 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be our spring homeschool plans for Emily's fifth grade year. I'm a little bit sad because spring means that we've almost completed this year, and I'm not ready for her to be in middle school. But nonetheless, let's go ahead and talk about what our plans are for spring. Now, when I refer to spring, I am talking about March, April, and May. That will be the three months that we're doing most of what I'm showing you. And I also wanna go ahead and say that this is a plan and plans change, and we are really big on following her interest and her passions. So I might show you all of this, and we might do none of it, or we might do all of it. Who knows? But this is what I have planned for our spring semester in our homeschool. So again, that's March, April, and May, so the next three months. In the springtime, we absolutely love spending as much time outdoors as possible. In Florida, it gets ridiculously hot in the summer, so the more time we can spend outside in the spring, the better. So that is gonna be reflected in a lot of what you're gonna see here today, because we wanna be outside as much as we can while it's still tolerable and enjoyable. So the first thing that I'm going to be showing you is our unit study, because that influences a lot of things in our homeschool in each semester, and that is mini-beasts. So we will be spending a ton of time exploring all things bugs and creepy-crawly and getting outside as much as possible to observe them in their natural habitats, and we are so excited about that, because like I said, we love spending time outside. So this is going to be a big portion of what we're doing in the spring. This includes pretty much all of our science, a lot of our geography, some of our language arts, probably ends up being some of our math too. It's gonna be a little bit of everything. In addition to that, for language arts, Emily is going to be doing, well actually she's gonna be finishing her handwriting without tears. She literally has like, I think two pages left in this one. Yes, two pages left in the cursive handwriting, and so she's going to go ahead and move on to the cursive success book. Now I do wanna stop because if you are watching this thinking, oh, you need handwriting without tears or whatever, I just want to say something before we move on. Emily hated handwriting. Like I have pictures of her in kindergarten and first grade balling her eyes out with any and every handwriting curriculum we used. I promise you that handwriting without tears was most definitely with all the tears. And so I threw all handwriting books away, and we did not do handwriting at all until about a year ago, and Emily came to me and asked how she could learn to write prettier, how she could learn to write in cursive, how she could sign her name like me. And I said, well, you would need to learn cursive handwriting for that. And I said, there's a couple different ways we can do it. And she said, well, I saw these books in your office, which is where I keep all the excess homeschool curriculum. And I had these because when I bought handwriting without tears, I bought everything. I bought it all because I was like, yes, no tears. That's what I want. So I bought the whole thing. So these were on the shelf, and there's a cursive Kickstarter too that she's done that was on the shelf. She's like, I saw these books in your office and I think I want to try them. And so she started doing them. Now, the minute that she comes to me and she tells me I'm done or I don't really want to do them anymore, it is not something that I'm requiring. I did want her to learn to read cursive. That was very important to me because I wanted her to be able to read our historic documents. But as far as actual like a structured handwriting curriculum, it was not important to me. It was definitely not important enough to enter the tears that we were going through. So I say that because I want you to know that it's not something I would have pushed. It's not like my plans for our homeschool. It's something that she really wanted to do and therefore we're doing it. So that's where we're at with handwriting. And then for other parts of language arts, like writing, I really like to do things that are real world and free writing and creative versus just learning like this is how you write a paragraph. Not that there's anything wrong with that but I really want her creative voice to come through and real world writing that's important versus the structure because I remember that we were taught one way to write in high school and then I went to college and I was taught another way to write. Then I went on to go to a bachelor's and get my bachelor's in business and it was like, oh no, you can't write like that and now you have to write like this. And I learned all of them when I needed to learn them. So I want her to be able to write and know what that voice is versus the structure of it and like knowing what that is. So some of the ways I do that is by encouraging writing in all different forms. The newest and funnest addition that she has really been enjoying is this Ghostwriter book. It is Kwame Alexander, which she's read some of his books and love them, Freerite and it's a poetry notebook. So she's really been enjoying this. It's just kind of like, let me see if I can show you. Like little poetry based activities and it's all kind of comes back to and references a lot of Kwame's books like The Crossover. So she's really been enjoying doing that. We still do mail time frequently. We don't do it every Monday anymore but it still happens very frequently in our homeschool. So we read subscription letters. She writes to friends and family. She absolutely loves it. And then we also still journal very frequently. This has been something that has been a new addition to our homeschool and I grabbed mine, not hers, but I'll show you an example of a spread just so that you can kind of see what it is. We journal, we kind of scrapbook. That's just a fun way for us to connect. Again, that real world writing, it's personal writing and she's had a blast. We both have had a really, really fun time doing that. And then she is going to continue to take book club classes with Mary Hannah Wilson. She loves those. She is going to stay in them probably forever. She's already looking forward to the summer book and the movie classes that Mary's gonna be doing. And so for the spring, the three book clubs that she's gonna be taking with her are for the books by the Great Hornspoon, Elijah of Buxton and Restart. And then for math, we are going to be doing a little bit of wild math. This is all outdoor math based. I actually think I have a look through video of maybe the first grade or second grade when we used it. So I'll link that for you guys. But it's all like getting outdoors and doing your math outside, which like I said, we love spending time in the spring outdoors. And so I thought this would be the perfect way to get some math done outside. We'll also be pairing it with math in the garden, which this is a book I've had forever, but it's so much fun. And so Kevin and her will be doing a lot of these activities together when they do some gardening. And I do want to come back to the wild math and say that this is basically an entire year curriculum. We will not do the entire thing. I will pick and choose based off of things I either want her to cover or things I know she needs to review with. And we will just do them outside, fun in nature, versus indoor inside in our homeschool room, like we would normally do math. So I'm just kind of basically subbing it out. We will not like do the whole thing in three months. That would be absolutely ridiculous. Now also for math, we will be using teaching textbooks still. I really, really enjoy that for on the go when we're traveling or when we need, well, when I need to not have to teach or when Kevin needs to not have to teach if there's just some time that we are really, really busy or we're sick or whatever. It's nice to have that as a backup to be able to say, hey, can you just go get some math done on teaching textbooks or hey, we're traveling and I don't want to take all this curriculum with us. Let's get some math done that way. We also use night zookeeper the same way for language arts. I didn't mention that, but we use it the same way. It's great for if she wants to do more school because sometimes she'll want to do something else and we're done, you know, like our brains can't work anymore, we're done for the day and so she'll utilize teaching textbooks or night zookeeper then she utilizes them a lot when we're on the go. If Kevin and I are just like we don't feel good or we're sick, but she still wants to do school that day. So we always keep those two in our back pocket they're some of our absolute favorites. So those are in there too. And then once or twice a week, Kevin does a steam class with Emily and so he likes to do a little bit of a math kind of like started off with a math problem or a math activity. And currently some of their favorites are bedtime math. We actually use these when she was really little and we haven't used them in a while. And so we pulled them back out and she's loving the big kids questions now because she obviously was doing the wee or the little kids before. So she's loving the bedtime math again. She is absolutely loving the Mathological Liar. These have been a favorite for two or three years now. She loves it when they start their steam life with these because it's kind of like a case to solve. And then her newest favorite is Pim Dice which is a order of operation dice game. Now sometimes they'll play the game other times he will just roll the dice and have her make an order of operation problem. Just kind of like I said to kick start their lesson off. Either way, she absolutely loves them. So that is some of our math favorites. Now let's talk about subscriptions because that is a big part of our homeschool. I was just talking about Kevin doing steam with Emily and that is like a big part of what they do during their steam. He does a math problem. They might go over something that she's having some trouble with and they'll review and then typically they do some sort of steam subscription box together. So I'm gonna show you the subscription boxes that we are currently getting that we're gonna continue to get through this spring. We change them up a little bit every semester just to have something new. We are now getting almost the entire Mel Science line because we love their boxes so much. So we're getting their art of math boxes which I guess is technically math but it goes with steam and I'm excited to see what that's going to do for them. We are also getting their physics box and we are still getting their chemistry box. So that is three, I guess it's not their entire line. They have a younger one too but that's three of their lines that we get in love. We also are still getting the Kiwi Eureka crate. We've gotten the Tinker crate in the past but she wanted something a little bit more advanced. So we get the Eureka crate. I don't know that Emily could do the Eureka crate by herself because I think it's like a 13 or 14 plus but with Kevin's help, they definitely get it done together. So keep that in mind. The age is probably closer to what it actually says just because Emily's 10. I don't know that I would get it for a 10 year old to do independently. We recently also added on the Crunch Lab boxes which they've done two of which so far and they've really enjoyed both of them. We haven't done more than that. I'll let you know how we continue to feel about it but it seemed like a really great addition. They were going through boxes faster than I could get them in even at three or four boxes a month if they did more than one a week. It was like they didn't have enough to get through a month. So we added another one for them to do. And then as a family, we have been enjoying the history boxes. So this is history unboxed. It is a really, really great history subscription. The one in my hand happens to be Ancient Egypt. This is actually an empty box because we've already done this one but we got the ancient history kind of like the whole thing. So they send one a month or you can get them all at one time. It depends on how you want to pay for them. And it has two or three activities in it. It's absolutely wonderful. I have a look inside video for a lot of these subscription boxes. So I will link them all for you. And if you want to see inside any of the ones I don't have yet, let me know in the comments. And then our last kind of oldie but goldie, this one has been around forever. It's one of our family favorites and it's Universal Yums. We love being able to try snacks from all around the world, sit around the table. We normally have a game night and we eat all of the snacks while we're having a game night. It is just so much fun. I don't see that subscription ever going anywhere. And then one I don't have a box for because Emily literally rips it to shreds every time it comes in is the My Zoo box. She is an animal lover and so she absolutely loves that box as well. And then the last thing that I want to share with you guys are the classes that she's taking. So I talked to you about the book club. So in addition to book club, she's also taking Lego class that is three weeks out of the month and that's online. And she absolutely adores Miss Bethany which is who teaches it. She's been taking those with her. Since 2020 because they started during the pandemic. She takes, like I said, the book club with Miss Mary and then she also takes a zoo club class kind of thing at our local-ish zoo. When I say local, it's still like an hour and 20 minutes away but the closest zoo to us and that class is once a month. And she was taking an art class in person but she decided that she wasn't enjoying that because she felt like it was a little more craft than art and kind of kitty. And so Kevin and I signed up for Masterpiece Society and we are all as a family taking classes with them. So we're doing the drawing 101 and the watercolor 101 classes with them. Currently we do those about once a week. So those are the classes that she slash we are taking this spring. And because I said that we wanted to spend as much time outdoors this spring as possible, I did actually go and kind of scour my shelves and pull a few books that were activity-based so that we could spend time out there doing activities together as a family or that I could give her activities to do, strew them, whatever will be. So if you were looking to also spend as much time outdoors and the spring as possible, I thought I would share these books with you. So the first one is the Thousand Hours Outside Activity Book. I absolutely love Jenny, she's amazing. So I got that to support her. It's low-tech nature activities for a high-tech world. Then we have the Usborne Outdoor Book. This one is Inspiring Ideas for Discovery and Exploring the Outdoors. And then the last one I pulled off the shelf was the Never Get Board Outdoors. We love the Never Get Board series so I thought the outdoor one would be perfect. So that is our plans for spring. We are going to try to spend as much time outside as possible doing as many things as we can. I'm sure our journaling will include some nature. Our unit study is definitely gonna be outside with all of the bugs and creepy-crawly nature as possible. We're gonna be doing some wild outdoor math, like gardening, all of the outdoor springy things that we can do while we have that great weather. And now I would love it if you would tell me what your spring homeschool plans are. Is the weather great where you're at in the spring? Are you still kind of suffering through some winter? Do you bundle up through the next few months? Are you ready to shut it all and go outside and take your homeschool outdoors? I would love it if you would tell me. What is your weather like? What is your homeschool gonna be like and what are your plans?