 Hi you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys happy new years. This is my first video of the 2024 year and I wanted to go ahead and kick started off with my mid-year curricula reviews. So in today's video I will be reviewing my sixth graders core curricula and in my next video I will be reviewing my kindergarten and my preschools curricula and how things have been going with them. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel again my name is Brittany. I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls and we are in our fourth year of homeschool. So you guys I want to go ahead and thank Oak Metal for sending me over their great six curricula in exchange for my honest opinion and my honest reviews. I really have been holding in like all of my thoughts and my opinions of Oak Metal's curriculum to save it for today's video. I really wanted to make like an initial like curriculum review of Oak Metal but I changed my mind. I wanted to give you guys a more thorough review and I finally have the opportunity you guys in today's video to really share with you my thoughts my opinions and how things have been going with us with using Oak Metal's great six curricula. So one thing I definitely will say is I have never used a curriculum quite like Oak Metal. I really love the critical thinking. I love the creativity. I love just the exploration aspect of this curriculum. It really keeps the child in mind. I love the independence of it. I love the fact that at this level I am just coming in on the back end of my daughter's education and she's able to really take the lead and facilitate her own education. Just the amount of research she has been doing this semester the writing the art it really has been a fruitful year for us using Oak Metal and I just really have been having so much fun with it. I love the variety of the weeks that Oak Metal offers. No one week is quite the same and one thing I really have appreciated about Oak Metal is when my daughter is coming from writing like a big research paper the next week in Oak Metal is pretty light. So it's really given you know her a chance to breathe after writing like a big paper. She really can just I guess enjoy whatever independent assignment reading she's doing have more like art and hands-on projects that week especially coming after the bigger assignments and I appreciate the way that the creators put together the weeks. One thing I definitely will say was a learning curve for me in starting Oak Metal was the fact that Oak Metal is not really an open and go curriculum where it tells you what to do Monday through Friday. I really had to come in and divvy out the assignments per week with my daughter on Mondays and that was my biggest learning curve but now that we are halfway through the curriculum it really is a piece of cake for me to kind of like look ahead see and let my daughter choose whatever assignment she wants to do for the week and then help her make the plan in her agenda so we can go ahead and accomplish you know the full week of the Oak Metal's curricula. So that was my learning curve in it but now it's really second nature and I really have been enjoying just that aspect of me having full control and autonomy over I guess the assignments and the things that I really feel like my daughter needs to hone in and focus on when it comes to her education. So you guys we're gonna go ahead and kick starts talking about Oak Metal with their math. So we are doing Oak Metal's Math 6 curriculum along with Math UC. Now since I already found the math curriculum that is working well with my daughter I did not want to do a math switch for her however since we are in a testing year for the state of Georgia I really wanted to go ahead and incorporate Oak Metal's Math 6 curriculum because Oak Metal's Math 6 is a spiral curriculum and Math UC is more of a mastery so she's still able to get that spiral review in preparation for her test. So while we are not using this curriculum the way it's designed I still can I guess appreciate the way that the math is set up and if we didn't already have a math program that was working well for her I definitely can see this being our full on math curricula for her. If I had to compare this to any other math homeschooling math curriculum out there I definitely will compare it to Saxon Math this is just a simplified version of it to start off each week they have a mental math section they have the lesson where the kiddos will read they have the skill check the lesson practice and at the end of each week they have a math test that the kiddos are going to be doing this is independent and student led where the kids can do the assignments by themselves however the mental math games some of them are like a playing game with cards you may want to go ahead and do like the mental math section with the kids and then they're like off on their own so I really really can appreciate that about this math curricula. My only con about the Oak Metal's Math so far that I have seen since we've completed half of it is that I wish there were a little bit more challenging work problems in this curricula. Other than that it definitely is a solid curriculum in the later years of Oak Metal's Math they do phase out the Oak Metal's Math and they incorporate Saxon Math and I definitely can see this curricula preparing them for Saxon in the future so definitely thumbs up for their math curriculum it definitely has been a great addition for us in our home school incorporation with my daughter's primary math which is math you see. Now I will be making a separate video you guys all about math you see our experience so do not worry you will get the nitty gritty when it comes to math and how it's going for us in our home school. So you guys now for the start of the show my most favorite part of Oak Metal's curriculum and I believe my daughter's favorite part of Oak Metal's curriculum definitely has to be their English and their history. Now in Oak Metal's Grade 6 their English and their history component is combined along with literature and it marries so well together you guys. I really love the take on you know combining your English and your history together whatever vocabulary words my daughter is doing in the English it matches with the vocabulary reading that she's doing each week in the history and it just goes along so well and I love that component of it. So for the first semester in English what we've went over so far has been note-taking and citations my daughter's went over the writing process she's done short story writing expository essays and she ended off the year with a comparative essay. So I'm going to go ahead or the semester I should say with a comparative essay so I'm going to go ahead and you guys and share with you the literature that she has read this semester so far which has been Maru of the Winter Caves she's read The Golden Bull she's read Once There Was Twice There Was the Rainbow People and the last book that we read when we went over Ancient Rome was The Bronze Bow. Now this is actually one of Oak Meadow's alternate reading because when my daughter started reading The Eagle of the Knife she wasn't into it at all and in my home school you guys I definitely want my kiddos to read things that they can like enjoy. I know not everything is going to be enjoyable but one thing I did appreciate about Oak Meadow is that for each of the book selections they have three alternate books that the kiddos can read. So I chose the first alternate book for Ancient Rome which was The Bronze Bow and we read it together and it was a really really great book in talking about Ancient Rome. So I'm so happy that Oak Meadow does have those alternate reads for the kiddos especially in this circumstance. So those were all of the independent novels that my daughter read as far as the reference book that we read together when we went over Ancient Greece we used this book the DeLaris book of Greek myths and we really really enjoyed this book as well as our reference book when we were in Ancient Greece. So those are all of the literature books she's read and I mean I feel like that's a hefty stack for the first semester and she said she enjoyed all of the books. None of the books was like bad except for she really didn't like The Eagle of the Knife but other than that she really really enjoyed all of them she got into them. One thing about Oak Meadow is they give the kiddos anywhere between three to four weeks in the English curricula to finish the um a literature component and at the end of the three weeks they typically have some type of project whether it be a short story uh some comprehension questions uh whether they want them to do some type of artwork they have some a variety of activities that the kiddos do at the end of each novel which I definitely can appreciate. One thing I will say that I wanted a little bit more is at the end of each novel in the English it would have been nice at the end of each week they would have some type of comprehension or a weekly recap of the novel especially if you have a kiddo that may be struggling with like reading comprehension or you really want to follow up with that kiddo when it comes with like the novel and the reading but because my daughter's strength is English I really didn't find it uh hard to follow up with her with the book at the end of the three weeks but for someone else I think they definitely would like that weekly check-in with the book but I will say you definitely can't do the projects at the end of the book if you didn't read it so um if you do have a kiddo that is like struggling with their comprehension I would definitely suggest instead of giving them the novels to read on their own to do some type of shared reading so you can kind of like follow up with them on a weekly basis when it comes to their independent assigned reading. Now the Oak Meadows English includes vocabulary spelling grammar and writing um one thing I will say is as far as the grammar goes I definitely wanted more of like a daily practice and review for my daughter as far as grammar so I added an affix it grammar for like her daily review and practice um the grammar lessons in here they're really really cool because they allow the kids to write their own sentences they're pulling out their own parts of speeches the clauses um any all of the things that they're doing it's really from their own sentences that they're writing is how they're pulling the grammar aspect in it which is really really cool but I do still want her to have that daily practice of grammar review so I went ahead and added an affix it grammar for her as well but they do do the grammar very very innovative and I really enjoy it as well so we do a combination of both when it comes to the grammar aspect of it as far as the vocabulary I love how they have the kiddos writing the vocabulary in context they write sentences they do crossword puzzles one of the assignments that my daughter loved the most with the vocabulary is when she had to take her vocabulary words and write a poem and her poem came out so well and it was so crazy how you definitely want to make sure when it comes to vocabulary the kids are understanding and comprehending it and knowing how to use those vocabulary words in context and when she had to write a poem using the vocabulary words it definitely took her outside the box but she used all the words in context and vocabulary is definitely an aspect that I have been focusing on with my daughter this year and I definitely know doing this like non-traditional take with vocabulary has been really sticking with her and I really really have been enjoying that when it's coming to the Oak Meadows English so I definitely love the incorporation of the vocabulary and the spelling and things like that that they do go ahead and already have together in the English component now one thing I will say is that Oak Meadow does give the kids a variety of writing and writing instruction but I'm gonna be honest I feel like if anything that they're lacking in in their English is that specific writing instruction and I would definitely say if your kiddo hasn't had any type of formal writing instruction before entering this level I definitely can see where they may struggle with the writing assignments that they offer in the Oak Meadows curriculum because you guys they just really get in straight to the point now my daughter had previous experience using IEW as her like formal writing curriculum in the fifth grade and it definitely gave her the skills to be able to take those ideas and thoughts and really begin to write in a different way especially when they had her writing opinion pieces or the short stories or her research papers she really was able to take that model from IEW that she learned and I really feel like she didn't struggle at all when it came to the writing aspect of this curriculum however I can see if a kiddo hasn't had any formal writing instruction they may kind of struggle a little bit with the writing because it's pretty intense in this level I mean some of the papers that my daughter has written I definitely will say um I didn't write papers with citations and things like that until high school so it definitely is preparing them for those upper levels of writing and critical thinking in the English and um I definitely appreciate the way IEW breaks down the writing in comparison to Oak Meadow but um if you do have some type of writing instruction previous you definitely will be okay with the Oak Meadows English now when they wrote the papers in the Oak Meadows English it was about the ancient civilizations that they were reading so so far in the ancient civilizations what we've went over has been early human culture we went over ancient cultures of Africa Asia and Middle East we went over ancient Greece and Roman empires and also we went over ancient systems of government religion and philosophy was all the aspects that we covered in the ancient civilizations which you guys like I don't know if it's just ancient history or not but I really have appreciated studying ancient history it's been so much fun and my daughter definitely has enjoyed the ancient history aspect of it she really really enjoyed the reading selections when it came to the ancient civilizations I really feel like when she had to do her reading assignments the ancient history was really written directly to the student it was engaging I really love when the text and the textbook is engaging and it's not just like a bunch of boring facts she was able to then take what she read to either do like some critical thinking questions or to work on her writing essays that they gave her for the essays again I don't know if I mentioned this but they would give the kiddos anywhere between two and three weeks to write the specific essays within Oak Meadows so they definitely gave them enough time to do research you guys we was at the library a lot this year when it came to like getting my daughter all the information that she needed to write the research papers she learned how to find credible sources and not just to you know look for Wikipedia it was really cool being able to take her to a library teacher how to you know find the books and look for the catalog numbers and things like that so it really taught her proper researching skills when it came to the history now at the end of each week in the ancient civilizations there was always some type of like art or hands-on project that she can choose from and she typically chose the art so I'm going to share with you guys some of her art projects that she did so this right here is the first one I'm going to show you is what she did when we went over ancient Rome this is of course the ancient Colosseum or the Roman Colosseum she really enjoyed doing this art piece when we was in ancient Greece she drew a Trojan horse isn't this cool you guys when we went over ancient Greece as well she made like clay pot or a clay figurine so she really enjoyed doing this one this is a ziggurat she drew earlier when we were in ancient Egypt she did a bamboo art when we went over ancient China she really enjoyed this I found the tutorial on YouTube for this ancient bamboo art painting and she had so much fun with this one when we were in ancient India she had an opportunity to draw an instrument so she drew this a sitar and I think she did an awesome job she used crayons with this one some of the art pieces she used different types of things like with this piece right here when we were on ancient Persia she used pastels with this one right here this is her hanging Babylonian garden that she made she also had to write the Ten Commandments in cursive when we went over the ancient Israelites she did an awesome job with that one this is her early caveman painting that she did she actually used oil pastels with this one she used chalk pastels when she drew the Great Pyramids and this is one of her illustrations of her folktale that she read when she finished off her novel once there was twice there was so you guys those are all of the art pieces and projects that she's done with the Oak Mills curriculum the ancient history and ancient civilizations which has been awesome we also have kept an ancient history timeline so this is her timeline that she used we just used our school nest notebook and as we were going over each of the periods she glued in each aspect that she was learning in ancient times so now that we are at the halfway point of the ancient civilizations we are going into medieval times so hopefully she will enjoy like the medieval history that we're going to be going over early Renaissance while we are finishing up this curriculum I believe it ends us off on the early explorers and the Mayans is where we're going to end off and then front in the seventh grade year it goes into world history so I definitely can see the natural flow for these middle school years when it comes to their curricula so you guys that is the math the English and the history so now we are going to go into their oak metals basic life science one thing I would definitely say about oak metal science is that it really has a lot of curiosity and expiration when it comes to it I really love the way that they had the kiddos doing like a lot of their diagramming and drawings one thing I will say is my con about the oak metals science is that the textbook isn't in color as the history is and I really wish that they had more like live pictures and things similar to the history when it came to the science um I definitely will say this science is very rigorous um they have the kiddos using microscopes the critical thinking it really encompasses the whole child in mind and I definitely love just that new aspect of science however I will say because of the exploration aspect and it wasn't something that I was used to the science didn't work for us as well as the English and the history and the math so I put down the science in November and I'm actually making a science curriculum switch um while the English and the history has been very independent and student led I have been finding that my daughter isn't able to take on the science as well as she has been with the other subjects that oak metal has to offer this definitely is a great science curriculum and I definitely can see myself committing to this if I didn't have you know my younger two kiddos that I am doing school with um it really like I said when we were going over um I forgot I think we were going over the environment one of the weeks they wanted us to actually go to like a watery environment for my daughter to be able to like take in the environment take in the senses and really do like her science journal and sometimes you know really getting out the house and doing those exploration things when it comes to the science it's kind of hard for me um so I definitely will say I was unable to utilize this science curriculum and it's fulfilled like in its fullness as they want it to be used and um I definitely am used to more of a traditional science so we definitely have made a mid-year science curriculum switch to something more traditional for her however in the future I definitely can see us continuing with the science program because it definitely was great the lessons that we did I believe we completed the first two units of the science so we didn't make it too far in it but the lessons that we did do I really really enjoyed doing them with my daughter and she enjoyed them as well it just wasn't our particular take on science that we personally enjoy so you guys this is my mid-year curricula review for my sixth grader we really have gotten into a lot of things this year um I definitely will say this has been my most fruitful year when it has come to our home school and I definitely will say it really is because of oak meadow um I can't come up with all of this stuff on my own in the past you guys um I never really relied on an all-in-one curriculum I always was pulling pieces together for myself and having a curriculum all-in-one I definitely can appreciate that now um I just love that I don't have to think or do any of the work it's all done for me we just have to come in choose what we want to do and follow the plan and it's been so much fun um so I hope you guys enjoyed like my review on oak meadow I will be giving you guys my final review on oak meadow when we complete it and I will show you guys all of the papers everything that my daughter has gotten up to at the end of the year with oak meadow and I really hope that this video answered all of your questions or maybe take your curiosity when it comes to their curriculum so you guys thank you so much for watching today's video and as always I will look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye