Homeschool Curriculum 2020 End Of Year Update \\The Good + The Beautiful, Apologia,Masterbooks+More!

hey guys welcome back to my channel I'm Angela Braniff and today I'm going to be sharing with you guys our sort of end-of-year homeschool curriculum recap I'm going to talk about the stuff that we used this year that we really loved the stuff that was kind of won't won't so so that we might not even carry into next year yeah so we're just going to kind of talk about that in general and how our school year went changes we're planning on making now we are not entirely done we are year-round home schoolers and because of the adoption of our son Benjamin we started wait later than we usually do so we are actually not done but we are in our fourth quarter so I figured I would at the very least go ahead I know a lot of people are done and they are kind of looking forward to what they potentially want to try for next year's curriculum and that sort of thing so I thought let me at least give you all my thoughts because even though we're not totally done with everything we're done enough that I can at least tell you what I think and if I would use it again so before we get too into it I just want to add that I'm gonna be doing a video sharing with you guys end of your testing like sort of how we structure and how we do all that that video is gonna be coming we are also going to be doing our back-to-school week again this year last year I did it where we did I did seven days of homeschool videos back to school series with the giveaways associated so that's going to be coming as well and I'm also gonna be sharing our curriculum picks for next year I have stumbled upon some things that I didn't even know existed before and I'm very excited we're gonna be adding some new things to our homeschool this year that I have never used before and just I'm very excited about so if you love homeschooling content if you love curriculum and talking about all those things then be sure to subscribe because there's going to be more of that sprinkled in as we finish out this school year and start planning and moving into the next one so I have some very exciting news that is going to be coming up very shortly and I've been working on something and I think it's going to be really really incredible and it's arguably something I haven't been this excited about in a really long time it's a big deal and an exciting thing and I'm just I'm really excited so if you want to be in the know if you want to be the first to know about all of this as it launches and as it's happening I'm going to have a link down below in the description box where you can sign up because all the information is going to go out to this group to this email list first so be sure to sign up down below in the description box that will have a link for you to do that so that you don't miss any of that and it comes directly to you first before it ever potentially even makes it to a video here on YouTube or anywhere else so lots of exciting stuff to come so let's jump in to the curriculum I've got my just oh we can't even lift it oh I probably just gave myself like a hernia or at the very least a hemorrhoid I have just brought out some samples because I didn't want to my kids were actually in the homeschool room doing some independent work so I didn't want to film in there and I didn't want to drag everything out here so I'm just gonna kind of I've written down some notes some some highlights and things I want to touch on to talk about some stuff that we really loved this year now we had this year my daughter is 13 so she was in seventh grade you guys know I'm a little loosey-goosey with the grades with grade levels for my kids but for the purpose of this I have a seventh grader fifth grader two second graders and a kindergartner that being said let's just go ahead and jump in I want to talk about this is the first year that we have really used a Bible curriculum if you will we have always done different Bible studies and devotionals and things like that but this year I wanted to try this this is from apologia and it's part of their their Bible curriculum series and the first set of books is called who is God so you have a teacher book like this and then you have the kids each have a lesson book a student workbook and the other thing I want to mention before I get too much farther just because I think it will help make things make sense in our home in our home school we don't require our children to join into group subjects until the third grade that's not to say that they don't do it but they do it by true so when you are in kindergarten first or second you are not required to sit down and do history or science or any like that kind of stuff with us most of the time and a lot of the time they want to join and listen and participate and all that I have everything for them to do so if they wish but I don't require it and I specifically don't require it of my very my very high energy kids who just need to really have their schoolwork be very very focused so for the younger kids they focus on reading writing arithmetic that is what they focus on everything else is just funsies it's just for fun for them at that age and I'm totally comfortable with that I know some people aren't and they want to like hit the history hard and kindergarten and stuff I've just found my kids don't retain any of it and it's futile and just creates a frustrating environment particularly for a little boy who just wants to get outside and play in the dirt and doesn't really want to sit here and learn about atoms and molecules right now so now my son next year will be in the third grade and so that is when he will be joining us for some of these group subjects for so for a lot of the group subjects it's pretty much my older girls that's where I kind of have my focus and then the younger kids like I said join us when they want to hopefully that makes sense so I really enjoyed this what I found that I loved the most and again I feel like I don't want to go back through and explain every little thing about my teaching style if you aren't new here and you're curious I have lots of other content I will leave a link to a playlist down below if you want to go learn a little bit more but I am very eclectic I like something that kind of gives us some roots and a foundation that we can build off of sometimes I enjoy a little open and go curriculum but a lot of times I want something that allows me to have open-ended conversations and dig deeper with my kids and areas that they show interest so that's one thing I really liked about this was I felt like it brought up a lot of good conversations and and thought-provoking questions that I was really able to spend some time with my girls and ask them what do you think about that how do you feel about that you know it really brought up a lot of good conversations so we we wrapped this up we are done with this and I did go ahead and order the next one for our next year which we might go ahead and start anyways now just because we enjoy it but I did really enjoy the apologia Bible curriculum history so we did this is our second year doing good in beautiful history I had mentioned previously that there was a little part of me that thought about switching away from this and going to what is the name of that one book shark going to book shark I'm glad I stuck with the good and the beautiful another year I really enjoyed this curriculum I feel like whenever I watched curriculum videos moms often say a lot of the same things about this curriculum that they enjoy and I think that's part of the sort of universal appeal to it is that it's not a lot of other curriculums are it might be a four-year cycle but you're you're focusing on one time period so Renaissance and that's like all you're doing or ancient times and that's all you're doing all year and the kids kind of get bored of it I don't because I love it it never fails to fascinate me but my kids are like just bored to death by it so the reason that I really like the good the beautiful history is because it takes you through ancient to modern times every year just hitting on different points of the timeline each time so you could honestly start at any you could start at year one year two year three or four in my opinion and it really wouldn't matter I mean technically they do build off of each other a little bit but not in such a critical way that you couldn't mix it up a little bit or if you were adding kids in at different points you know let's say so let's say next year we're gonna be doing the year three but my son my third grader it's gonna be his first year really being required to join us for history and so I don't think he's going to be like wait a minute what like what happened we're we're huh it's it makes it so you can kind of slide in at any point hopefully that makes sense really enjoy this as I always say with history curriculums this one of those things that yes there's stuff in here that I don't like love their stuff in here I don't entirely agree with so I am a eat the meat spit out the bones when it comes to pretty much anything that I read or study or whatever so even when it comes to curriculum and my kids in home school it's the same thing I got to one particular lesson that I just wasn't feeling the way that they were presenting it and so I skipped it and did a little bit of research on my own and presented the lesson in a different way to my kids and that was only one lesson out of the entire book so I was pretty pleased with this I will say that my older girls are kind of a little like on the read aloud or the stories like the audiobook part of it where you get on the computer and it tells you a little story but I feel like my girls are a little bit they're a little bit like me and that they're both a little bit not cynical but a little bit and I don't know they're just not they don't like love things that feel kind of cheesy and so that is I think will be very appealing to my younger son in the coming years I think he will enjoy that and they'll continue to listen but and it does help them but you know it's kind of one of those things I think it depends on your kid's personality but there's a lot again that can be built off of this in fact we're still not completely done with it because we hit pause because we decided to dive like headfirst into the Constitution Declaration of Independence so we actually hit pause at a certain point I don't remember which lesson we stopped on at this point but we've only got a few left we hit pause and I created a whole separate unit myself that we've been doing for the last two weeks about the Constitution the Declaration of Independence have been the girls my my girl's memorizing the preamble that's what I love to do like that's the part of homeschooling that really makes me come alive and part of what I really love is finding things where my kids are showing like a smidge of interest and I'm also really interested in it and so I'm like I pounced on that like a like a lion I pounced on that and I'm like yes let's do that so we've been kind of diverting and focusing on that and I just I like it I like that I can build off of it I like a lot of the read-alouds that go with it and we do a ton of reading aloud and so yeah I really enjoyed this and we will be doing year three next year other thing from the good and the beautiful that I have just really really enjoyed so far on every level we've done I think I've I think I have a child that's we've done kindergarten all the way to their highest level I believe although I think I saw that they came out with a new level of handwriting but the good and the beautiful handwriting I just really enjoy and my kids seem to really enjoy it this is my little JJ when I look in her gardener and yeah I think we'll stick with it the only thing that's tempting me I'm not gonna live the thing that's tempting me is my friend here on YouTube Nikhil in a farmhouse full she has her own handwriting curriculum that she's done that she's created so I actually think I'm gonna I'm gonna buy her because it's a download and then you print it and bind it all that yourself so I think I'm gonna buy hers and test that out and see what I see if if my kids might like that just because what she showed in her video was very intriguing to me I loved that she focused on like commonly misspelled words and homophones and things like that but I will say that I do love that the good the beautiful I can't remember which level it is that where they start cursive but I am all of my kids will learn cursive at some point I don't I think that's another thing that I just like about homeschooling is I don't like to move my kids to cursive until I feel very confident in their print and one of my children in particular just their print had a tendency to backslide like as I started adding in cursive I noticed that the print was starting to backslide and I was like nope okay we're pausing on the cursive until we can really nail down the print because inevitably I realize we all form our own writing styles that oftentimes looks like a little mishmash of print and cursive but good and beautiful handwriting really liked that the other thing and I just brought out one book and this is actually one that is completely unused because somehow or another I ordered the wrong level so I just stuck this in my closet to be able to use when I have a kid that can use this level but you know we have done the good in the Beautiful's language arts various levels from kindergarten all the way to level six or so I think and there's parts of it that I like and there's parts of it well I shouldn't say I I don't actually as the teacher have a problem with any of it my children are the ones that seem to not be as interested in it and you know at there's there's a high there's a breaking point always with home school stuff where it's like sometimes you need to pick things that you as the teacher are interested in because then you will do a better job of teaching it but in other areas you know I like to follow my kids lead into things that that that seemed to work for them and that they enjoy so all of that to say this year I decided to try some of the younger ones on language lessons for a living education and also my fifth grader she she did this language lessons for a living education this year and I like this this is one master books curriculum I feel like I've been really pleased this is my first year trying stuff from master books I think so we did master books I'll talk about that a second math for the younger ones and then language as well for different different levels and I really like this I like that they use story it kind of I believe it's like a Charlotte Mason based type curriculum so they're using stories and things to bring it to life for kids and it seems to work really well and I just like this it's a little less cumbersome because we tend to use a lot of our bandwidth on some group things and I don't like to have my kids bogged down by having an hour's worth of language arts to do because they get so much of the other stuff in other areas that we're doing so I really liked the master books language the language arts for master books as well as the master books math so again this teaches math through story and that is really great if you you know depending on what kind of kid you have what kind of learner you have what we typically do is start teaching textbooks in the third grade so the sort of plan moving forward is to have our kids kindergarten first second we'll do master books math and then they'll go into teaching textbooks and the third grade I love teaching textbooks it's so great as a parent and so just I can't say enough good things about teaching textbooks and we've used it for years and just love it so we'll definitely be sticking with teaching textbooks for the older grades but younger grades we're gonna use the master books because teaching textbooks doesn't start until level three or grade three if you have a math Wiz of a kid then I know like second graders and stuff who do the level three but that I would say that's probably for a child that seems to have a natural inclination towards mathematics if you will we did for science this year we used a number of different good in the beautiful science curriculums there science units basically so there were some that we liked and some that were and you know we just finished the water unit and my kids were not they were interested in the beginning some of the initial stuff maybe some more of the like chemistry type stuff was interesting to them but as we moved on it just they they just lost interest in it I really I like the the good and the beautiful units for science you know space mammals biology health water always weather all these different ones I like it I find it very easy for me to build off of and add on to I think that the better job I do of that piece of it the better it goes over with my kids if I do a lackluster job of beefing up the unit and finding extra things to make it more interesting diving deeper into certain things if I do a good job of that then my kids are interested and they're in it I think part of the water one too is that normally we have field trips and things associated with whichever unit were and because of lockdown there were no field trips associated with water had we been able to go to a water processing plant and see the process as they learned how it comes from the wasn't reservoir and you know how they sifted through dirt and if they would have been able to see that I think that that could have helped again bring it to life a little more but no field trips meant that it just it was a little two-dimensional for them and I you know wasn't able to to be as three-dimensional with it as I and also it had we did this unit in the middle of me launching my book so I wasn't as good at getting getting in the nitty-gritty of things with them so maybe that's why that particular one but I think that we will we've they've said they want to do and I own a bunch of them so we've like I've already bought them and have them on my shelf so I think we're gonna do mammals and then I think they wanted to do marine animals as well so I think we'll do those two and see how that goes and then I am considering because I love the apology a Bible so much I'm considering looking into the apology of science and God's design I know other people who really liked the God's design science so I'm gonna look into those whenever stores open back up I'm gonna head back up to our home school our local homeschool store that carries a lot of used curriculum where I can kind of leaf through those different science types and see if I think it would be worth switching but I do like I do think that the good the beautiful has redone a lot of their science units to make them expand further because they are most of a lot of them were like K through six with a few that were K through eight and now I feel like they've redone some of them and they're like like they're whether one was K through six but now it's K through eight so I think they're doing a good job of expanding those for more grade levels so we'll see we'll see what happens with that but I enjoyed them and I enjoy putting them together but like I said I think that my kids interest in it does have a lot to do with how good of a job I do of pulling everything together for them these I don't know I have these in my lap these are books I'm reading we really focus hard and heavy on read-alouds this year I just I just went all in on the idea of reading aloud to my kids and it has made such a difference in them and in me and it's been so good for all of us I really fell in love with the idea of focusing on read Aloud's when I discovered Sarah Mackenzie and read her out read aloud revival and the Regal out family her book and I just I just fell in love with the whole idea of it and wanted to implement it we were always doing it on some level but I just never prioritized it or recognized how much of an impact it could have on my kids and on our home school and even not just for home school like nighttime daytime in the car audio books like I love to read and so I I thought that oh my kids will see me read and then they'll want to read to write but that wasn't really happening and so I have this unique opportunity to bring stories to life by reading aloud to my kids which is helping to really get their interest in books I hope that that makes some kind of sense so what I did was before I came out here I asked them of what we have done as read aloud so far this year what was your favorite book and I thought I would share with you guys what they picked my two older girls asked them to pick and and I picked a favorite as well from our read aloud so I thought I would share those with you guys really quickly if they're on your list for next year or if you want to add them to your list of read allows these were ones we really enjoyed so my fifth graders shall be picked for her favorite was Esperanza rising I will say that I mmm these were all a toss-up for me man did I love them all - these were I totally agreed with their picks let me just say that Esperanza rising was such a good book I think the author did a fabulous job of taking the main character Esperanza and really her their internal struggles and character watching that develop over the course of the book just a great book lots of lots of good topics get brought up there's lots of good discussions that can happen base that book so that was my fifth-grade daughter's pick though we all agreed on our favorites this was my daughter's in seventh grade and we just finished this one her pick was a long walk to water and y'all this book it did me in man such a tender topic for me anyways just because of my deep love for Africa and Congo and Uganda and this book is set in Sudan and it's a true story based on a true story and I love it kind of has this dual narrative of two different characters and you know there's obviously there a collision there at the end that brings it all together but it was great and something that as soon as we finished it my daughters asked me to look up this nonprofit that was started water for Sudan and like how much would it cost to fondo well and could we do that and I think it really does a good job of bringing in into perspective the things that are going on in the world and there's there's a lot of hard stuff in this book and not a lot of happy endings but that's life and I think it was really good for my kids to understand and see things from a different perspective and yeah I'm just I'm a big fan I thought this book was great we read this book in a few days it is a quick read but I will say that one of the things that I really have enjoyed doing that I have not done with every book but going and searching teachers pay teacher's it's just like one of my favorite sites anyways but going and searching I found a teacher had put together a really awesome unit study to go with this with lots of great questions and quizzes and vocabulary things and it really you know beefed up what we were doing in just reading this book and yeah I loved we didn't do every single thing in the unit that she provided but it was a great framework for me to add on to a book I hadn't read before so I couldn't really generate that on my own without sitting down to read it so loved that I will leave the link to the teachers pay teachers thing that goes with us as well and then the book that I picked to share because I we all loved it and I feel like it went to the back of their minds a little bit when I asked them to think about their favorite books because we write it so early on in the year but I know how much they loved it and so did I and that is daughter of the mountains and this was a it was an incredible book it was an incredible book and one that I mean it had this sweet storyline of this girl wanting to rescue her dog food she had prayed for and wanted but it does it takes you through different landscapes and you experience different cultures and it's really really a good book this is a great book and the kids loved it I loved it I highly highly recommend and I kind of wish that I would have thought to do an add-on like through teachers pay teacher's and come up with some like book unit study stuff to go with it cuz this would have been a great one for that as well as Esperanza rising I mean the topics that this brings up in terms of immigration and the Great Depression and in going on strike for better conditions and what does that look like and why things like that aren't so black-and-white that there's you know lots to be considered and just great conversations and all of these books these were our picks so loved those I want to give an honorable mention to the fact that we added in a poetry tee time this year and it has been a huge hit with my kids have loved it it's something that we will probably just continue to do even when we're not in our school year even where winter in our period of of not school we'll continue to add in some poetry tee time and read aloud time because I never want my kids to feel like me reading to them or reading or you know reading poetry or whatever it is is something that is like that schoolwork so I like to kind of package things differently so that they enjoy it and it doesn't feel like a punishment it feels like something good and something they want to do so those were kind of you know adding in the poetry tee time and adding in a lot more read Aloud's this year was definitely a a plus for us in terms of stuff we liked this year and will definitely carry over to next year so yeah that is just sort of a summation of some of the things that we really loved I'm not going to go through every single book because we did a lot of different little things here and there this year and as I said you know we're very eclectic so these are kind of the bones of a lot and we build off of that that's my favorite way to do things it's what I love to do it's part of the reason I love homeschooling we're gonna continue on and wrapping up q4 and finishing up our school year coming up we're going to be doing end of your testing and I am going to have a video where I'm going to share with you guys sort of how I how I do end of your testing like how we do it how we schedule things how we make it work and how we make it work in light of the fact that I don't spend weeks and weeks and weeks training my children how to take a test so I'll share all of that coming up in a video about end of your testing like I said though don't forget to add your name to the list in the link down below I think you will be very interested in what's coming down the pipeline so definitely add your name to that list because lots of fun and exciting stuff is coming but that is it for today's video guys that is our homeschool recap for the year of stuff that we loves and stuff that was one of her I was so so for us and yeah I hope y'all enjoyed I would love to hear down below in the comments anything that you use this year that you absolutely loved and that you would highly recommend to other people comment sections are a fabulous place to find new stuff I have often found stuff that I didn't know about and was like hmmm we're gonna do our back to school series this year and all of that as well so if you enjoy homeschooling content there is more of that to come so be sure to subscribe if you haven't already that's it I've been talking about long enough I will see y'all very soon fine No the place is that the face is mine

Channel: Angela Braniff

Views: 121,441

Rating: 4.8905845 out of 5

Keywords: homeschool, homeschool curriculum, homeschool 2020, homeschool curriculum 2020, curriuculum choices, end of grade update, end of school year, how to homeschool, homeschool ideas, homeschool updates

Id: EuuTQkpJBd8

Length: 28min 29sec (1709 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020