 Hi you guys! My name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys, in today's video I'm going to share with you my October homeschool update. This month has been amazing and I cannot wait to share with you guys all the details and everything that has happened for us within our homeschooling month of October. So if you're interested then go ahead and stay tuned for today's video. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel, again my name is Brittany. I am a mom of three. I have a nine three and a one year old and I'm actually in my second year of homeschooling and I only have one homeschool age child right now who is Brielle. She is in fourth grade. So I am very excited to get right on into this update and the first thing I want to share with you guys are our book highlights. So right now you guys we are actually reading packs. It has been amazing. By the time you guys are actually watching this video we would have completed this book packs but it has definitely been a good fall story. I definitely would recommend it to all. My daughter wants to listen to more and more chapters on Audible of this one and you guys it really has been amazing. I have really been enjoying following Peter and Pax's adventure. So Pax has definitely been a good read aloud and our read aloud highlight for this month. Now we also went ahead and added in a second read aloud for this month which has been Little House on the Prairie. We read the first two books of Little House on the Prairie last year. We read Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. So we just are continuing on our Little House on the Prairie series and I think this is going to be the book we're going to read this year for our Little House on the Prairie. So the first chapter was really really good. My daughter enjoyed it and I have really been enjoying just the nostalgia of reading just older time periods and settings and it's really amazing just to see all the things that these pioneers had to go through and I really enjoy listening to these stories as well. So read aloud this month again Pax Little House on the Big Woods amazing I love them. Now as far as other read alouds that we have been enjoying this month has definitely been poetry. We have been focusing on a poet this month who has been Maya Angelou and this has been an amazing addition to our homeschool and into our like reading time and everything like that. We have actually done our first poetry tea time you guys and it was amazing. We read a lot of poems from Maya Angelou and my daughter just loved it. I actually was snapping my hands and I was saying come on Bree let's get some free verses going on and I just really have been enjoying introducing poetry to my daughter and she has been loving it as well. So poetry for young people by Maya Angelou has definitely been a hit. Another poetry book we have been reading this month has been Ashley Bryant's ABCs of African American Poetry. So these two poetry books have definitely been a win in our household. I cannot wait to continue poetry time and continue to read the rest of these poems from Maya Angelou. Now as far as independent readers and things like that my daughter has been reading she has really been enjoying this series called All Eyes on Lena. She is actually on book two which is Daydreams and Movie Screens. This book or this book series you guys has been really amazing for my daughter and it's really been a good wholesome read. I'm just going to go ahead and just take out a minute just to read to you guys the synopsis and what the books is actually about. So it says with her little sister's Ainsley Ashton and Amber and her mischievous pup Austin constantly at her side Lena must face the challenges of everyday life while chasing her newfound dream of being an actress on the big screen. Keeping her hopes high and her feet on the ground Lena tackles life's tough choices learns the values of perseverance and holds her faith and family in heart while making her way to the stars. You guys this book and these book series has been amazing for my daughter. You guys my daughter came to me and she read to me one of the chapters and it was amazing because at the end of the chapter I don't know if you guys can see it but it's a little prayer that Lena she prayed to God at the end of her day just thanking him for whatever she was going through. She either thanked him or she was praying about a different challenge she was faced and I did not realize when I first bought this series how much it was going to incorporate faith within these books and so far they have been really really good. I definitely would say if you have a daughter between the ages of eight and twelve this would definitely be a good read. It's a good wholesome read and I love my daughter seeing Lena face or being able to or seeing Lena facing challenges throughout her daily life and just different areas where she's finding difficulties and she has to persevere. I really feel like this is a good read for her because it's just gonna show her that in life even though some things may come a little bit hard it doesn't mean that you need to automatically stop. Sometimes that means that you just need to have a little bit more faith believe in God and persevere through those challenging and hard times. So I have really been enjoying her reading this series so again she's on book two and this series has three books. I know she's gonna be sad when it's over but yeah you guys this definitely has been a highlight for Brutal's independent read. Now as far as other highlights this month has definitely been piano. My daughter has actually been able to be consistent on the piano this month. When we first started off homeschool you guys I really feel like I just bogged my daughter down with so much curriculum and you know I talked about it before and I really find that I'm so happy that I made changes where I needed to make changes as far as lightening her load when it comes to curriculum and still allowing her to have that time to pursue her passions and interests and this has actually been the first month she has been consistent with being able to have that time and being able to practice the piano. So we are actually using Hoffman Academy for piano. It actually is a free it's a free app that you can use online but I just went ahead and paid for the membership so I'm able to get like the what is it I'm able to get like the music sheets and all of the additional printables and things like that along with the Hoffman Academy so I just go ahead and I just paid that subscription monthly so she is able to get piano lessons. When I added it all up her that subscription is cheaper than her doing actual piano with an instructor so I feel like for her just as a beginner learning it definitely has been economical and affordable for us to do piano this way. Now if she does show a greater interest in it as she finishes up Hoffman Academy I do know that I will put her in to further instructions but for right now she's really been enjoying it you guys she's playing like court she's playing with both hands and I'm really amazed to see her progress with piano just for her doing Hoffman Academy consistently for one month so she's been enjoying it and I'm really happy that we have lightened our schedule and she's able to do piano which is something she enjoys. Another highlight that I have this month has always been my daughter's writing if you guys aren't new here to my channel you already know my daughter she loves creative writing that is just her passion just I love seeing her come up with her stories and I just love seeing her eyes bright up when she roots me her stories and yeah she's definitely she definitely loves creative writing so in lieu of us doing poetry she actually made a little poetry book and this this book is called a daytime poem and she has all of her poetry poems that she has written throughout the month and I'm going to insert some flip-throughs so you guys can see all of her poems and things like that that she has written over the course of the month so it's really been fun seeing and listening to all the poems she has written. Another thing is she wrote a little short story this month and the short story she wrote this month was called a lion growls and it's been so cute seeing all of the little pictures and things she has illustrated to go along with her short story and you guys I love just giving my daughter the computer and just letting her type and illustrate like all of her pictures and things like that it has definitely been amazing seeing her thrive within her creative writing so yeah now as far as curriculum and everything like that goes you guys everything really has been going good and I'm really grateful I'm really grateful for just how it's been going I know we had a rocky season at the beginning but you guys I just I just can't say it enough how grateful I am that things have smoothed out our daily rhythm with my toddlers it can't get crazy at times but for the most part I really feel like we are trucking along on this homeschooling journey and I feel like I'm family at the point where I can say I'm starting to feel a little bit more confident and I'm feeling like I'm starting to get my groove within homeschooling especially within my second year um and yeah a curriculum that we have been loving my daughter has been loving using uh rod and staff uh great for if you guys have seen either my plan with me videos or my day in the life videos you have seen like a more in-depth view of that curriculum I found it used at the thrift store for only $13 and it's just crazy how um just this simple old school curriculum she has really been enjoying we still have masterbooks level five however we're not picking it up as much we have been really going in headstrong with rod and staff and like I said I don't mind as long as she gets English and she's learning that is all that matters to me I'm really finding myself to be really an eclectic homeschooler I love pulling in uh different resources taking out things and just really utilizing what is going to be best for uh my daughter and for this season that we are in in homeschooling um now with that being set you guys we are actually doing a god's design for life for science and my daughter has really been loving uh studying mammals and uh we went we got to the point where we ended the unit in god's design for life for mammals and she just wanted to learn more and I was going to go out you guys and buy another curriculum buy something off of teacher space teachers I was going to spend more money to get her um something that was going to allow her to continue studying mammals but you guys I just went ahead and I decided to use what I had on my computer I have all of the pdfs and science files from the good and the beautiful I went ahead and I printed off the mammals good and the beautiful unit and you guys we have been doing this and my daughter has been loving it um at the end of the day guys um I think that um this experience has really humbled me this year and I think on my channel I will never say I'm not going to use a particular curriculum or I'm never going to use that what I will say is I will not not use something that's going to work out for my kids no matter the company um just no matter anything at the end of the day my goal is to teach and to educate my kids and to show them the love of god and to really help them be able to have the skills to navigate in this world and I think that um that is going to be my take on any curriculum company um from this point on um at the end of the day you know I know I can harp in my feelings and I can take things personal but I feel like when it comes to my daughter's education I feel like I don't have the opportunity or a luxury to take things personal I feel like uh regardless of where the curriculum comes from I just need to use what's going to best suit my family and uh keep it moving from there so yeah right now we are using um the good and beautiful's mammal unit my daughter has been loving it we're not using it in its entirety I only have pulled out the units that she wants to do because she is doing an African mammals project that is her big project she's going to be doing a presentation for for the end of this semester and um she we're just going through the units of the animals that's going to help her with her presentation and I cannot wait to show you guys um her display board and things like that as she's working on getting her presentation ready for Thanksgiving so um yeah you guys that is uh really where I stand at with everything and um yeah so um I have some more notes of things I want to talk about let's see if I mentioned everything oh as far as my daughter Leia I do have a four-year-old Leia is doing some sorts of uh I guess like preschoolish things um we have really been enjoying using purely preschool right now we are doing the purely preschool fall unit and it has been going amazing even my one-year-old Alana has been doing a lot of activities within it and um it's been great I think in a separate video you guys I am going to make um a preschool update so you guys can kind of see um all the resources I have been using for Leia for preschool I made a video um way back and I showed a lot of resources that are all of the resources that I had but out of all the resources I had you guys I really find myself only picking up my top like maybe five or six favorite things and I just want to make another video showing you those things and showing you guys what you actually do need for preschool because I think um I went a little bit out of hand and I got a little bit excited about doing preschool with Leia and um I'm finding that you really don't need that much you really can keep things simple when it comes to preschool and I cannot wait to share with you guys all the things we have actually been using and um what we have been loving so uh yeah now I did went ahead and I wrote down some goals and things that I have for the rest of our school year because we are actually finishing up week 12 and uh we're almost finished our first uh semester of our second year home schooling and I can't wait to come back to you guys with our mid-year update uh sharing with you guys um um just everything that has happened our first semester and just you know us making it to that halfway point this school year so um yeah so I'm gonna share with you guys some of the goals that I wrote down and some of the goals that I wrote down for this next month and some things that I'm still working on is that me as mom I still want to try to wake up before the kids I have not successfully uh been able to wake up before my daughters um you guys I've been waking up maybe like five ten minutes before them I really want to you know start just trying to wake up 30 minutes before them then an hour before them um sometimes I'm not gonna lie I find it it's more important that I do get my rest so I'm able to tackle the day then to actually wake up before them but I do need to be uh just uh I guess I should say I do need to get those extra few minutes in the morning uh to be able to spend with God and be able to spend with myself just to um be able to be prepared for that day for my kids so that is definitely a goal that I'm still working on another goal that I'm working on you guys is that I want to give myself more grace and it's just so crazy that that's the second one but I wrote down that I want to give myself more grace um I know in my heart you guys I am doing my best um this is definitely a tough season if you guys have any toddlers who are young like my toddlers you know that this season of motherhood is very exhausting and it's very tough and you know as much as I want to give them everything and do everything and do all the activities and go on field trips and go outside more and uh go on nature hikes I really need to uh be mindful of this season and just knowing that it's not always going to be like this and I need to give myself more grace um when it comes to just uh mothering and just knowing that um I am doing my best and um if we can't do all the field trips or if we can't do all the nature hikes and uh things like that it's really okay and I really like I said need to give myself um some grace when it comes to that um another goal that I wrote is I want to get outside even more we have been just going outside in our um front yard and just having the kids um play in our coda sack and I've really been enjoying just that being a part of our daily rhythm I um made a day in a life but I didn't show you guys us actually going outside because that day it was a rainy day but typically um right after our written time in the morning I will have us just go outside get some fresh air sometimes I will put my daughters in their stroller their double stroller and we'll just walk around our neighborhood um we have been really doing good as far as going outside we actually went on a field trip this month we went to the pumpkin patch and it was so much fun um just going to the pumpkin patch and getting the kids outside and everything like that so um that has definitely been like another highlight but I can I want to continue to get my kids outside even you guys as we get into these coda mums I'm just going to bundle them up put their big old puffer jackets on and still allow them that time to be outside and I really hope that I can push it through within these winter months still uh being intentional with getting them outside even if it's just for a few minutes so um yeah and um another one of my goals is I want to take more pictures of us just doing school not necessarily to just post them on instagram and things like that but just to take pictures for myself and for my memories um we have been doing so many fun arts and crafts and um we have just been doing so many fun things throughout our school day and I want to just take out the moments just to take a quick picture just so I can hold on tightly to that memory and I think um at the end of the school year I think I really would love being able to put together like a small little yearbook or something like that for my daughter so we can go back and look at those memories um and everything like that so that is something I really want to strive to do uh more so throughout the rest of this school year or this semester really to focus on is just trying to get um more pictures and um I know I'm gonna look back at them and I'm gonna uh enjoy them I have this really cute picture that I took of my daughters uh last year after they did uh um what was it they did a project on sea turtles and you guys I always look back at that picture and I definitely know I want to look back at more um memories and just more things and things like that so yeah so you guys that is my homeschool update I really hope you enjoyed it I hope it wasn't too long I hope I wasn't rambling on and on but um you guys yeah as always you guys please don't forget to comment like and subscribe please let me know how your homeschool is going uh just let me know if you're having any challenges um if the year has been going good bad however it may be let's chat it up let's talk about it and I can't wait to uh message more with you guys um about your homeschool so as always please don't forget to comment like and subscribe and I will see everybody in my next one bye