 Hi you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video I am going to share with you how our first week of homeschool went and I cannot wait to share with you guys like all the details, all the nitty gritty everything that we got up to in our first week of homeschool. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel, this is your first time clicking on this video today. Hi, my name is Brittany. I am a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 10 four and two and I just started my third year homeschool. So you guys like I have really been excited about this homeschooling year because I really have started off our homeschool year a lot different than I have in the past and um yeah I'm just going to chat with you guys and hopefully you guys enjoy just chit-chatting with me recapping our first week of homeschool. So you guys the newest thing that I added into our homeschool year has been I have actually been using a official planner this homeschooling year from the start and I really love the school next planner that I'm using this homeschooling year and I'm going to briefly show you guys my favorite page of this planner which is my reflections page. So I was able to really just sit down with some washi tape and just really write down like all of like our high points some of the points that I feel like we need to work on throughout our homeschooling year some tweaks some things we're definitely going to do and I'm just going to sit down and you know talk to you guys about all of the things that we really got up to some of the things that I'm definitely going to keep and some things I may have to tweak a little as our year progresses. So you guys first and foremost let's go ahead and talk about our first subject that we do every single day which is math and we are doing sacks of math. If you guys aren't new here you already know the journey that I went on last year when it has come to math and finding a good one for my daughter that she actually enjoys and she actually gets it and Saxon has definitely like filled in those cracks for her and she is to the point now where she is feeling confident in math and I can really see her thriving within Saxon. From my last update that I spoke with you guys about I was speaking with you guys about some gaps that I was seeing with her within Saxon some things that she needed extra practice with and you guys thank you so much for like writing all those comments down on that video because I have taken some of you guys suggestions where I stopped the lesson if I'm finding she needs a little additional practice and then I've been using the supplemental practice at the back of the book before we go on to the next lesson and that has definitely like solidified a lot of these concepts and I'm so happy for you guys and for this community because that really has helped us out along with our Saxon journey. We utilize Nicole the math lady those video lessons have been like gold especially for me it gives my daughter a sense of independence and it's just a subject that I can be a little bit more hands off on so I have really been enjoying Saxon I'm so happy to see my daughter's growth in it and we're just trucking along with it so we are on about a lesson 93 right now so yeah I'm really proud of Brielle so math really has been good for us now as far as one of our highlights for this week you guys I really have been enjoying the Heritage Mom Hymn Study now this Hymn Study you guys is so simple we just read the history of that Hymn on the first day on the second day we read out the Hymn out loud and then as we are doing our Hymn practice in our Hymn Study we actually are able to listen to so many different forms of that Hymn being sung whether it be traditional jazz soulful country instrumental I really love all the links that the Heritage Mom has put in this Hymn Study and it's been such a great and beautiful addition to like our morning time so this Hymn Study has been so so much fun doing even my younger toddlers have been listening and enjoying all the music and everything like that so this has definitely been one of our highlights for this week now as far as our grammar and ELA block we have been really enjoying Fixit Grammar you guys Fixit Grammar I love the updates that they have done to this I love the teacher's guide so much better than the teacher guides from the other edition so kudos to IEW for all of the updates that they have done on this Brielle she definitely has her strengths when it comes to grammar ELA and she has been trekking along on this she's been doing more than one lesson a day because she just loves English so I'm so happy she's been really solidifying those grammar skills and these short effective lessons have been given us time to really allow Brielle to focus on her creative writing and other writing skills we're not bogged down all day with grammar and I love how effective these lessons are so Fixit Grammar love the updates it's been amazing so you guys like our main core that we have started off our homeschooling year with has been gather around artists and I'm not going to lie you guys this has definitely gotten me out of my comfort zone when it has come to like how I view my homeschool a lot of just the activities just the style of learning it definitely has me feeling a little bit anxious just because it's new however I'm not going to lie I really have been enjoying this style of learning my daughter has learned so much over the past week we are finishing up or I think we did five lessons so in the artist unit they have it broken down by specific artists that we're going to be studying and we already have done the first lesson which is what is art we learned about painters ballet dancers poets and cartoonists and out of all of those lessons our favorite has definitely been learning about the cartoonists um you guys I love the video links that gather around has for their like playlists when you log into the gather around app they have specific playlists and book lists that a lot of people have put together for you and I really have been enjoying the playlist on YouTube of like all of the videos and things that we have been watching to like really add to gather around and I really have been enjoying this unit study and I really have been seeing like a Brielle really like bloom and blossom as we are studying about art um I will give you guys like my full overall review of this unit after I complete it a couple of things that I have not been liking about this unit really has been the student pages I really thought that this since this was an artist unit it was going to be like more art incorporated in the student pages but it hasn't been that much art so what I've been doing is been pulling activities from the gather around app and some activities of my own uh to add and we haven't been doing all of the student pages and and by modifying it that way we really have been enjoying this unit study um I'm going to share with you guys some of the picture books that we read with artists to school or this um first week we have read a blaze the story of Amma Thomas and this picture book you guys it's so pretty I love all the illustrations I love of Brielle learning about Amma Woodsey's life she did a recreation of one of Amma Woodsey's famous paintings and um we really enjoyed reading this book when we went over painters now when we went over ballet dancers you guys you already know Brielle loves Mitzi Copeland so I went ahead and I pulled off this book Firebird off of our bookshelf so this was just a reread for us and we really really enjoyed it Brielle got an opportunity to work with some pastels and she was able to color some ballet shoes and she really really enjoyed it we enjoyed all the videos and one thing I will say is that Rebecca Spooner in that ballet lesson she really really really did a great job covering Mitzi Copeland's life and I really love how she talked about discrimination in such a biblical way where she referred the students back to the bible and it was so beautiful her words in that lesson and I really appreciate how she touched on that topic very very beautifully so I really enjoyed that um something else that I have been adding into our artist unit is these little leader books what I have been doing is just pulling out specific artists that goes along with whatever lesson we are doing and when we went over um when we went over poets we actually talked about Gwendolyn Brooks so uh Brielle had an opportunity to uh read in this little leaders and hopefully here it goes I can find it for you guys she had an opportunity to read about Gwendolyn Brooks and she did a small little summary about her and I really love utilizing these little leader and little legends books because we're really able to add in that uh diversity and other voices within this unit this unit it really just paces on and it's just touching very uh european uh just the regular uh basic art and I really just wanted to expound on that a little bit more um when we went over cartoonists as well um I went ahead and I found um another one and here we went over DeWayne McGuffie especially him uh he it was really really great learning about him especially when we talked about cartoonists and I was able to introduce Brielle to like the justic league the justic league and um we were really able to talk about those different forms of cartoons and marvel and then we uh watched a really cool documentary on disney and it was really really cool doing that unit Brielle she actually created her own comic strip as well and she had so much fun doing that so um this gather round artist unit it definitely like has gotten me out of my comfort zone but I really have been enjoying all like the little rabbit trails and the things we have gotten up to so definitely thumbs up another thumbs up that I have been enjoying has been a brave writer we are actually doing the lemonade war literature study through brave writer and Brielle is utilizing her school nest notebooks and as you guys can see she actually had a chance to decorate all of her school nest notebooks you guys I'm going to show you like all of her school nest notebooks that she decorated on the first day of school she had so much fun doing that and that was such a great surprise for her so this is her main fifth grade school nest notebook that she is using for her brave writers of copy work and things like that and I'm going to briefly show you guys like her first page of copy work and we learned about Anamana Piaz and different literary elements I really loved how the brave writer literature guide the arrow guide it really pulls us back into the book for grammar for everything and it really has been allowing Brielle to experience novels in a different way so I have really been enjoying the brave writer literature guide especially going along with our read aloud for the start of our school year and the lemonade war you guys this book is just so cute I think I really did a good job picking out this one I definitely think this is a great summer back to school read because the kids in this book they are at their last weeks of summer so it's really really cool for Brielle to start off our school year reading such a fun light hearted read now as far as Brielle's creative writing you guys go she actually finished another one of her creative writings and we are actually going to do a creative writing exercise in the brave writer so this one that she completed was called lost in Disney and she did such a good job you guys typing up her story and I can't wait for us to go through her creative writing and this time we're actually going to go through it and we're going to do some small edits when Brielle has done creative writing in the past I really haven't touched her work she just reads it to me or I read it out loud we talk about this theme the plot the setting and that's it I don't do any type of edits to her work but as she's getting older I really want to help her fine tune her writing so I think we're going to gently start editing her creative writing I typically only like to edit her writing when it comes to like her history or science or like her specific writing assignments that she does outside of creative writing but we're going to give this a go and I'm going to let you guys know how it goes I really don't want to I don't want to I guess approach this in a way that she starts to not want to write anymore when she starts to see some of the edits I want her to know that her voice matters when it comes to writing and everyone has to get their work edited and this is just going to help her improve it so hopefully it goes well so this one she just finished and I also want to share with you guys the writing assignment she did over the summer her creative writing which was called the illusions of Aunt Artica so Brielle really loves doing creative writing and these illustrations she actually illustrates on procreate she really has gotten really good when it has come to like learning procreate and things like that so she really really enjoys creative writing as far as history you guys we started our heart and soul history and this has been so much fun you guys I really enjoyed this book right here the heart and soul book we have been reading the main literature book that we're reading with heart and soul has been 40 acres and maybe a mule and it has been like amazing you guys we really have been enjoying this book along with reading and doing this literature guide I actually pulled off my shelf Howard Zins a young people's guide to history and it has really been amazing giving Brielle like the context in which all the things in history has been happening and using all of these living books has been amazing when it has come to this heart and soul heritage pack I love how she utilizes so many like living books picture books the main picture book we've read this week from heart and soul has been brick by brick and you guys like history was definitely like one of my high points this week it really was like a lot of fun so I'm so so so happy we are taking this like living history approach when it comes to like um history and things like that um so as far as like my toddlers you guys go I really focused this week on Brielle this week was supposed to be a week where I wasn't supposed to do preschool but uh you guys if you have younger kids you already know the deal when they see the older ones doing work they definitely want to like come on into the group so I still actually did preschool with Leia but we're officially going to start her schedule next week so I did take her first day of school pictures as well and uh she really enjoyed that so um we mainly have been doing a gentle and classical preschool with Leia she loves this program I love it as well it incorporates bible her literature and it incorporates math she does preschool math at home by Kate Snow this you guys I love this hands-on math approach now I did add a few things into Leia for this week uh with a gentle and classical preschool I went ahead and I added in her handwriting book and you guys is so cute like I went ahead and I put the date on it so this is like some of her first handwriting that she did in this first book handwriting without tears so I'm really excited for her to really start learning like her letters and things like that she actually for the most part almost knows how to write her full name so I'm really proud of her and uh this book has been so cute we only did it one time this week and my goal for Leia is to do this book at least two to three times a week something else we went ahead and started this week has been get ready for the code and you guys I love this book um get ready for the code I went ahead and I just purchased the heart copies of this one right here because I noticed in the pdfs that I had it was missing a few of the pages so I went ahead and I purchased the physical copy of it and I also purchased the teacher guide because this teacher guide you guys I know a lot of people say you don't need this teacher guide and honestly I think you do it has a lot of fun activities on solidifying those letter sounds beginning starting and end and I really think that um it complements it very very well it gives you a lot of like outside activities to do so Leia you guys she has just been like uh getting on into this school thing and she's so excited and um I'm so excited about like these preschool years and I really um hope she enjoys like all of her little lineup and things like that so um that is really Leia's update but as far as me being very consistent with her her full schedule is going to start uh next week and you guys um talking about schedules a lot of you guys have been asking me like how I work around doing uh work with my toddlers and doing all the work with Brielle and I'm going to make a separate video you guys talking about like my schedule and how I'm able to fit it all in you guys when I started off my homeschooling journey I was I had a six month old and I had a two year old so I was still breastfeeding my six month old and I was potty training my two year old along with homeschooling Brielle so I definitely know that homeschooling with babies and toddlers you guys it's like no joke so I definitely want to you know give you guys some like tips on how to maneuver homeschooling through those seasons definitely because I have been there so you guys um that was really like my first week of homeschool my first week and how everything went like I'm so happy we had like a really really great start to our first week um one thing I will say that I definitely learned this first week was I cannot do our big full spreads when it comes to like our breakfast I really have to keep them nice and simple we have really been getting our you know getting in the groove of like having huge breakfasts over like uh the summertime but I definitely had to like uh stock those and you know we had to go um and eat like cereal oatmeal we had to go back to the basics when it came to breakfast as far as our schedule and things like that but um overall you guys I will say uh I really didn't have many hiccups and I'm really really blessed I really hope that this is going to be a start to another great homeschooling year you guys I really hope you all are having a great start to your homeschooling year thank you so much for watching today's video thank you for chatting with me and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye