First Week of Homeschool | HOMESCHOOL FAMILY OF FIVE

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] panda panda fit all [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm so excited I'm unboxing my Apple pencil so excited so we made it to the third week of school we're just finishing the second week of school and I'm about to start on the third week of school um and I'm just now getting around to sitting down and talking about the first week of school and kind of how that went it went so well you guys and like I mentioned before I really did not want to vlog during that time because I really just wanted to focus on getting a good handle on our new schedule and our new things and just getting homeschool set up properly so I chose not to vlog but I did get a couple of clips not too much so I thought I would throw that together along with a little kind of talk through about how the week went and yeah so that's what I'm about to do um so the first week of school went really really well you guys like really really well I was telling Brian on the weekend that I felt like it was the first week that I don't know I feel like each year it gets better and better just because I've grown in confidence with how we do you know uncomfortable with how we do things going into this new school year I kind of I had a very strong grasp on how I wanted their year to go when the direction we wanted to continue to move in but I think teaching summer camp really added a little extra to the plans that I have for moving into the new school year and what I realized was that I wanted to add a bit more structure and that it was okay I think those first several years I went through it was a lot of like stripping myself idea that I needed to be like a school because there was just so many things yeah there's just like so many things that you wanna do that our school like that just don't work inside of your home so just kind of stripping myself of those ideals and being patient with our homeschooling journey and the whole process of learning what it means to home-school for us now we are entering into this is our sixth year of home-school and after doing summer camp I just noticed some things that really worked well with the kids that they really enjoy doing while they were there and so I thought there's nothing wrong with infusing those things into our days so there were certain things that that I tried to implement here that very much so mimicked what we did a summer camp and I was really excited about that so this year we are doing well at least for the first week we have adapted a bit more structure to our schedule which I took away in previous years but now adding them back I feel like I've kind of redefined what structure is and our schedule is in our home school and how to do it with the most amount of flexibility does that make any sense so the very first thing that I wanted to do was make sure and you know your kids get older there were certain things I could not do last year because from 4:00 to 5:00 made all of the difference with savanah like now she's just her attention is just her attention span is greater and the same thing with my younger son Kendall his attention span is greater it's I don't know it's weird the difference between last year and this year and I think last year I definitely wouldn't have been able to do the schedule in this way but this year I think it's definitely time so one of the things I did I think I showed you in another video was to pull together our schedule so I went and laid out the things that I wanted us to accomplish in each day and kind of put them in order based on what I thought would work well for us then I used that first week of school it was more like an orientation type of things just letting them know that new things that I had to set in place our new schedule any new resources and just to be very clear about the flow of the days and what I had planned and then see what they think about it because I like that they have input they feel a greater ownership over their school day when I allow them to have a say we started on Monday with the schedule that I had planned out and then I just made adjustments along the way I think we switched very minimal things around but the changes that we made each day got better and better there are two parts to our schedule I have the first half of the day and then this is the second half of the day these have been working out so well these little pieces live inside of this mason jar I use mason jars for everything I know that's not for everybody and I think that I'm able to do that now there they're a bit older they don't break the glass I haven't had any issues just yet so these work out great for me and I have like 15,000 mason jars so anyway I just talked them in here put them on the table and then I put the clipboard the clipboard is over by the map that we have in our room and we just work our way through our day and that's been working out super super well so each day we just come in and we start from the beginning of the schedule and then we make our way through it it is some days it felt like I was stumbling through things I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to communicate it to them but they did a good job just kind of keeping up with me because they know their mom and they know I can be all over the place sometimes so there were certain things that we did not do once we got to them so morning basket time we really did not do that first week because I had not had I didn't have the morning basket setup yet so I just let them know that you know during this time this would be the first thing we do is all get into our morning baskets and then we did do devotional each day we did worship and workout together and then we move on to Bible after that we pick out a quick snack because it's about time by then and then we move on to our morning read aloud time this has been our absolute favorite time of the day is our morning read aloud time they grab blankets and pillows and I just get comfy on one of our beanbag chairs and we just read right now we don't have specific times that we that we set aside for each section of our schedule but I figured once I move along in the weeks I'll get a better idea for how long we're spending on those parts of the days and then I'll keep you posted um then we move on to the second half of the day we have our morning binders which we did skip the first week because the morning binders were not fully prepared yet then we move on to language arts or math depending on which day it is lunch unit study writing geography science or history depending on what data that is our elective and then we have quiet reading time which in our home school day and then we have token time we have token time to give them rewards for how they did during the day and it's been going so well you guys so well yeah so I have learned to keep the first week of school super simple over the years in that is what I did this time around made all of the day but I'm just gonna kind of talk to you about some of the things we did do I do not plan my first week of school I write down a few ideas of things that I would like to do during the first week but the first couple of weeks are basically just getting the kids used to our new routine or schedule and getting their feedback and things like that so I don't even stress myself out by planning actual subject matter to get into but I will share with you what we did end up doing we are still working through our indescribable 100 devotions about God in science we've actually doubled up on quite a bit of them meaning I mean I don't think that was the right way to say it but we we've actually repeated quite a few of them which i think is always a really good thing so we're not rushing through it but I think we pretty much have done the majority of the devotions inside of this book so we are doing this in the mornings for devotional time this year is our book here which I'm super excited about and I know I keep mentioning how I'm going to talk about it but not just yet but so that's why we have quite a few reading allocated reading times during our days for my oldest Cameron who is 9 he just finished reading wonder so he has moved on to fish and a tree we finished reading a Kate DiCamillo DH the miraculous journey of Edward Tulane and we have moved on to the taiga rising by Kate DiCamillo as well they are responsible for reading a certain amount of pages in their book kendall has been doing the one and only Ivan and like I said Cameron has been doing wonder which he just finished and he's moved on to fish in a tree but savanna is responsible for making her way through these bob books she's generally responsible for reading three or four of them on her own and then three or four picture books and we use the same picture books throughout the whole week so she can get really comfortable with reading the books that she has selected okay so my battery died not quite sure where I left off but basically um unit study we haven't gotten into our unit studies just yet I was a little bit conflicted because the next unit study that we have coming up is going to be water in our world like an ocean study plus water unit type of deal and I'm really excited to get into that however we didn't completely finish all of what I wanted to do for our third pod unit study and that is because we were supposed to be working our way through it through the summer but because we did summer camp I was able to do a lot of their core work while we were at summer camp they would complete that instead of the work that they had assigned them a camp but for the unit study we did not get around to that and your friend was trying to do the most and I said to myself I was gonna still be able to do it after we got back from camp each day definitely didn't happen definitely did not happen because camp was a lot okay so we did not work our way through the unit study like I wanted to and for that reason I'm trying to figure out if I should go ahead and finish it up or if I should just move on to the warded unit and just wait till we circle back around to the arthropod unit a little bit later one in the school year so I'm think I'm leaning more towards just going ahead and finishing up the arthropod unit I don't have to do quite as much as I have planned on finishing up but there were certain things that I did want to cover so I may actually do that so obviously I'm still working my way through my thoughts but it's what I'm thinking about so I have our pod unit I took all of our unit studies and put them in these white binders that I got from Sam still I don't know if this video is gonna go up before it probably is gonna go up before my Sam Sal Hall it's gonna go up but I'm gonna be doing in a homeschool organization hall featuring a company called Sam sell and poppin store so they reached out to me to see if I wanted to try any of their products and it just so happens that I actually really enjoyed their products so I'm going to be doing a haul of what I got from them which I'm super grateful for cuz it's helped me tremendously and organizing my school room for the year but anyway like I what I was trying to get to is that one of the products that I got from them was a big case of finders and they have been so amazing and helping me organize my home school thing so I got a big case of white binders and black binders so I'm gonna be showing you that stuff in a video to come but I went ahead and organized my unit studies from the good and beautiful into our binders so I have my Arthur cart unit here and then I also have the water and our world so this is probably don't hold me to it but it's probably what we're going to be moving on into after we finish our Arthur cart unit so I said all of that to say that I didn't even get around to starting unit Studies on the first week because like I said it's just a lot of really trying to go over our new schedule and our new resources getting them pumped up and excited and hearing their feedback for things that they are interested in learning this year so we did a lot of that what else did I want to say you guys another thing that I worked on for this week with the kids help is their morning binders so I'm gonna show you this in a separate video but basically we are going to be working through our morning binder in the morning we went over quite a bit of this just working our way through it and I felt really good about what we did for the first week just a lot of repetition and walking through the schedule and setting up my expectations for them how they're to put away the markers and how they're to put away their art supplies I feel like this is just a new level a new year and a new level teaching them to be independent in their work and their projects and things like that so we do have our core work that we are going to be working through but I did just want to give them you know another level of responsibility over the things that we have in our home school room and how they can use them now I did not make it through my schedule from beginning to end but I did walk through the whole thing so I think over the next few weeks we're just going to be trying to kind of like build up our just our ability to get you know through that full school day and it looks like it's gonna run between 9:30 I think we've been starting to around 2:30 3:30 and we're still gonna be super flexible with it what I'm really trying to work on is then being able to get up in the morning and work their way through the entire schedule on their own without meeting me except for Savannah of course even though savannah is on a totally different level because she is the baby of three so she is able to do a lot more than the boys were doing at that age as far as following a schedule and things because she has her big brothers to follow and look up to hey that's it you guys after I finished up school brian has been doing dinner for me for these first couple of weeks just so that I can iron out all the kinks I still have to finish filling our I got through our morning binder I got through a morning basket and I made my way through part of my work boxes which includes their binders not their binders their notebooks just need to finish up their work boxes and then we'll be completely ready for them to be able to get through their their schedule on their own I also need to go ahead and make that decision about our unit study and get you know whatever I'm going to put on the chalk wall up for our unit study to get that taken care of yes so I would finish up our school day and then I would just try to do as much prep work as possible in the evening times okay so I just got in my order from Amazon this is C this is the bean bag refill I'm really excited about it you guys but it's not enough I got these two of Amazon to go in our homeschool room this year and they look super comfy and I was really really excited they actually are just like covers and they are supposed to you're supposed to be able to stuff like stuffed animals and blankets and pillows inside but goodness it holds so much and I didn't realize it was gonna hold that much so in this one there are blankets and pillows all of the blankets and post I could find in my house and it's still not quite as full as I want it to be so I went ahead and for this one I ordered these beam back inserts and I ordered two of them because the instructions said that it would be enough they said that it would be enough but it's not it's not gonna be enough I put one in there already and it's still pretty flat but I'm gonna add this one to it and see how many more I might need so I got this collector's edition this has the five of them all in one so that was really exciting I got that from Ali's so it has the borrower's the borrower's the field the borrower's the float the bar was aloft the borrower's avenged so I'm excited to start that I'm probably only going to do one though I'm gonna start with the borrower's trying to fill these up you guys but I think there the nicest little addition and my lighting is like a nice little addition to our room in the evening times that's when I do all of my stuff which makes filming kind of hard because a lot of times I try to wait to do my things until it's morning time so that I can film with the daylight but with my new lighting in my room and everything I think that I can start filming some videos at night so look forward to that because that is when I mean my planning and set-up time for home school is like precious to me and I really enjoy it so just look forward to you know no makeup Serena with sweatpants and a cup of coffee after a long day so I can keep it moving and get my things done and then I'll try to get some videos done during that time like yeah hope you guys enjoyed sitting down and listening to me chitchat halfway through our first week of school it was really really good um it was really good had all the feels you guys I felt like it was a nice combination of the plan that I had set up for them plus letting them have as much input as possible so it went really well and the kids were really excited and I'm looking forward to the rest of the school year just I'm looking forward to this year just being more of us than it has been before in the past and I think each year that's what gets me really excited about home school is seeing what our home school becomes you know you see all of this inspiration from other people's home schools but just get into a place where it really starts to become what you have in your mind for how you want to educate and um and and live this life with your kids so I'm really excited about that so I hope you guys enjoyed this video though make sure to LIKE comment and subscribe and in our next video [Music]

Channel: TheFallCoFamily

Views: 3,321

Rating: 4.955801 out of 5

Keywords: homeschooling, homeschooling mom, homeschool room tour, homeschool classroom tour, homeschool curriculum, homeschool curriculum choices, homeschool haul, homeschool library haul, Charlotte Mason method, Abeka curriculum, homeschool vs public school, homeschool morning routine, homeschool coop, homeschool tips

Id: xGlfxEU8ljQ

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018