 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be our homeschool plans for spring, as well as kind of a chatty update on what's working and what's not working in our homeschool lately. Now, first, let's kind of review some of the things that I talked about in the fall, now that we're in the spring. The first thing I talked about was our one thing, which was gonna be nature study. And I'm just gonna go ahead and report that that has not happened, hardly at all this year. It has just kind of been a crazy, busy year. Emily is a full-blood twin-ager now and her social schedule has absolutely gone crazy and we're just not home as much as we were before. And so that, unfortunately, has been something that has fallen by the wayside and has kind of been replaced with archery, which is something our entire family has gotten involved with. It does keep us outside. It does actually kind of flow over into nature because we're constantly shooting in different places and talking about the different plant and animal life that we're seeing in those places as we're traveling the state of Florida. But all of the things I said we were going to do for nature study have not gotten done, at least not in the traditional sense. So there is an update on that. I also wanted to update because in the fall, I had said that my plan was to split our terms into 12-week terms and to do six weeks of science and six weeks of history or something like that. That also didn't happen. Splitting our terms into two different studies was just too much. Emily likes to deep dive, I should have known better. We spent the first 12 weeks basically deep diving into Texas and all of the national parks that we visited on our three-week long road trip and we really continued to do a lot of that and we never really got to the science not the way I wanted to anyway. So we will be revisiting that science in the future and for now, my plan is to just kind of stick to one unit study for a longer period of time or at least until she's over it. Okay, now let's talk about what is really working in our home school as of lately. Morning baskets are still working. They just so happen to not be at morning anymore. They're happening very frequently over lunch because we're sitting and it's just easier to capture her attention when we're sitting down. So we are still doing our middle school morning basket if you are unfamiliar with what's in it, I will link it up here and I'll leave a link in the description box so that you can check that out. That is still working well for us. The discovery decks that I created are working super well for us. I strew one of these almost every single day unless I forget in which case she just grabs one from the pile and she is watching a video typically either before breakfast while she's waking up or while she's eating breakfast. So she is starting her day with some random educational video about something and a lot of times that leads down some glorious rabbit trails and so it is working so well in our home school lately. It's been amazing. Also, I mentioned in my favorites video I shared with you guys that we have been playing games over dinner for a while now that is working really, really well. I did a lot of the guests in 10 games and we have started doing Professor Noggin. I've absolutely loved the trivia. So I actually picked up a new trivia game that we will be adding after Emily gets it for Easter and that is this Mount Cleverist. It is basically true or false. It's 300 fascinating facts and you just say it's true or false and so this will be the newest addition to our dinner time games. If you have a tween or a teen, you will probably earn a similar situation. We're just not home. We are always on the go and dinner is the one time we are all together at the table. So we've really been capitalizing on that as much as possible with games and then if I can sneak in an educational game, it's like a win-win and so that's what that one will be. Okay, let's go ahead and get down to the plans for the spring. I've tried to keep them as simple as possible because we are seriously on the go so, so much. Emily is doing archery still, which is a lot and we're also doing it as a family. So we pretty much have a tournament almost every single weekend. She's also started doing karate which is three hours, two times a week. So that is again, out of the house a lot because nothing is close to us. And so there's all these things going on plus she's a member of 4-H with archery. So there's other things that she's doing with 4-H. We're just not home a lot. So I'm trying to keep our academics simple so that there's still a lot of room for the books and games and fun that we really, really crave. So for language arts, she is still working her way through editor-in-chief. I bought the digital download so that's not what the cover looks like. She has, let's see, she's on lesson 10 and there's only 12 lessons so she is almost finished with this. In case you didn't see our previous video, what I love about it is it teaches the lesson. This lesson is on run on sentences and sentence fragments. And then once it teaches you what a run on in a fragment is, you kind of show your skills by editing a passage to find the run on and the fragments. And there is up here in the corner, this level, not all of them have it, has like the numbers that you would bubble in once you've found them. So it's teaching her grammar and spelling and all of these skills, not through her drilling and killing, but through her editing, which she finds super interesting. And she's actually even started helping me edit products because she wants to help out with the Waldoch way. So that's been really fun as well. She is still taking book club with Mary Hannah Wilson and the books that they will be doing a book club on this spring are The Birch Bark House, The Silver Arrow, Grounded, Manatee Summer, and The First Harry Potter, which she's actually really excited to read this one again. And then for math, she's gonna keep doing teaching textbooks. I ask that she does three to four a week. Wherever we are is where we are. I don't necessarily care if we finish one this year and start one next year. We just kind of keep rolling with it. So that's where we are with math. And then for our unit study for the spring, really, really excited to dive in to explorers and exploration. So we read the Explorer Academy books, which Emily absolutely loved. We're probably gonna read these again just because she likes the whole exploration part of it. And because we read those, she was like, I would really love to learn more about explorers and the things that they were exploring in the books they're assigned, rooms like Mount Everest and the Great Barrier Reef. So we're going to be doing some of our where was unit studies as they come into contact with the book. So we'll be doing like, where was the Great Barrier Reef or where is the Great Barrier Reef? Where is Mount Everest? I can't remember the other two right now off the top of my head, but we'll be doing those as well for the rooms that they're assigned to. And then we will be really, really diving in to the new exploring history, which is a living history unit study through the eyes of adventurous explorers. And so this new unit study is basically 12 mini units that are all of the different who and what was kind of bundled together creatively. So we will be doing what was the age of exploration? Who was Amelia Earhart? Who was Christopher Columbus? Who was Ernest Shackleton? Who was Ferdinand Magellan? Who was Jacque Cousteau? Who was Leif Erickson? What was the Lewis and Clark Expedition? Who was Marco Polo? Who was Neil Armstrong? Who was Saka Joia? And who was Sally Ride? So we will be diving into all of those mini units in the next 12 weeks. And then Kevin and Emily really, really love to do STEM together once or twice a week. So the subscription boxes that they have asked me to stay subscribed to for the spring for them because they've become their favorite are the Crunch Labs Hands Down has been a favorite for forever. It was actually just featured in my favorites video. So they will continue to do that one as well as the Generation Genius. This has become kind of the new science one that they really, really like. And then as a family, we will be also doing Universal Yums, which has been a favorite for forever. This is probably the subscription we've had the longest and like not canceled. So we will be continuing to do those. And then, and this is actually the instant Australia because I haven't gotten the new ones in yet. We've also gotten some of the History Unboxed that goes along with the Exploration. So I've like Alucard or whatever order the specific boxes that I wanted that felt like they tied in with the Exploration Unit. And so these we will be doing along with our Exploring History. And then obviously, like I said, we still wanna do all the fun stuff. So I'm still hoping to fit in some poetry tea time. I'm hoping we can get back to some Nature Study. We will see. I don't have high hopes for that, but we will fingers crossed, see what we can get in. We are hoping to still read lots and lots of books together and play lots and lots of games together. That has always kind of been our family culture. And so we will get in as much gameplay as we can. And that's what I was hoping to leave room for by making sure that our academics were semi light this semester and that I wasn't over planning. I also tend to over plan in the spring knowing that the spring's weather is going to get nicer and we're gonna wanna be outside more and we're not gonna wanna be inside doing as much book work. So this feels like a good amount to me. This feels like we're getting in some language arts. We're getting in some math. We're gonna have fun with some science boxes here and there. We're gonna do exploring through history, which is gonna be a little bit of history and explorers and geography and science. And that's gonna be a really well rounded unit. And then we can get outside and enjoy that wonderful Florida weather this spring. Now I would absolutely love it if you would tell me your spring home school plans down in the comments because I always love reading and hearing about what you guys are doing in your home school.