 However, this year you guys we have hit a roadblock with Abeka Arithmetic 4. I'm going to let you know this writing workshop will not continue with us for the next semester. Hi you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys I'm so excited about today's video because this is our mid-year homeschool curriculum update. So my daughter has worked so hard this year. I feel like she deserves a really serious pat on the back a serious clap brie if you ever go back and look at these videos. I just want to let you know mommy I am so proud of you. You have worked so hard this semester. So you guys um if any of you are new here to my channel again I'm Brittany. I am a homeschooling mom to attend three in a one-year-old. We are in our second year of homeschooling. We are pandemic homeschoolers. We actually started homeschooling due to the global pandemic and now you guys we are in this for the long run and I'm so excited for our journey and I'm so happy to have been documenting our journey thus far. So let's go ahead and get on into all the curriculum that we have used, what we are loving, what is staying and what is going. So I definitely can say our homeschooling style has evolved over the year over the past year that we have started homeschooling. So I'm just happy to see us finally settling into our groove and our rhythm in our homeschool. So you guys I'm going to make sure I do my best to make sure I put chapters into this homeschool mid-year curriculum update because I already know I'm going to go through a lot of curriculum and if you guys want to skip ahead and just maybe see math language art science etc you will have the opportunity to do so. Hopefully this video is not too long but I do want to give you guys as much details as I can because these videos you guys as a new homeschooling mom has been so helpful for me when I've watched them. So I really hope that today's video could help any of you guys that are new searching for a curriculum having problems with your curriculum to kind of just see how things have been going here in our household. So let's go ahead and get on into all of the curriculum. Okay you guys I'm going to go ahead and start off with our toughest subject in our homeschool. I know I'm not the only one which is math. So we actually went through three different math curriculums this year. We landed on our top two so that's the two that I'm going to share with you guys today. The first one is abeca arithmetic four. We did abeca arithmetic three last year. My daughter loved it. She enjoyed it. However this year you guys we have hit a roadblock with abeca arithmetic four just because this says four. I just want to let you guys know this book is primarily fifth grade math. The concepts in abeca they do go really really fast. One thing I will say I love about abeca is abeca does have like a really good like arithmetic spiral where they will spiral back around those concepts. And I think that's why I enjoyed the third grade abeca arithmetic so much because even though they introduced a new concept to her the concept will be reviewed over and over again through multiple lessons. So my daughter definitely does well with the spiral based curriculum. So this was meeting her needs last year. However this year with the introduction of harder concepts in the math going so fast I was finding that I had to start to slow this abeca arithmetic down. So we did a good like I believe it was a good nine ten weeks straight of abeca arithmetic and we were trekking along. We were going good until we hit our first roadblock when it came to three by three digit multiplication. And that was when I really had to reassess this curriculum and really slow this down for my daughter. So what I did was I went ahead and I printed off the simply good and beautiful math four. Now the simply good and beautiful math four you guys this curriculum is really really good. I really like it. I will say I do want to make another video you guys just giving you like a full in depth view of this curriculum my review everything like that. But for the sake of this video and me trying to keep it short and sweet as possible I went ahead and I wrote like a few notes down of some areas of this curriculum that we like and that we dislike. Okay you guys so here right here in my phone I have my initial pros and cons. We are actually on lesson 52 of this curriculum. So I feel like I'm pretty much at the halfway point of this curriculum. I'm past like the honeymoon phase of a new curriculum. So I think that I can give you guys a pretty fair opinion of this curriculum so far. So my pros are I love that this curriculum is independent. My daughter can get started on math without me. Now as far as the Becca arithmetic for my daughter she does need me to get her started and then she's free. So this is kind of like just the reverse she can get started on her own and then after when she finishes the video lesson then she will sometimes need me for the new concept and then she's able to do the review and practice on her own. Another pro that I have is that the lessons are short and simple. This curriculum is very strong in geometry conceptual math and mental math. My cons however that is that it's not enough arithmetic practice for the mastery of just the regular arithmetic skills. That's just my personal opinion. I found that when they were introducing a new concept they would just have a few problems and once they introduced that concept in unit one the second unit a concept that was introduced wasn't introduced again. And I find that my daughter she does need that additional spiral. She definitely needs that additional supplemental practice and that's one thing I love about a Becca is that you have plenty of problems and you have plenty of review in the back. So if it is a concept I am able to just stop and use the problems that they have in the back. However the simply good and beautiful math it doesn't have that. So you will be on a man hunt to find other resources and other areas where you can supplement and find supplemental worksheets to help you guys out on a particular concept. Another con that I have is that I found a few math errors in this book. I mean I think no math curriculum is perfect even in some of these older edition math books. I definitely know you will find some type of errors in it. However I have found a few errors within this simply good and beautiful math four. And also another con that I have of this is that I don't like the answer key. I really like how Becca has the answer key where they show the solution to the problems. In this answer key it just gives you the answer. So if your child got the problem wrong you then as a parent will have to solve about the answer. So you can see where exactly where they got it wrong and you don't have like that full solution. So that is one of my cons about this. I do have a lot more to say about this simply good and beautiful math four. If you guys want me to make a separate video I definitely will. However I will say that this math it is actually working for my daughter. I think no math curriculum and no curriculum in itself is perfect. And I think you really have to take the pros and the cons with it. But I will say putting these two curriculums together has been a good marry for my daughter. So right now we're doing four lessons of the simply good and beautiful math four and we're doing one lesson of the Becca arithmetic four. Sometimes we will do three and two so it just depends. However I know by the end of the school year we will have this one this math curriculum finished and this math curriculum. A Becca arithmetic four has 170 lessons. I looked at it and I just calculated from where we are at. We probably will end off the school year in about a lesson a hundred in this book. So my daughter is doing good. These two curriculums they work for her so I'm just going to stick with what works for her. However next school year for fifth grade I'm not too sure how I really feel about the simply good and beautiful math four if we will continue with five or not. So I'm still kind of like up in the air with it but for right now it is working. Okay you guys let's go ahead and get into language arts. Now language arts you know of course it has like a plethora of categories spelling grammar writing all the things so I'm just going to go ahead and start off with our main grammar and composition which has been rod and staff building English series building christians english series. You guys like my daughter she absolutely loves this curriculum and I love it too. I'm going to be real honest with you guys. I really don't have many cons with this curriculum. The only con that I can think for someone else coming into this curriculum will be that you do have to get your kids started off with the lesson. They can't just read this on their own and get started. You will have to do like the oral drill kind of get them set up and then they will be independent after that. However I am finding that for me as far as my instruction time it's really uh it really varies. It's between like eight ten minutes has been the longest I've spent on a unit with my daughter on a lesson with my daughter before she is off on her own but for the most part I would say it's really between six to eight minutes of my parent time before she's independent. I love how simple the instructions are. I love the oral drills in the beginning. It really gets her brain thinking and it really has a good way of bringing in those concepts from previous chapters and bringing them into the new lesson. I really will say that this uh grammar curriculum it's very thorough. It is it's really strong. This is like a older Mennonite English curriculum so you will have like older terms and different things like that. It's really simple. It's black and white. It's no fancy frills. However just the the way that the text is written it's really simple and my daughter she really loves these English lessons so Rod and Staff I think honestly you guys this curriculum is probably here to stay for the long run because that's how much my daughter loves it so Rod and Staff it has been amazing for us. Now as far as spelling you guys we went ahead and we did Evan Moore's building spelling. This spelling skills has been amazing. I love the fact that it has like the spelling dictation. It has the word study. It has like cross work puzzle. It has activities and it's really really simple and easy. My daughter is able to get done spelling in like 10 minutes top. I will say my daughter she actually completed this whole book this semester so this is the spelling grade four. I do have the next level up however because my daughter is really really strong in spelling. I decided to finish to to not do any more spelling for this remaining school year and to go ahead and pull out our new wordly wise. So we will be starting wordly wise. How I think I'm going to use this wordly wise is going to be kind of like a vocabulary and spelling so the vocabulary where she has for the week I will turn those into a spelling lesson like test her on the words how to spell them and their meaning at the end of the week so this is going to replace this right here for this semester. I haven't tried wordly wise just yet so this is going to be our first time trying it. I heard good things about it so hopefully we will enjoy it as well. It looks simple and to the point so I think my daughter is going to like it but as far as our review on Evan Moore's building spelling we are going to continue with this spelling series until we level out. It has been amazing. So as far as reading comprehension you guys we use these reading tests from Scholastics for reading comprehension. It has the reading comprehension part. It has a portion where it has vocabulary for synonyms and antonyms and this reading comprehension skills has really been amazing for my daughter. I've noticed her skills as far as reading comprehension get better and better as she has gone through the test. We actually work on these tests on Friday. She does one test a week and we are actually done with this grade level four. This booklet has 15 tests in it so of course we we finished them all this first semester. So for second semester I went ahead and I purchased the next set which is the written test grade five. So she's going to go ahead and start this one off in January. So I'm so excited for us to continue with these reading comprehension. If you guys need a short simple reading comprehension straight to the point paragraphs multiple choice questions this simple workbook is really really for you. This book is only like $3.99 so it's definitely worth the money. My daughter loves it. It's simple. It's to the point and no complaints about this. I feel like it's getting the job done. Now as far as handwriting you guys we continue with handwriting without tears. We did handwriting without tears cursive last year so this is the second part of their cursive book which is the cursive success. My daughter loves it. One thing I will say that she does or she told me that she did enjoy about the handwriting without tears is that she likes how it actually gives them the full instructions on how to create the cursive and the writing. She really enjoys that. My daughter she's still working on mastering her cursive however I have seen such big improvement with her cursive handwriting this school year so we didn't do this as faithfully as we did last school year. However this semester I told my daughter we are going to pull this bad boy out and we're going to get more consistent with it. So handwriting without tears it's been amazing no tears so yeah. Now as far as writing goes for my daughter if you guys are not new here to my channel you already know writing is my daughter's favorite subject. For writing what we started off doing was I gave my daughter this plain composition notebook and I just allowed her to go ahead and just write anything short stories poetry whatever she is feeling for that day I give her free brains as far as writing and from here I really have found that it has given and allowed my daughter to create that stamina when it came with when it comes to her writing. She just has a really natural knack for it. One thing I will say is that I was really looking for some more type of I guess formal instruction when it came to writing for my daughter just because I did like her doing like her daily journal and doing things like that but I felt like she needed something else. So you guys I went ahead and I printed off the writing workshop from the Good and the Beautiful level four and she did this writing workshop she did all the way up until let's see we made it to lesson 37 in this writing workshop and you guys I am going to let you know this writing workshop will not continue with us for the next semester and it's actually not anything wrong with this writing workshop while we're not going to continue it this writing workshop you guys is really amazing if even if you have like a reluctant writer I really feel like the way that the writing workshop gives the instructions it's really really great it really gets your kids thinking and it really just gives them that confidence and that stamina to start writing words on the paper so I really did enjoy the writing workshop however I'm just finding that with my door just having a natural knack for writing doing things like her daily writing journal her actually typing up stories on the computer she's actually getting that formal writing in without needing like that formal curriculum one thing that we have done is that some of her creative writing I will print it off after she's typed it and we go over the errors she has made as far as punctuation and run on sentences and commas and different things that she has learned within her grammar we have been just doing it that way and I'm finding by giving her this writing workshop I'm actually giving her just busy work because she is naturally getting her writing in in various subjects my daughter actually completed a really big project this first semester she did a african mammals project where she had to research six african mammals she had to find credible sources she had to be able to turn in information into her own words she had to it was a lot of things she had to do with that writing project and I really found that by her doing something outside of a formal curriculum she actually was able to learn so much more with writing so for this next semester I'm going to do the same thing for her writing I am going to continue to allow her to do her daily writing I think this semester I may give her like some writing prompts um and she will continue to write in different areas like science and I definitely know she will continue to write within history so that is what we're going to do for writing as far as next semester like I said I just think because she is more of a natural writer I can just take various places where she has written in and work on that writing instruction instead of giving her some type of separate curriculum however I will go ahead and let you guys know is that I think next year is going to be my last year giving her formal grammar instructions and I think from then from there moving forward because she does like writing so much I will just have her just do writing for English as she gets into middle school so you guys let's go ahead and get on into science so for science we actually did God's design for life world of animals and you guys I absolutely love this by masterbooks these lessons in this science book was like so short so simple to the point I really really enjoyed it I actually paired it with a really cute interactive science notebook that um I had my daughter do instead of using the teacher guide with the worksheets I just took the questions from the teacher guide and we've been making a creative interactive science composition and she's been enjoying that but you guys these lessons they're short they're sweet I love the comprehension check at the end it really uh it really gets uh Brielle thinking and it just really uh gave me the uh I guess encouragement that she is comprehending her written comprehension skills are good she was able to answer the questions and if she didn't know the question I would have her go back through the text and find the answer to the question and it just really worked on those written comprehension skills as well um the lessons the way did they word it it just pulls you into the stories and um this is really really good I cannot wait for us to start the human body next we have a few more um lessons left in the world of animals but you guys this right here is a keeper I think we want to go ahead and continue with the rest of the masterbook series uh to some people one thing I will say a con might be is some people might feel like you're just reading a text and that's it they do have some activities but it's not like heavily activity and experiment based so that's something that you're looking for this may not be for you but if you just want a short simple lesson maybe a few activities sprinkled in here and there this science curriculum is definitely for you now as far as science goes we also did a few lessons of the mammal science unit from the good and the beautiful you guys I like this but my only con about this is that every single lesson had some type of activity that had to cut get prep get prepared and I found that a lot of times when it came to do science I would just put it off just because I didn't want to have to do the extra work that was required from the good and the beautiful science now I will say the good and the beautiful science I mean it is good it's nice um it's really hands on base it will have an experiment every single lesson you will have something that you have to cut you have to glue some type of experiment you're going to do every single lesson so you as the mom if you have the stamina to do that every single time it comes time for science if you don't have like younger kids like me uh where you don't have to really worry about that you really have like all school age kids this science curriculum may be uh good for you however I personally find that now in the season of life that I'm in I uh am not picking this up as much just because I know the amount of effort that it's going to require of me um again this is these science units they are good I like the way the information is presented one con that I will have with this is that I don't like that this science curriculum doesn't have any type of uh I guess reinforcement any type of knowledge checks any type of like comprehension questions at the end you're just presenting the information to your kid and that's it if that's something that's not important to you I think you wouldn't mind this but as far as me when we did the gods design for life because this was my second um science curriculum trying I actually used the good and the beautiful science units for our first year of homeschooling so when I was able to try a science unit that had like those comprehension checks and and um had those things I realized that that was something that was important to me that the good and the beautiful science units don't have so um yeah and another thing too I also liked about masterbooks is that they do have like a final exam at the end so if you do want to give your kid like a quiz or a test they do have that if that's important to you as far as me it is important for me to see and attest my daughter's knowledge just because in the state of Georgia I do have to give my daughter standardized tests every three years and I just definitely want to make sure when that standardized testing time comes that um I can really see what information my daughter graphs and what information she um has retained with this however I can't see that unless I make up my own test and quizzes to go with it so that was something that was important to me so these science units I mean they are great if you are looking for just all the time doing some type of experiment hands-on learning then these will be for you but if you're like me you just need a short simple sweet science lesson then I will definitely go with masterbook now as far as history you guys we have definitely done more of a geography based history this school year we have done the amazing Africa unit by the heritage mom blog and you guys we definitely have been enjoying this amazing Africa unit this is just taking us through each country we are reading picture books we are learning more about each and every country after we learn about each country I have my daughter color a flag and she writes a paragraph about what she learned about the country some of these uh in this unit some of the countries have videos that we are watching to go along with it and it's really been amazing it's really uh given my daughter a chance to experience another country and she has definitely been lovin this I wanted to be finished with this amazing Africa by the end of this semester however you guys we have about eight more weeks left of this so we're actually not going to be finished with this until the end of February which honestly I don't really mind now because we are going to get a chance to finish this during black history month which is going to be kind of like amazing so um yeah so we will have this finished by the end of February and then after that I do have the beautiful feet early American um or early American intermediate history I already have that it's up here in my um curriculum uh hall my curriculum storage back here so I do have that ready to go for us to start American history if we will start it however I'm kind of contemplating I really don't know if we are going to start American history this year or if we're just going to wait until the fifth grade um honestly we're just going to kind of see uh as far as the amazing Africa goes I do have my daughter do like some geography uh workbook lessons we have a maps and geography workbook that I have that we go through and she does do like some geography as well so like I said this year has definitely been more so a heavy geography year for us than actual history so I'm not too sure like I said if we will start American history in March or if we'll just save it for August so we will kind of like just go from there so the last piece of curriculum that I'm going to show you guys is actually art we actually have started this living art lessons from masterbooks and you guys this is amazing if you don't know where to go where to start for art this is really the way to go I really love how it talks about the different elements of art it really pulls the kids in I'm not too sure about masterbooks but they have a way of their words and their texts and it's not boring and it's exciting for the kids and it really grabs them in I really like the um workbook that goes along with this now if you don't want to buy the extra workbook that goes along with this you don't have to because inside of here it has like all of the instructions for the art project so I'm really excited to continue with this I definitely know we're not going to finish this full curriculum this year which honestly in my opinion is great because I can continue art with my daughter for next year so if you're looking for art simple sweet doesn't require much of you if you guys are catching a trim with me that's definitely it this right here is definitely for you so I really have been enjoying these living art lessons um let me see oh yeah you guys as far as other electives you guys my daughter has done piano through Hoffman Academy she's doing really really great I believe my daughter is in unit four of the Hoffman Academy so she's learning how to play the piano so that is another elective that she's doing and the last elective that we do is typing.com my daughter is doing great with it she's actually on the advanced level of typing.com she finished the beginner and the intermediate units in that typing.com if you guys don't know typing.com is a free typing curriculum online it's interactive it has the fun games I think it really gets the kids ready and excited for typing they do have ads on it however I find the ads don't really bother my daughter she just tinkers away at it I will say my daughter's little typing is getting fast when she is doing like her creative writing her story writing her little keys is making noise and I'm like okay she really has learned a lot from that typing program so it definitely has been amazing so you guys that's everything that is all of the curriculum that we have done this school year so you guys even though we did have a rocky start starting off our school year I will say that um it has been successful we have found what works for us finally and I feel like we are just trucking along and I'm so excited I'm excited for next semester I know we can do it I know we can end this year strong so you guys I really hope today's video was helpful to any of you guys and I really hope that getting a glimpse of these curriculums and seeing what worked and what didn't work for us could possibly help you guys as always you guys I look forward to seeing everybody next year 2022 will be everyone's year so as always you guys please don't forget to comment like and subscribe I hope you guys all have a great new year bye