CHIT CHATTY SUMMER HOMESCHOOL PLAN & PREP// Curriculum Changes, School Supplies, New Room Decor

[Music] hi you guys my name is Britney and welcome back to my YouTube channel you guys in today's video I'm going to take you along as I plan for the upcoming year the 2024 2025 school year if any of you guys are new here to my channel again I'm Britney I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls and this year I have a seventh grader a first grader and I have a four-year-old who's doing kindergarten work this homeschooling year so I'm really really excited to plan out my school year this video is going to be a lot different than my other planning videos I'm really just going to take you guys along with me this is just going to be like a chit chatty video where I just go through the process of planning if you do want to see like a more specific planning video I do have a video that I made last year that I'll go ahead and Link Down Below on how I plan my homeschooling year so you guys uh this homeschooling year is going to be a little bit different and I am going to be more transparent on my channel and sharing this but I have not been completely honest with you guys on my channel but I will let you know that I have been having some health concerns and some health issues and I really know that this is going to impact this homeschooling year I have received some recent diagnosis which you know sometimes it can be scary and um I am going to be getting some treatments this year so in knowing that I do have to plan out and schedule my year a lot differently than I have done before and because of that I have simplified a lot of things in my home school and I have made some curriculum changes so don't worry I will share those changes in today's video as well uh not really big major changes for all of the kiddos just really just peering things down and being realistic on how much I can manage this homeschooling year to really be completely honest you guys I was really hesitant to even homeschool the kids this year because I didn't know if I was going to be capable of doing it but because of like the support that I have from my mom and my husband everyone is going to really step in this homeschooling year and help homeschool the kids because this is the path that we have chosen for our family and everyone is on were to help me so I do need to simplify things so if someone needs to step in and homeschool the kids that day uh everything will be really seamless for them to be able to just jump in so um with that being said I have went ahead and I planned out my year and you guys I have been influenced I have been seeing especially from um Ashley from gather and grounded I have seen um a lot of her videos where she shared about homeschool planning and you guys I did the free trial and I'm going to be completely honest I I'm in love like I really love homeschool Planet I have just been like kind of dabbling into it and trying it out as you guys know I am definitely like a paper planner girl this is my school Nest planner this will be my uh third year using a school Nest planner because I definitely love like really documenting um our journey through like scrapbooking and uh I love doing this but at the same time time I need to be more realistic this homeschooling year and I just tried Out homeschool planet for the past couple of weeks and you guys I was able to plan out my homeschooling year seamlessly by using their like school planner and things like that so I'm still kind of like dabbling into it and I'll let you guys know if I'm officially going to be like doing a digital planner this home school year uh but I have been doing a little mixture of both for right now because again I do love my school Nest planner but uh homeschool planet has been making things so seamless for me um and I definitely love like the checklist aspect of it so it's been fun uh dabbling into it but I'll see like how it goes uh which method I am going to use as far as like my planner but for the most part the start of our homeschooling year this year we typically always start in July like typically right now we would have already started our home school uh but again because of me I still have a few more more tests that I have to do I have a few more doctor's appointments that I have to do at the end of this month we push back our uh homeschooling schedule to August so our our tentative start date is August 5th and our end date is uh May the 23rd so um that's kind of like just where we're at in our home school I'm planning to do our schedule four weeks on and one week off I typically uh did the six weeks on one week off but I want to give myself more grace and I want to uh allow myself to be able to just do little chunks at a time so that's kind of like how I have I have scheduled it out uh we are going to take like a two week break during Christmas time uh we're going to take you know the week of Thanksgiving off and of course I always take off all of my kiddos birthdays we're going to have a spring break and we're kind of just going to play it by ear this is kind of like how I said it now but um I really don't know which days we are going to school and which days we're not I just know I just need to fulfill the 100 80 days of school for the state of Georgia and that's kind of like my priority but um for the most part that is like our tentative start and end date but if we have to stretch it out a little bit longer this homeschooling year we definitely will so um I have that all ready to go as far as the state of Georgia you guys I have to fill out a form called a Georgia intent form to homeschool I went ahead and I filled out that form in may already so I wouldn't forget so this is actually the first official year that my middle daughter I had to fill out a Georgia form of intent for her because in the state of Georgia we don't have to register our kids uh in the Georgia Board of Education until they're in the first grade so it's official I have to follow all of like my homeschooling laws for my first grader and I'm a little bit nervous but I definitely know we're still going to have a smooth homeschooling year so that is everything when it comes to like my planning and my uh planner the only thing that I have so far in my planner is I just put um uh my tracker record in here as far as like tracking out our curriculum progress because I do enjoy doing that and I went ahead also and I just filled out uh each of the uh months uh so I went ahead and I just did from August to December because in January I definitely love coming in my planner and filling out you know the January as the start of the new year and things like that so I did set up like my calendar and the initial things in my school Nest planner so I'm excited about that so again like I said whether I do The Homeschool Planet this year or my planner I do have like the initial setup of it in here so uh that's all kind of like ready to go um and I'm really really excited now this homeschooling year I did want to do like a co-op uh with my um my oldest order especially but you guys like it's just going to be too much for me to commit to our homeschooling Co-op and I had to break the news to her but she was okay and hopefully second semester um if things go well and um I'm a lot better than maybe we will be able to go ahead and join the co-op because they have it broken up in the fall and the spring semesters and hopefully we can do the co-op in the spring but for right now we're not going to do the co-op so because of that I do want to plan a couple of field trips right now I only have one field trip plant which is for us to go to the Space Center uh because uh my daughter is studying my seventh grader is studying earth science so I definitely have that one field trip plan and I think I'm just going to keep it simple as far as field trips and we'll just going to do that one and hopefully that'll be enough for this semester and then we can kind of like uh figure out things as far as the homeschooling co-op in our second semester right now I'm going to flip you guys around I'm going to share with you the curriculum changes that I have for each of my kiddos okay you guys this is my risen 7eventh grader stack and I'm going to briefly share with you guys the curriculum changes that I have made for her uh nothing too major it's just like little tweaks here and there so she's going to start off the year again we are finishing off iew uh structure and style level 1B we will have this completed by the end of September beginning October so we're wrapping this baby up and I definitely have enjoyed this so we will have this finished again really really soon at the start of our homeschooling year now as far as her core again as you guys already seen um we are sticking again with Oak Meadow so she's doing the oak Metals world history the English and again the earth science so that is her core when it comes to um her Oak Meadow now you guys as far as uh math goes you're going to be really really surprised but over the summer uh my daughter has been going through pre-algebra so well uh we are actually going to be wrapping up math youc pre-algebra by the end of July and I was really really surprised uh we are able to wrap up this curriculum faster because a lot of the concepts towards the end of uh math UC um pre-algebra our concept she has already mastered because again uh I do use a variety of curricul with her when it comes to math so we were able to check off a lot of those skills and some of the skills I went ahead and I omit it because I knew she was going to learn them again in uh algebra so with that being said you guys I was on a hunt this summer to pick out a Algebra 1 curriculum for her because she is going to be getting her first High School Credit this homeschooling year and I'm really really excited about that for her uh so I went on uh the hunt for her and I decided to go with um and this was a hard choice for me to make but I decided to go ahead and go with Dennis Algebra 1 and she's actually going to be starting Dennis in Algebra 1 in um August and I went with Dennison because for this daughter the frustration that comes along with math I definitely know I needed to simplify and ease her into math math has always been a struggle for her and um I just wanted to make math seamless in her high school years however my concern with Dennison was is this going to meet all of the needs that she needs as far as uh mathematics is she going to test well on the SAT and ACT uh using this curricula and um with all of the research that I have done I definitely uh landed on Dennis and I think this is going to be a perfect fit for this particular daughter and if you guys want to see a flip through of this I definitely will share with you a flip through of Dennison algebra one but uh you guys this is where she's at and I'm really really excited for her the cool thing about Dennis and Algebra 1 is all of the concepts that she has learned in prealgebra pretty much the first 40% of this book they are recovering uh pre-algebra so she's going to get a second opportunity to really solidify those skills she has uh learned in Matthew see and hopefully uh this will be a better fit for her the main reason why I have switched from Matthew see to a new curriculum is because uh I was Finding towards the middle part of Matthew C my daughter was getting very frustrated with the way that the teaching was on the video and I had to use my instructor manual a lot to teach her and because of this year I definitely need to be a little bit more hands off with her and I love how Dennison has not only the video lessons but when she is solving the problems he has Solutions videos so she doesn't have to wait on me to go over the math concepts with her she will have that extra support with a dentist and algebra and I definitely think this is going to be a great fit for her so she's getting her first High School Credit I'm really really excited so Dennis and algebra one so again uh this is not really a switch this is just a level up because she completed math a little bit early now other things that she's doing again is the fallacy detective um we are just going to kind of squeeze this in I'm not too sure how I'm going to schedule it but hopefully she will enjoy this one we have again our word prowers from vocabulary cartoons she has her grammar through Roden staff uh this grammar course only is 90 lessons so she's going to finish this pretty early she might have this finished either by the end of this first semester or early second semester so I needed something to fill in the Gap so we have been using editor and Chief and she definitely loves this so I'm excited for her to continue using editor and chief she has enjoyed this over the summer uh again we also do uh word roots now second semester because a lot of these curricula she will have completed um I do have a couple of things that I may do or I may not do but I do have them I have Fixit grammar uh the F frog print which is level five we have done fixed grammar since level one for this particular kiddo and in second semester uh if I find that uh after we have finished rotten staff we may go ahead and start this fixed grammar level five now um I'm also going to go ahead and do in second semester we're going to go ahead and do this is iws public speaking course this is uh for a high schore credit and I think I'm going to go ahead and have her this in second semester this is only a 12we course uh and I'm going to give her another High School elective credit for public speaking so these are just my tentative plans for her again all of this stuff that I'm sharing with you guys my daughter can do independently uh somebody just has to come back behind her and check her work and um I'm really really excited about that so if I need any help with like my family members they will be able to assist my oldest and really just come behind her and check her work because she's able to do uh a good bit of her work independently and um I'm really really happy about that for her so these are her simple curriculum changes now I'm going to share with you guys the things for my littles and what I have shaken up and Chang with them as well okay you guys this is my four-year-old stack again she's working in some kindergarten work this homeschooling year I'm taking it at her Pace but this is where she's at so she's going to be using the level one Bob set book readers I love these Bob Books she is on the second book right now I really like them to read the books and master them so this is kind of where she's at as far as like her readers her handwriting is a Kickstart to kindergarten we started this over the summer so I'm really really excited for her to continue to work on those handwriting skills and she's doing really really well she is my Lefty you guys and um it's been going good so as you can see I mean she's doing okay especially for a um especially for a four-year-old so I'm really taking this at her Pace if I do need to redo this level with her I definitely will but she's enjoying handwriting and she likes it so much now as far as her math she is actually doing the kindergarten math with confidence series we're already on lesson five because we started this March of this year and I just paused it over the summer so we're just going to pick off what where we left off with this with her and she is just kind of like going seamlessly through it this is just a workbook page most of the teaching is actually inside of the uh teacher manual because it's really really handson so we're just going to finish going through the kindergarten math with confidence series with her as far as reading you guys goes over the summer I just did dabbled into all about reading level one with her we was working in the teacher child to read but I was noticing she wasn't really fing it after a certain while so I was like you know what let me just practice just some CVC words using our letter towels and I did it and she enjoyed it so we started just going over like the lessons and all about reading and you guys she is actually on lesson number three right now so I'm like okay here we go I am actually teaching two kids to read this year so uh she's actually going through it pretty pretty well uh I really take my time with her I just have fun I let her play around with the letter towels and she really really loves it so we're going to continue in all about reading for this kiddo so this is my fouryear Road's little stack of everything she's going to be doing this homeschooling year I'm keeping it really really simple the only thing I might add in for her is I do have explode the coat level one for her and if I see she is uh ready to do it as far as her penmanship skills I will pick up that book and use it for second semester but this is her little baby stack for my four-year-old okay you guys this is my Rising first grader stack and I forgot to mention as you guys seen I am not going to be doing a gentle and class iCal primmer with my 4-year-old I had to cut something out cuz it was just going to be too much for me so uh we're not going to be doing gentle and classical primer if You' seen my uh pre Kinders or my four-year-olds curricula piics that is definitely something I have omitted this homeschool year I was really really sad about it but I have to keep things practical because if someone comes into my home school and has to take over I definitely know they can take over with what I have selected and peer down now especially for my littles because my oldest daughter again like I said she can work independently but I definitely need to keep things more simple for my littles uh so someone can come in and help out with them I also have omitted spelling connections for this year you guys is nothing wrong with this curriculum I just decided to uh do the all about spelling with all about reading level two so that's the only reason why I'm not going to be doing spelling connection so as soon as my daughter gets into all about reading level two we're going to be doing all about spelling uh this all about learning press has been working so well for her I just don't want to shake it up so uh I'm just going to go ahead and omit this for right now keep things simple as well so as far as handwriting goes again Handwriting Without Tears we're finishing up the letters and numbers for me book with my Rising first grader and then she'll go into the first grade uh print book you guys I really really enjoy Handwriting Without Tears uh in the first grade book she's just going to be writing a lot smaller than she is now and I love how they uh work on it it's really really repetitive and um she's going to again hone in on those lowercase letters especially in this book so uh these are her handwriting books she's going to be working in this school year again she's actually working in all about reading level one but we have been doing so well over the summer you guys right now we're still in mid July and we're on lesson 21 for her so I foresee us being at the halfway point pretty pretty soon we have been going through almost two lessons a week with my uh Rising uh first grader so um I think I'm going to go ahead and have to go ahead and buy level two for her because I definitely know by the end of this semester my Rising first grader will be uh moving into Le level two so I definitely need to make sure I uh go ahead and get that level I definitely like to have the next level on my shelf she has just been excelling and rooting over the summer I don't know what it is something just has been clicking for her um I also got a eye exam done for my uh Rising uh first grader and you guys she needed glasses so she's wearing her glasses now so I'm not too sure if that has something to do with it but she's been doing so well so uh this is her reading instruction again for this year I do love to pair it with explode the cat so she's more than halfway through level one so I have level one and a half and I also have level two on my shelf we can pull off if she gets through these books faster so here are her readers we're going to continue to use this year we're going to use the Bob Set uh set two uh actually today you guys she has just read the last book in the set one so we're going to start these really really soon the set two books I'm really excited for her I also have the trophies the hardcore trophy readers that we are going to use this homeschooling year as level readers so again I don't have to go out to the library to pick new books this has like reading comprehension and little question questions in here for her and I'm really really excited to begin uh these hardcore trophy readers now the all about reading curriculum does come with readers but I definitely love having additional readers in my home school so this is just going to eliminate the need for me to have to go rent to a library all the time so I have my Bob Books I have my hardcore trophies now the hardcore trophies book did come with this like fun practice um it's kind of like explode the code exactly really so I have this workbook here as well too so if she likes this one better than the Expo the coat we can kind of switch them up and do things with it but I'm definitely happy I have readers with her now as far as math goes she's again going to be doing first grade math with confidence right now we are actually on again week number five with her so um I'm really really excited about this now I do have a math you see Alpha last year we did the math with confidence and primer but I'm going to be completely honest I'm not too sure if I'm going to to do two math curriculums with her this year we will see but for right now I'm just going to start off with uh first grade math with confidence if I see we have it in us to do the two math curcums like we did this year I will go ahead and pull this off my shelf but I want to keep things really seamlessly again for uh myself so for right now we're just going to stick with just the one as far as science goes we are going to be doing sunlight science K and we're going to be doing this of with my uh four-year-old too because I defin defitely think they can both do this this is for uh k for ages um 5 to six or grades K through 1 so I definitely think that my uh four-year-old will have fun doing this with us as well now as far as history goes we are going to be again doing the all around the world um level zero with build your library um I'm excited about this curriculum we're going to be uh Reading literature cooking recipes uh I shared with you guys a lot of the uh picture books in or the reference books in her curricula pick video uh that we're going to be using and I'm really really excited about this one uh for us to do I'm going to keep it simple for right now I'm just going to have us do this two days out the week we may or may not finish this curriculum in its entirety this homeschooling year but I'm okay with that I'm okay with peering down and just really doing what we can and just having fun as far as our African-American studies I decided to keep in melanated Tails melanated tails is just two days out the week where we will be reading uh picture books on African-American fairy tales folktales a lot of literature and we're going to do this two days out the week and we're going to read our fairy tales uh over breakfast and hopefully the kiddos will enjoy this these are just fun picture books and I love using these Heritage packs in my homeschool I think this is going to be the third or the fourth pack that I have used so I'm excited about this one so these are all of my uh Rising first graders curricular choices and what we're going to do and how I have like really just kept it simple seamless and simple for them okay you guys this is my teacher basket right here and I keep it right here in my um on the side of my desk and this just has like all of my teacher manual so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and set it up I already have my rot and staff in here I have my pre-algebra in here this is probably not going to be in here for much longer but it's in here for the end of the summer I have my IW in here and then I just have like my um this is like my daily planner that I keep everything in I use a separate planner so I'm going to go ahead and just add in the front my new teacher guides I'm going to have right here again so I can remember to read them so this is just like a reminder to myself I need to come back and read these babies before we start off our school year oh you guys I forgot to share with you guys I got new washi tape for my um school nness planner and like I said before like am I even going to use this this year because I'm so excited about hes School Planet but I do have my new washi tape and I'm just going to go ahead and sit this right here and a lot of you guys ask me like where I get these uh bookmarks from because you see them on all of my teachers guides these are magnetic bookmarks that I use for my teachers guide so I don't have to like continuously find the page I just already have this little bookmark in them and a lot of you guys asked where I got them I got them from Amazon I'll link them down below because I really really enjoy these I think this pack came with like 12 of them Al together so yeah so now I have my little teacher station all ready to go it was nothing much I had to add in it here goes my tentative planner as far as our um days that we're going to be doing so everything is all set up right here nice and neat looking good so when I am ready to come in here it's all ready to go for me so yeah guys I'm back I have my Target pickup of my school supplies I'm going to share with you guys uh in today's video also and I am also going to share with you guys some things that I have to decorate my Homeschool Room um you guys I have not shared with you guys my homeschooling room in forever so what I'm going to do is after I set up these small little things that I'm going to change like decor items in my a Homeschool Room I'm going to give you guys an official Homeschool Room Tour I'm not too sure when it's going to be posted but I definitely have to make one for you guys so uh with that being said I'm going to share with you guys the things that I have to change up the homeschooling room first things first you guys I am definitely going to change this I have like a button light that I want to change and I have been wanting to change it so bad so I got like a new light fixture uh this is just a simple one and here goes the picture of how it's going to look right here so I'm really really excited about it um we have been really working diligently me and my husband to change change out all of these light fixtures because um I definitely know that it looks better when we change out the button light so it's a really really it's really simple we have learned how to do it so I'm really excited about our new uh light fixture that I'm going to add in our Homeschool Room and hopefully uh me and my husband can install this this weekend uh and I can change out my button light now as far as curtains go um I went shopping again with my mom and we found these curtains these are like two panel curtains and I kind of want to do like a peachy kind of theme in here because all the colors in here are kind of like neutral and I wanted like Spruce it up this is going to be like the first like pink room we're going to have so I definitely think that these like uh peachy curtains are going to look really really cute so I have these right here these are my two panels and then my mom she was decorating her room and she had some extra curtain rods so I'm excited I get to change out our curtain rods so these are going to be the new curtain rods I'm going to use and she found these on sale they were only $16.99 so hopefully these curtain rods will look really really cute on our windows in my Homeschool Room I just have two windows so this is going to be perfect uh along another addition that I'm adding Into The Homeschool Room is you guys like I have like a old pillow that I keep on my uh chair I'm actually sitting on it right now because I always film with it and my kiddos always fight over that pillow and it's just so funny so what I did was everyone has a pillow for their chair and it's like a cute like a pink peachy color so I can't wait to set up everyone's pillow on their chair so uh they can stop stealing mine and everyone will have a matching pillow it's not going to be any fighting well hopefully it's not and like when we sit on the floor and do school I always sit on my pillow so hopefully the kids will enjoy having like a pillow they can sit on in The Homeschool Room so I got uh two packs of these as far as pillows because I have four chairs in our homeschooling room so those are like the new decor items that are going to that I'm going to be doing and hopefully again I can drag my husband in here and he can help me set up these things this weekend and I can kind of like share with you guys um the new changes and things like that so I'm really really excited these simple changes like curtains and pillows and light fixtures they really spruce up the room and hopefully it can kind of really give us like that little additional added Joy so these are the things for The Homeschool Room now you guys I'm going to share with you uh briefly our homeschooling uh supplies and like the things that I got I really didn't need much this year here uh so I'm just going to uh share with you guys what I picked up from Target okay you guys I want to share with you guys again what I got from Target from my pickup order um you guys like this year I just didn't want to fool with going inside the store and I definitely knew I would have grabbed more than what I needed so I did a pickup order so the first thing that's in this big bag right here is um let me get it out is some new binders I like to use bind binders to uh record my kiddos record so I have three of these binders uh for each of my kiddos so I don't know if I'm going to use all three because sometimes especially for my littles since they're still so young I'm able to combine two years into one binder so I have three I always grab them during this time because this is when they're the cheapest and these are the 2in binders and they hold uh 500 sheets of paper which is a lot so um I'm excited to have these and again if I don't need them for my littles I would just go ahead and store them in a closet uh for when I do need them so they're really really cheap at this time so I got my binders for my recordkeeping uh let's look in this bag right here so the main school supply that I needed this year was markers we have been going through markers so fast and I love Crayola but I have found that these uh Mond Lama uh these are the generics for the Target they are so similar to the Crayola washables that I just got these so these were only 50 cents each and I think I only got five packs so this will be good if I need more I can grab them throughout the year uh they won't be this cheap but um I typically don't go through markers that fast so this definitely will last us the whole homeschooling year uh just for fun I got some uh glitter paint markers uh I think my oldest is probably going to love these ones I just seen them and I was like you know what let me just go ahead and add these to my order now as far as pens goes I went ahead and I got myself some new friction erasable pens these are just the green purple blue I just the standard colors I really really love these and they were on sale so I went ahead and got them I typically get get the knockoff brands from Amazon but since I was already doing my back to school shopping I was like okay let me go ahead and get those now in this bag I went ahead and I have some Expo markers we have been doing a lot of stuff especially with my littles them practicing their handwriting their penmanship we've been using a lot of Expo markers and my oldest order loves using Expo markers when she's doing her math so I just got two packs of the like fun color ones and I got two packs of the black ones so each of the kiddos will probably have like two markers out at a time and hopefully these will get us through probably just only the first semester if they go through longer I'll be happy but I have four packs of Expo markers and I have tried so many other dry erase markers you guys and these are the best um I've tried to Dollar Tree ones they work good but they do dry out fast so uh I just went back to the old school Expo markers now as far as other markers you guys goes because the mondol Lama doesn't come in the bright colors and my kiddos love using the standard and the bright colors I got the bright colors in Crayola and again I have five packs of these I already have crayons and color pencils in my shelf from last year that we didn't go through so I didn't need those now I did need new watercolors for the littles so I just got two uh of the watercolors these are the target Brands these are great we do a lot of watercolors uh in our home school so I'm happy to have another set of that I'm going to add those to my art cart uh you guys I got a lot of glue because I go through so much glue in our home school and um I went ahead and I just got three big packs of these 12 packs of glue um hopefully this will last us to the end of the H school year uh we do like a lot of notebooking and things like that my kiddos do like a lot of cut and pasting activities and things like that that I find online for them uh we just go through glue so much I have three kids so technically each of them will have their own packs so these are the glue sticks that I got for them this homeschooling year and the last thing that I got from Target again like I said this was just a small back to school supply order I didn't need much but I went ahead and I got them these uh drawing pads because my two Littles have been enjoying like doodling and drawing and things like that so for like a morning starter or for them the color and just a doodle in between me working with each of the other kiddos they have their own drawling pad I actually purchased one for the summer they've been using so they hopefully they'll enjoy having a new one for the upcoming school year so these are all of like my homeschooling supplies so you guys I really hoped you enjoyed like coming along with me as I'm just like uh doing little final pieces and touches in my Homeschool Room I got my school supplies and I'm kind of like really kickstarting our planning for the upcoming homeschool year um I'm taking it easy but I'm still kind of getting things done um hopefully you guys are enjoying these uh like plan and prep videos that I'm sharing with you guys but as always thank you so much for watching today's video I hope you enjoy and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye [Music] oh