 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be our spring homeschool plans. I don't know about you, but I am done with winter. I'm ready to put it in my rear view mirror and move on to spring. So that's what I have done. I have spent the last week planning our spring homeschool and I have it all planned and I'm ready to start and I can't wait. So just so you know, when I refer to spring, I am referring to March, April and May because those are the three months that I planned for. And then I'm gonna share everything that we are hopefully gonna get done. That doesn't mean we'll get to all of it. It also doesn't mean that we won't do other things because we like to follow Emily's lead and we like to go down those rabbit trails and we like to do like the little mini units around the holidays. So I'm sure we will do more or other or different things than just this, but this is what I am planning for us to get done in the spring. Okay, first let's talk about morning basket. So I've had some of you message me and ask if we are still doing it. We are just not right now. So we did a fall morning basket, which was space and we loved it. We did a morning basket during the holidays, which we loved. We didn't do one for the past two months. After the holidays were over, we haven't done another morning basket. Mainly because February is hard y'all and we still haven't got back to our routine and we're just trying to survive this month. If we're being honest, we are just trying to survive. So we haven't done it in the past two months. However, we will start doing it again in the spring. March 1st, we're doing a morning basket, no matter what, because I said so. Because that's what helps give us structure to our day. Starting with morning basket helps give us that foundation to have a good day and it starts our day off on the right foot. So we will start back with it. Now we will continue to do morning basket the way we have been doing it, which is it lasting a little bit longer and the theme matching our unit study. Emily really, really liked that during the fall and the holiday season and she wants to keep doing it. So our morning basket will be the same for March, April and May unless she deems that it needs to be changed. And it will be themed human body because that's the unit say we're doing. Which I'll share more about that in just a minute. I will be sharing our morning basket with you guys next week. So if you wanna see everything that's in it, make sure that you are subscribed and that you hit that bell so you get notified. All right, for our unit study because I just told you guys about it, we are doing a human body unit study. Now this is a brand new unit study that I just finished writing and it will be in the shop soon. You guys like very soon. February 28th is its release date and that is also the day that our spring cell starts. So it will hit the shop at the same time the cell will happen, meaning that it will be 30% off from day one. And I have to be honest, I love everything that we've ever made. Like they all have a special place in my heart. But this one is like, it's pretty high up there you guys. Like I am so excited to do this. I'm not sure I've ever been this excited with the exception of maybe wizards and wands because we'll Terry Potter. Mainly because Kevin's illustrations in this make human body fun to me. Like it just, they make it fun. He did a phenomenal job and I can't wait to learn more alongside Emily. So super duper excited. We will spend March, April and May diving into the human body and I can't wait. You guys probably already knew that Emily was interested in it. She's kind of been dabbling in it lately. In fact, some of her Christmas presents were themed human body. So it was like hands down. We're like, what do you want to learn for spring human body? I'm like, okay, then that's what we'll do. So that's what we're doing. Now me and her sat down together and we researched people who made an impact in the medical field or in the advancements of medicine. And then we looked through all of our who was books that we have, which is pretty much all of them. And we tried to pick some people that we wanted to learn more about so we kind of tie in with human body. And so we picked three who was books that we will be reading and then we will be accompanying them with a who was unit study. So we have who was Leonardo da Vinci, which he is already in the shop if you're looking for a unit study on him, as well as who was Marie Curie, also already in the shop. Although you guys wait a week and you can get them for 30 person off. And then the last one who will be in the shop soon is who was Clara Barton. So that is our unit study, human body, along with those three who was, and then obviously a ton of extra fun stuff in our morning time and all of the things that's within it. But that is going to be the bulk of our spring. So excited. All right, let's talk math. So math is something that if you don't know or if you haven't been around long enough to know, Emily has always had a very strained relationship with. And so because of that, I try really hard not to push or force or do anything that will make the relationship any worse. So we play a lot of games. We read a lot of math books. We bake in the kitchen. We do a lot of real world math. And I make sure she has tons of math apps and we keep our subscription, even though it's not really subscription, but we pay for teaching textbooks every year because she enjoys that. It's one of the few math that she enjoys. And so that is actually what she's been probably doing the most of right now. And this season of life, she has been doing a ton of teaching textbooks. She loves it. She enjoys it. She likes her little buddy. She gets excited to do the bonus rounds now and she gets excited to check her score and her grade. And she's just really been enjoying it. So I mean, I'm not gonna argue with that. So she's probably gonna keep doing teaching textbooks in some form or some way. She may not do one every day. We may not even finish this grade by the end of this grade. That's not really my goal. My goal is that she has a good relationship with math, that she doesn't hate it, that she enjoys it, that she mostly understands it. And I want her to keep moving through the math goals that I had on our checklist for the year, which we are still doing with books and games and hands on things and just whatever. So teaching textbooks is just like extra supplemental fun. I mean, if it teaches great, but she's just enjoying it right now. The bulk of everything is just me reading and playing games and being kind of consistent with the fact that this is the skill I want to teach her. So that is the majority of it. Now I will say we've started doing extra math again too, because I've noticed that her multiplication and division just aren't quite there fact wise, not as quick as I know she could be. I guess probably the holidays didn't help. Maybe February is just February. Maybe she's struggling too. I'm not really sure, but she doesn't dislike extra math. She actually mostly enjoys it and she can do it in less than two minutes. So she's been doing that, I think, three days a week about, like two to three days a week, just as an extra kind of like, let's make sure my math facts are getting better or I'm not forgetting them. However, all of that to say that one of the things I'm most excited about for math for the spring is this super fun, real world, a math journey through the human body. I love that it will tie in with our unit study and I love that she's gonna see real world math and how it will tie in with that unit study. So she's gonna be able to see how doctors use math and how just all this stuff. I'm really, really excited about it. But I love the way that this book is written because she's also going to be getting some facts about human body as well while we're doing math. So it's like an all in one. So that's what I'm the most excited about. But I'm sure she's also going to be continuing doing extra math, continuing doing teaching textbooks. We will obviously still be reading books and playing games. So that is kind of a little bit of everything when it comes to math. For language arts, we are just about as eclectic as we are for math. She will be doing a book club with Mary Hanna Wilson on out school. She's been doing the book club with her. Wilson's Mary Hanna Wilson started the book club because Emily loves her and just loves being in them. But the spring, they are reading two books and one is Crenshaw. And the other is from the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler. So I know for a fact that she will be reading those and doing those book clubs. I'm sure she'll be reading more too because she loves to read. But those two books in the book club are definitely happening. She is doing that as a keeper still. She is also currently in the process of writing a book. She's just for fun, wanted to write a story. And so I decided that we were going to use that this spring as a way to kind of take her writing through all of the different writing processes, which is one of the things that was on my checklist that I wanted to get done this year. And it's like the perfect opportunity. And she kind of just presented it to me. So she's going to be writing this story and we're going to take it through all of the writing processes from start to finish. And then when she's done, we'll print it and I'll bind it and put it on her bookshelf. So she has a book that she wrote. And she's very excited. Another thing that she is doing is handwriting without tears. She is doing the cursive kickoff. And there is nothing to me more ironic than the fact that she is doing this because these are the same books that quite literally caused tears for her in kindergarten. So the irony is never lost on me every time I share this. And I say that because I don't want you to see this and think, oh my gosh, my child needs to be doing handwriting. Y'all, we didn't do hand writing for a very long time, like very long. We literally threw the handwriting without tears books in the garbage because they stressed Emily out so much. And we did no kind of handwriting, none whatsoever until this past summer, so not even a year ago, when Emily came to me and said, mom, I really want to write prettier. I would like better handwriting. Is there a way for me to do that? And I said, well, the only way to do that is to practice. And she said, well, can you get me something to practice? And so I showed her all of the handwriting options like everything that was out there and apps and books and everything. And she made the handwriting without tears, which I'm telling y'all cracked me up because I was like, you realize these are the same things that you made me throw away three years ago. But she's sped through, and I say sped through, she wasn't like rushing, but she's wanted so badly to get a cursive that she was doing like six and eight pages a day. And so she's made it through whatever the first two books are. She just finished printing power. She finished printing power in January. And she is already halfway through a little less, but almost halfway through a cursive kickoff because the first like 30 pages reviews print. And she was like, I'm ready to start cursive mom. And so she was doing like 10 pages the first three or four days so that she could get to cursive. And you guys, I just have to say, I mean, I want you to see this from the fact that the child's never done handwriting. And in one year, less than a year could go from no handwriting to writing in cursive. I mean, it was gratifying, I guess. I mean, I hate to say that because it shouldn't really matter, but it was gratifying because as a homeschool mom, and I know I'm getting on a tangent, you worry about your child. Like, am I doing this wrong? Am I, she should be doing handwriting. She should be doing it. I should force her to do it. But I am so, so glad that I didn't force it. I'm so glad I trusted my instinct and that I trusted that I knew her best and that we would get there eventually. And then I didn't push it, but I just let it go all together because we are, I'm almost positive. This is, if you look at it by grade level, I think this is their third grade book. Maybe it's their fourth grade book. But I mean, she could essentially finish this one and the next one and still be on track if we cared, which we don't. But what I'm trying to say is, I'm glad I didn't push. I'm glad I waited till she was ready. It's been very, very worth it and it's been very rewarding to her and I both. Okay, I'm done with the tangent now. So that is kind of like the basic of our language arts with the exception of Mondays. We do what we now call mom day because we used to call it mail time Monday because that's all we did was mail time. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I will link our mail time Monday video up here. But since Christmas, we have added in journaling, which has become like my newest favorite thing in the whole wide world. So me and Emily journaled together. We write, we print pictures and stick pictures in there and we just read our thoughts down. And it has been so much fun. So we alternate between that and mail time every other week now, which is why we now just call it mom day in our house. And it just, seriously, you guys, it's amazing because kids find magic in the mundane. And I love seeing that through her eyes. Like when we sit down to journal, I'm always thinking big picture, like what big thing happened that I can journal about? And like the other day she journaled about a science experiment that she did with Kevin because that was magical to her. It just like she journaled about journaling because she's loves doing it so much with me. It's just been really, really fun. And I can't wait to look back on the memories in the journal years from now. So I'm so glad we started it. But those are things that we add to get some of that like practical real world writing. And then because one of the things I wanted to focus on this year was like letters and journaling, like more personal writing. It's giving us the ability to do that in a really fun way. The last thing I wanted to share with you guys are subscriptions. Now I have an entire subscription playlist which I will link for you. And there are a ton of subscriptions in there. And we've tried them all and we love them all but you could go broke on subscription boxes and letters you guys. Like I could easily go broke on them. So we either try to rotate through some of them, different seasons of life, different seasons of our homeschool depending on what we're studying, what Emily's interested in. And right now, this is what we are getting currently in our house. Like this is what's being delivered monthly. So I wanted to share that with you so that you know that this is what we get every month as of right now. For subscription letters, we are currently getting Writings from the Wild which Emily absolutely loves and the American Heritage Adventure as well as the Heritage Letter. So we get the one about the National Parks or the American location landmark and we get the famous American from history from them. So we get those letters and then for boxes, we get our favorite Universal Williams. This has been like the staple in our homeschool that's never gone anywhere. It's one of our favorites. We are still getting and loving Melchemistry. This is one that Emily and Kevin really, really enjoy doing. And then I had actually stopped it for a little bit because I thought since they were getting the Mel stuff that they wouldn't miss it, but they did. And so we are now getting the Tinker crates again because they started missing them and they just wanted them again. So those are the subscriptions that we are currently getting. Tinker, Mel, Science and Universal Gums and then the letters. And then Emily is still getting the My Zoo Box. I don't have anything to show you guys for that because it comes in a like plastic bag and she literally rips it open the minute it gets here. And she, the day after it arrives starts bugging me. When's my next Zoo Box gonna come? When's my next Zoo Box gonna come? She loves it. It comes with a book and a stuffed animal and she loves learning more about it and obviously loves collecting stuffed animals because she's addicted to stuffed animals. But it really is a fun way for her to learn more. And it's really a fun way for us to encourage reading because the rule in our house because she would gladly take the stuffy and run away is that she has to read the book to the stuffy when it comes in like so that her and the stuffy can learn together. And so that's been something that's made sure that she doesn't just take the stuffy and run away with it. But she's really, really enjoys it. And I have a feeling that's the one subscription that she probably wouldn't like go of. So that is what we are getting for spring currently. If anything changes, I'll let you guys know but I don't have any plans for anything to change. And so that's it. That's our plans. Now I would absolutely love it if you would tell me first how your homeschool year is going so far was February is hard for you as it was for us and what your homeschool plans are for this spring in the comments down below because I love reading them and I love getting to know you guys and more about your homeschool.