 Hey everybody! Welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be our fall homeschool plans for the 2022-2023 homeschool year. You guys, I cannot believe I'm homeschooling a fifth grader this year. That is so surreal to me but I'm very excited about all of the really awesome materials we're going to be using in the study we're going to be doing this fall in our homeschool. Now when I say that this is what we're going to be doing for fall in our homeschool I'm referring to the months September October and November. I have found over the years that our homeschool has kind of a natural ebb and flow and I have learned to just plan for that. So it seems like in the fall and the spring we are a little more heavy on academics, we're over the holidays, and in the summer we're a little more relaxed and so I just try to plan kind of to the season of our lives. So for fall for September October and November this is what we're going to be using. Keep in mind this is the plan and obviously things are subject to change. This is just what I'm hoping that we'll do and what me and Emily have sat down and discussed that she would like to do. The main resource that we'll be using for the fall is Greek Heroes and Myths. This is going to be covering a ton for us this year because we will be reading all five of the Percy Jackson books and included in Greek Heroes and Myths is comprehension questions, writing projects, language skills that cover figurative language as well as parts of speech and we will be learning history and geography along with like Greek mythology and where Percy's traveling during the books. So it is a little bit of everything. We will be doing a ton of subjects and skills and concepts within just this one unit study. So it's actually going to be a big part of our language arts, a big part of our geography, a big part of our history, really just about everything except math. In addition to Greek Heroes and Myths, Emily will continue to work on her Curse of Handwriting with handwriting without tears. We will also continue to incorporate fun things like mail time and journaling into our home school. Those have both become really near and dear to our hearts. We love sitting down and having that time to connect together and I kind of love the outcome of them. So when we're doing our mail time, we're reading our subscription letters together and then we're writing letters to friends and family. That might be birthday cards, it might be get well cards, it may be just a friendly letter, but either way it's a way to encourage and connect with the people around us and that is so important in this busy day and age. And journaling is kind of the same thing. We're sitting down and we're writing some of our favorite memories. We're putting stickers in together, we're practicing real world personal writing, but we are also really, really scrapbooking those memories and I cannot wait to look at them years from now. I absolutely love it. I feel like both of those things are academic, but they're also so much more than that. We will also be utilizing it too of our favorite programs that we've been using for years here at the Waldeck Way and that'll be night zookeeper and teaching textbooks. I love that both of these are easy for Emily to do 100% without me. So they're great for days that I'm not feeling well, that I'm busy or that we're on the go. So I don't have to bring a lot of resources with us. It means we can get writing and math done pretty much no matter what. And we will be also including tons of extra stuff pretty much in all subjects. If you watched our back to school hall, you know that, well, I bought it all. So we will be using those hands-on resources, the books, and the games to really round out and enrich our homeschool and make sure that we're covering all of the skills and concepts that I want her to cover in a fun, interactive, and engaging way. Now for classes this semester, Emily is going to be participating in a book club with Mary Hannah Wilson on out school. She's actually participating in two book clubs this semester. She will be doing her eight to 10 year old fiction club as well as her 11 to 13 year old fiction book club. Emily was kind of in between and was sad to see that some of her friends moved up in the age group and wanted to move up with them, but she also didn't want to leave the friends that were staying. So basically, we ended up with two. So I have the books that they will be reading this semester. Again, this is September, October, and November. So for those months, they will be reading and then doing a book club on Frendle, Juliette, and the Diamond of Enigma because of Wendixie, The Wednesday Wars, When You Reach Me, Orphan XI, and The Wings of Fire. Now I have not decided which of these yet that I will read aloud versus which one she will read. Basically, my distinction for that is and always will be if I want to read them. So if I want to enjoy the story, then I will just read it aloud so that I get to participate. And if I'm like, eh, I'm okay, then I will just have her read it without me. So again, I don't know which of these I will read aloud versus which one she will be reading. I just know that they will all be read during this semester of our home school. In addition to book clubs, she'll also be taking her beloved Lego class with Miss Bethany that is Interactive Bricks. I'm going to link all of this stuff in the description box, you guys, so you don't have to try to remember it. She absolutely loves those classes, though. She gets inspired to build. She gets to show off her build, so she's going to continue to take those. And then we are going to be trying out two in-person classes this year. I will let you guys know if we continue to do them. One of which is an art class, so it meets two to three times a month. And basically during the art class, they would learn about a specific artist and then recreate some sort of art masterpiece inspired by them. And then the other one are zoo classes. I was going to say our local zoo, but you guys, we live in the middle of nowhere. Nothing is local to us. The most local zoo we have is over an hour away, but they do home school zoo classes once a month. And so Emily has already gone through and put little check marks by the ones she wants to do the most, which, well, is pretty much all of them. So we're going to do one and see how it goes, see if she likes it, see if it's worth the drive, and then we will go from there as far as that goes. And then subscriptions. You guys know that we absolutely love subscriptions. We love our letters, but I'm going to share with you the box subscriptions that we're going to be continuing to get through the fall. Sometimes our subscription boxes change, sometimes they stay the same. This is pretty much our staple subscriptions. And then we just added a new one. So the subscriptions that we will be utilizing in the fall are Mel chemistry. This is one that Kevin and Emily absolutely love. They do a STEM lesson once a week, at least once a week, sometimes more. And these are some of the boxes they use for that. This is Mel physics. And then they actually upgraded this year from the Tinker crate with Kiwi Co to the Eureka crate. Now, Eureka crate is supposed to be for 14 plus. Obviously Emily's only 10, but they like doing it together. And so since she has Kevin's help, they'll be upgrading to the higher quality and older age range box. Emily's personal favorite is her my zoo box. That comes with a book and a stuffed animal and an activity. I think her favorite part is the stuffed animal, if we're being honest, but it's okay. She gets to learn about a new animal each month and she gets a new stuffed animal to add to her already giant, overflowing stuffed animal beanbag. In addition to my zoo box, my personal favorite is our universal yums. We get snacks from a new country every month. It's one of our family favorite activities to do to sit down and eat the snacks together. We find it on the map. We listen to the playlist of the music that they've chosen. We laugh, we make horrible faces that some of the snacks we don't like. It is a all around awesome family night that happens to teach a ton of geography in the process. They include trivia questions. It is just absolutely really one of our favorites. It's probably the subscription box that we've had the absolute longest. And then the new box that we are adding this year is history unboxed. We decided to start at the beginning. So we are starting with the ancient subscription. They have ancient medieval and American history. So you could get the history subscription that went along with maybe what you were already learning in your home school. Since we were doing Greek mythology, we figured ancients would tie in really well with that. And it's just kind of fun hands-on projects that have to do with that specific time period. So we're trying that one out. If you would like to see inside one of those boxes, let me know down in the comments and I will see about filming a look inside for you so you can kind of see what's in it. But that is pretty much it. Now I would love it if you would tell me what your fall home school plans are in the comments. Have you already started back to school? Are you like me and you're holding on to summer with all of your might and not starting until later? Or have you just been like I'm in total summer mode and I don't even know what I'm doing for our home school year yet? Either way, I would love to know.