within my homeschool and I'm going to go ahead you guys and share with you all of those changes that I have made so far in today's video. So I'm going to go ahead and start off with the biggest change. This may be a surprise to some of you guys but I went ahead and I stopped our gather around artists unit. You guys we had fun with the lessons that we did do within this gather around unit but overall I really didn't find it to be the greatest fit for me and for our homeschool. I definitely see why a lot of people do enjoy gather around it just didn't work out for us and I really feel like that's okay. I think that that's the beauty of homeschooling is we do get an opportunity to try new things and I'm happy. I tried something new and uh yeah. So you guys I went back to like my original plan when it has come to like art and art study in my homeschool. So we are going to continue doing the live and art lessons studying the seven elements of art through masterbooks. We're going to continue out this curriculum throughout our homeschooling year. We actually do art two times a month so we alternate them every other Friday and it's really been working out for me in my homeschool. So we are going to go ahead and just stick with this art study and we are going to finish this baby out throughout the rest of our homeschooling year. So far Bria really has enjoyed the art lessons that we did do in um this live and art lessons and um I'm just happy to continue uh using something that I know and I know that works out for us in our homeschool. Something else that I went ahead and I added in our homeschool if you guys see my planning video you would probably have already seen this book. It is called come look with me discovering African American art for children. So I really love this uh book because it actually is a picture study book and it goes over different artists. It gives you like a history of the artist. It gives you like picture study questions. You can ask your kiddos and then it goes over the actual art. Um I really really enjoyed this series and I really enjoyed this simple way for us to incorporate picture study in our homeschool. This series has so many different types of art and art forms in these little uh many books that you can pick up for you and for your kiddos. They have one on all different types of art. You guys I was so amazed by the plethora of this collection. I definitely want to collect more uh when we are doing picture study in our homeschool but this is the first one that I picked up and so far we really have been enjoying doing our picture study and our art when we do it on our um alternating Fridays. So um back to like our original plan when it has come to art. So you guys now as far as math Saxon math it has been going great uh Nicole the math lady. You guys she is my BFF because she definitely has came in my homeschool last year and she really has changed it up when it has come to like math. Uh it definitely is a great fit for Brielle and I'm so happy. You guys we are so close to finishing Saxon. I know we're probably gonna be finished with it within the next few weeks and I will definitely update you guys as we finish it. What our plan of attack is going to be moving forward. Um I am really contemplating on waiting until January for us to start Saxon 7-6 and just to kind of review in 6-5 before then or we might just go on into Saxon 7-6. It really just depends but overall we love Saxon. It's great. So um now we're gonna go ahead and talk about language arts. So you guys this year I am not doing like a all-in-one language arts where everything is all built in together for me. I do have like a separate literature, grammar, vocabulary and writing curriculum. So all of those pieces are separate for me and I'm finding I have really been enjoying having my language arts separated because it's really fun adding and picking out those different moving parts within my homeschool. So first and foremost you guys we have finished our brave writer literature guide on The Lemonate War and you guys first of all this book is so stinking cute. It was funny. It definitely kept us on cliffhangers. I really really enjoyed this book The Lemonate War. I will go ahead and give you guys like a little brief synopsis of this without giving you too many spoilers but I will let you know it does have some sibling rivalry in this book and I know a lot of people don't like their kiddos to read books with like some sibling rivalry but I really enjoyed the way the author ended this and I really enjoyed the way that the author allowed the siblings to be able to figure out their I guess figure out their disagreements and come together on their own without actually needing their parents to help them with it. So overall we enjoyed this book. I enjoyed using Brave Writer. It was definitely a very open ended like literature guide. I really enjoyed how organically she added in like grammar and literary elements and Brielle really enjoyed it. I enjoyed like all of the big juicy questions. It just really held my hand in guiding this particular book The Lemonate War and I'm definitely going to add maybe a few more of the Brave Writer literature guides throughout the rest of our homeschooling year. I'm not too sure how many we're going to do but I definitely want to add in a couple more. So we really really enjoyed it and I definitely want to make a separate video about my overall review and kind of showing you all of the writing projects and things that Brie got up to when we did our Brave Writer's literature guide. So Brave Writer definitely two thumbs up. Now as far as English goes still we started wordly wise wordly wise great thumbs up. I definitely can see why a lot of people do love and enjoy wordly wise. These vocabulary words in this wordly wise is pretty challenging but I love it. I definitely can see Brielle's vocabulary improving and I love the way they break down each and every definition. So wordly wise great addition. I love it. So as far as our main grammar and writing you guys we went ahead and we started IEW and oh my goodness I have so much to say about this curriculum. I don't want to make this particular video too long. I do. I definitely have to update you guys on this IEW. It is great. I love it. Brielle loves it. I didn't know how she was going to like the video lessons because some of the video lessons are pretty lengthy. Her Nicole the math lessons video lessons are like five to seven minutes but her lessons as far as her writing instructions with Andrew Poudawal they are 30 minutes long and I didn't know how she was going to feel sitting in like a lecture like that but she absolutely enjoyed it. They sit down to do their lecture for the first two days and then the rest of the days they are working on either their key were outlined their rough draft their final draft. I love the parents guide in IEW because it really holds my hand when it's coming to like actually grading Brielle's writing. Like before I never really knew like how and what checkpoints I need to be looking at her writing at her age and now with IEW I have all of those like particular checklists what I'm actually looking for in her writing and this has been great. I definitely need to make an updated video really going deep dive into this for you guys but so far after doing this curriculum for over a little over a month great. We love it. Along with IEW you guys we are doing Fixit Grammar. Again I love Fixit Grammar. We did Fixit Grammar last year. One thing I will say you guys I absolutely love the updates that they made. I love how they have the kiddos just edited in like one sentence a day and I love how clean these pages are and Brielle definitely loves it. She does like more than one week in she does more than a week in a week's time. So I went ahead you guys and I added back in for Brielle Rod and Staff and honestly I added in Rod and Staff for Brielle because she absolutely begged me to do Rod and Staff. You guys Brie if you're not new here to my channel you know how much this girl loves English and I went ahead and I just you know I was really trying to lighten her load. I really wanted her to have more opportunities to do like organic forms of writing. I really wanted her to have more time to do that but I'm finding that Brielle just wants more English. She wants more English and more literature. So that is what I'm giving this baby girl. So we are actually doing two grammar programs again this homeschooling year. She is loving it and I'm just gonna give this baby what she likes and you guys I love Rod and Staff so much. This is such a simple yet thorough grammar program. It's old school and I definitely want to really show you guys and capture this curriculum for it's like beauty and I know not a lot of people actually use like Rod and Staff because it is an older curriculum but it's very thorough. It's mastery and your kiddos will leave this grammar curriculum knowing diagrams and it's you know it's crazy because it's like it's thorough but then it's gentle because um they are just taking little bite-sized pieces at a time and as they build upon each other it's great. It's so great. So Rod and Staff we definitely love this grammar curriculum. So that is everything when it comes to like our full English language arts because again it's separated out. Now you guys we actually went ahead and we started our beautiful feet early American history and this right here is the intermediate guide. Now you guys we actually are on the Indigenous Peoples Unit which is the first unit within this beautiful feet curriculum and I will say I absolutely love this curriculum. It is great but it's a couple of adjustments that I already made within this curriculum and I'm gonna go ahead and share those with you guys. So I will go ahead and say this beautiful feet is a literature based curriculum. If you don't know anything about beautiful feet they give you like a plethora of books you are going to be reading throughout the course of this study as we are going over these different sections. They actually have each section in this early American history broken up. We are going to be going over the Indigenous people, the Golden Age of Discovery, the Colonies, the Revolutionary War, the Young People or the Young United States which is just like United States just starting off and then we are going to end this unit on the Civil War. So I love the breakdown. I love the literature that they have selected. One thing I absolutely love so far has been this little part right here and hopefully you guys can see it where it gives me like all of the rabbit trail books that we can go ahead and check out from our library to add into this curriculum. So I definitely love that aspect of this beautiful feet curriculum. What I don't like about this curriculum is this child's first American history of this child's first American history book. Now I'm going to go ahead and say this I really feel like beautiful feet needs to reevaluate the use of this particular reference book within their overall curriculum. I feel like this particular reference book does not do a great representation of history and how we actually study it in this day and age. I definitely will say this book does not give any credit or justice to the Indigenous people. I don't like the depiction of the Indigenous people in this book. I don't like the way they talk about Indigenous peoples so far in this book. If you actually purchase beautiful feet I definitely will say as a parent please read this before you present this information to your kiddos. I actually really felt uncomfortable with this overall reference book. So I didn't toss this baby in a trash. What I did was I decided to replace this reference book with the DK Encyclopedia book that I actually have in my home school. I have been using this DK American history book for a while and I absolutely love the layout. It actually doesn't affect me using this beautiful feet literature guide because all I do is whenever it refers me to use this book which is not that often I just go ahead and find whatever time period we're on and we utilize our DK American Encyclopedia and it definitely is a better representation of the Indigenous people and I love this book a whole lot better. I love the way this book is broken down and this is just a minor adjustment that I did go ahead and make as far as beautiful feet. I really hope that in the future beautiful feet we'll consider possibly using more of their rabbit trail books like this book right here which is called Turtle Island you guys. This is a great book depicting and talking about Indigenous people and it is a great reference book and I really hope that they will consider maybe changing out some of their rabbit trail books for some of their main reference books when it comes to studying Indigenous people. So that is the only thing that I have seen so far other than that you guys I absolutely love the other literature that act the main literature pieces that they picked out. I love it. I love this guide. I love the comprehension questions. I love the notebooking. That is just like one little adjustment that I did make so if you do have this curriculum just keep that in mind. I definitely want to let you guys know about that. Now as I move forward within this beautiful feet early American history I will let you know if I see any other like red flags or any other things that I feel like I should bring attention to. I feel like history can be hard sometimes but it doesn't have to be especially when we have like all these beautiful living book resources that we can grab our hands on nowadays. So it still has been a great and awesome curriculum so beautiful feet. Now as far as my other curriculum because this is a heavy history year for us I really haven't done a lot of history as far as Brielle our first two homeschooling years we really focused a lot on like geography state study. We had a lot of fun as far as those things so this is a heavy history year. I went ahead and I added in this heart and soul curriculum from Heritage Mom blog and we actually started this one out and it has been an amazing fit. It's so crazy how these pair so well together and it's just been a great way for me to incorporate more of that diversity that I'm looking for within my homeschool. I definitely will recommend anyone to just get this book right here. This heart and soul book if you want to go ahead and start off doing like a gentle history especially if you have like maybe a second or a third grader this heart and soul book will be a great introduction to American history and I definitely would recommend if you don't do anything at least get this baby because it is great. We actually just finished off chapter two which went over slavery and this was my daughter's first time being introduced to slavery formally and I love the words in this book. It was beautiful. It was gentle but it was truthful and I really felt like she left understanding it but she didn't feel oppressed or she didn't feel like down. I really felt like it was a ingestible bite-sized information for her as we are continuing with American history so great book. I love this resource. So you guys that really is all of like my updates as far as brief recalls the only thing we haven't added into like our homeschooling year yet has been our music curriculum which is living harmonies from thistles and biscuits and we still haven't added in science. So as we enter in our second six week term I definitely know I want to go ahead and add in those last two bits of our curriculum and then we will officially be doing like our full load as far as our homeschooling goes. You guys so far our homeschooling days have been ending pretty early. We've been ending anywhere between like one thirty twelve and one thirty because Brielle's been starting homeschool early like seven a.m. Brielle is in this homeschool room doing her math because she definitely likes to have those free afternoons and I'm finding she is so much more independent and motivated because a lot of her curriculum except for like her history Bible and science that's the only thing she really needs me for everything else. Brielle has definitely been a go getter this year and I definitely see her wanting and taking charge of her homeschool her you know education and I love it. I love seeing her like feel like she can do these things on her own because eventually I do want her to get to that point where she does feel comfortable being independent especially as I'm adding in my younger ones. So for my younger ones you guys I right here have their gentle and classical preschool it's been going great. They really have been having fun as far as their homeschooling goes. I'm finding or I was finding in the beginning it was a little bit challenging as I was adding in Leia into the mix officially but now you guys Leia knows when it's her time to do school she's so excited she's so enthusiastic. So they definitely have been enjoying it a lot of my two year old she is like tagging along she is trying to do all the things with all the big girls and it's so funny and so cute seeing her trying to do all the things and I just incorporate her as much as I can especially when it comes to like my preschool read aloud time and things like that. As far as Leia goes she definitely has started speech therapy and that has changed our schedule around when it comes to our Fridays not too much but I'm happy that we're kind of like getting into that rhythm. So you guys this was my homeschooling update. I hope you enjoy seeing all the changes that have made so far. If you guys made changes so far in your homeschool it's okay. We got this. We are still going to have good and amazing strong homeschooling years. Thank you guys so much for watching today's video. I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one. Bye.