END OF THE YEAR 6TH GRADE CURRICULUM REVIEW PART 2// MATH U SEE, IEW, FIX IT, APOLOGIA

hi you guys my name is Britney and welcome back to my YouTube channel you guys in today's video I will be doing my end of the year Reflections for my sixth grader part two so in my previous video you guys are already seen I did my end of the year curricular review with my old this and sharing her review on Oak metal grade 6 however we did not only use Oak metal grade 6 we used other resources in our home school and I wanted to make a separate video to go ahead and give you guys my thoughts reviews of the other pieces of curricula that we did at in our home school along with Oak metal great SE so um I really hope you guys are enjoying my curricular review videos that I have been sharing with you guys um on my channel these have been so much fun to make and I really hope that they're helpful um I feel like the curricular pick videos although they are fun and exciting I feel like you get the most benefit from seeing the review videos and really seeing how uh that curricula played out in you know like our home schools and things like that so um let's go ahead and get started I'm going to go ahead and start off with math so for math uh my oldest daughters or my six graders primary math that she used this year was Matthew C she started Matthew C Zeta over the summer and she completed this level in December and then we began doing math you see pre algebra in January and we got to the halfway point of this at the end of her sixth grade year so you guys I I love Matthew see I need to make a separate video All About Matthew see really giving you guys the in-depth view of it I think I am going to go ahead and do that for you guys cuz at this point I have completed with my oldest Epsilon Zeta and then we're halfway done with pre-algebra so I really feel like I have enough levels under my belt to really give you guys like a good review on math you see and um I have some quirks about it but overall I feel like the master approach to mathematics and how it just simplifies math it just made it be seamless for my oldest daughter um although I will say this year I did give my oldest daughter a standardized test because in the state of Georgia this was a testing year for us and I will say this you guys not to scare anybody but her math scores was not as high as they was when she was doing Saxon uh we did Saxon and math you see were the primary math curricula that I have been most consistent with in my home school and you know at the end of the day I'm going to be honest I just think that you know math may not be everyone's Jam or subject at the end of the day she's learning she's growing she's uh gaining knowledge and she has confidence in math now and I think that's all that matters um I just know that moving forward I know how to tweak the areas that she needs to uh develop more in her mathematics skills and I do need to S continue to supplement math you see um I personally believe and this is just my opinion that Matthew see uh you do need to supplement this curriculum based on my experience but like I said I will make a completely separate video on Matthew see um I will give you more in-depth review of it but overall this is what my daughter needed in our home school she's flourishing in it and um I have been enjoying it one thing I will say coming from Zeta to pre-algebra once we hit into pre-algebra um my daughter needed me a lot more math is my strong subject I loved math in school I know I was that crazy person but um I have been really partnering with my daughter working side by side with her with math now that she's in prealgebra and it's okay but I will say I do not feel confident after prealgebra to be this Hands-On with mathematics so this will be our last level of math you see that we are going to use so for high school we're going to be picking another math curricula that's going to uh get her through I guess her high school years but overall I'm happy with our switch to Matthew see and what this is going on our second year using it and it's been it's been great so that's all I really have to say about that one now uh like I was saying before I did test her at the end of um this sixth grd year we used the n n WEA map growth test from homeschool boss and it was great if you guys want to know like our experience when it came to standardized testing in a separate video let me know I know it's kind of like late everyone's kind of like past that point right now everyone's in their summer but if you do want to know about our experience doing um standardized testing in my homeschool just let me know and I will make a separate video Ashley from Gathering grounded has some really really great videos on standardized testing in particular the map test I'll link her video down below um where she went into detail that was a great one I liked it watching her video with that one but um I enjoyed using the map test in our home school I love the breakdown of the map test it really gave me like detail line by line the specific areas and the standards uh that I can work on with my oldest when it comes to math and Ela that's all I tested her in I didn't test her in the science this year uh but I seen that because we were doing math UC her scores in geometry and complex numbers wasn't as strong so over the summer I added in the supplemental workbooks from Kuman which is intro to Geometry we have been just doing one page a day for her to brush up on those geometry skills because I will say math you see because it's Mastery it doesn't have that much geometry it's not as it doesn't have as much geometry as Saxon had in it I'm just going to be honest with you guys but uh using these workbooks along with the pre-algebra over the summer I think it's going to help her retain her knowledge when it comes to Geometry uh at this point so she can uh remember the basics like you know volume uh metrics measurements things like that just the basics when it comes to Geometry so uh I just added in these cheapy Kum books I love these ones you guys in our homeschool uh moving forward since I got those results from the standardized test now as far as Matthew seagull uh the manipulatives for The Zeta and prealgebra were these um algebra and decimal inserts I will let you guys know she did not use these as much as she used the fraction overlays in epsilon and uh for some kiddos they may use this but I really will say I could have saved on my $60 on these manipulatives because she rarely use them in this level um so I'm going to be completely honest with that now as far as the blocks for my younger kiddos the big box right here we use those all the time so I'm happy I have the big set but up in these higher levels she didn't use the manipulative so yeah now as far as language goals you guys I did add in uh grammar along with our Oak metal because Oak Metal's grammar was more of a Mastery approach they didn't have like really daily grammar practice in it so what we did was first before we start started fixic grammar we completed rotten staff grammar 6 and you guys like I really really enjoy rotten staff grammar rotten staff is um Mastery yet spiral so each chapter we focus on one part of speech so one chapter will be just nouns verbs adjectives uh pronouns and it has the same format in each of the levels at this point we have completed four five and six of Roden staff and I love the diagraming of sentences this is a Christian curriculum um it's not secular I do prefer using secular curriculars in my home school however I didn't mind using this curricular because um I just loved the foundational skills that it laid this is more so for like a classroom setting but I will say I did modify it a lot by using our dry erase board when it came to her diagram and and sentences we did a lot of these uh lessons orally in the textbook and then if it was something she needed extra practice with I would use these uh extra practice sheets uh for her when it came to a grammar concept that I felt like she needed to like get the skills reinforced and then after each chapter I would give her a test so I really enjoy roten staff I really feel like roten staff has been my preferred grammar curricula uh Of All Times uh I do love fix a grammar you guys but I will say fix a gramar has always just been like a review over the concept she already learned in Daily practice so we finished rotten staff in September so I needed like a Daily Review grammar to get us through the rest of the year and again we use the grammar the uh what is this uh mowgly and Sher Khan level four book and I think she only asked me maybe one or two questions the rest of the year when it came to grammar like I said grammar is her strong point and I'm happy we did use this but I will be honest she didn't learn anything from fixic grammar just you know for this particular child I I do feel like fixic grammar is great I love how each week and lesson you know you go over your uh one part of speech and it slowly builds I like how the kids are editing in sentences I like the copywork aspect of it and I really will say um her editing those sentences it really helped her in editing her own writing and seeing the errors that she made and that's one thing I will say fix a grammar is great for is for allowing the kids to be able to see and correct the grammar and apply it to their own writing which is excellent so um I did love fixic grammar and I enjoy it and I will continue to use it in my home school but like I said uh my main grammar that I loved for my sixth grader has always been rot and staff now of course we finished up IW structure and style we did half of this during our school year if you guys want to know um IW how I feel about it you guys I love this curriculum this is our second year using IW structure and style um how I used iuw structuring style this year is that when she didn't have a writing assignment in her Oak Meadow we would do a writing assignment in IW so she only did this every other week so we completed 12 weeks of this over the course of our hes school year the video lessons she loves them they can be lengthy um I definitely will say maybe at this upper age they may be fine with the videos but definitely for like the elementary age I really feel like the videos were lengthy in the beginning of the videos he does do like the jokes and he lets the kiddos hear the other kids papers and I do feel like it's room in the level onea for you to be able to skip the like I guess the beginning jargon part of the video and get to the meat of the video to really shorten it for your elementary kids that's doing the 1A but at this level my daughter she just enjoyed it sometimes she said she would skip them him reading the papers but for the most part she will watch the video um I just like how it really takes the W and pressure off of me and seeing the growth in my daughter as a riter from doing level 1 a now to level 1 B it's just been great we're finishing this off over the course of the summer and um I'm so happy I decided to continue to use IW I didn't know if Oak metal would have too much writing for her but for this daughter she just excels in writing and I definitely want to continue to challenge her in that area because she definitely wants to study a field within uh English writing is what she does want to major in in college so um given her this area to be able to flourish has been great in our home school so I love it if you guys want to check out my uh 1A review I'll link it down below for you guys and I definitely will make an end of the uh Course Review when we complete the 1B and let you guys know how it worked out and if I had any quirks or my opinions have changed about the program once we complete it so yeah now as far as vocabulary goes vocabulary was a skill I definitely knew I needed to hone in with my daughter um so I made sure I just grabbed a few vocabulary supplements to help her really retain vocabulary at the end of our testing she did great in vocabulary uh so I definitely know what we used in our home school really really helped her out and I'm so so so happy about that so we used vocabulary cartoons and and again we're still working in this over the summer she used her school Nest notebook and uh what she would do is she would like write out the word she'll do a copy work sentence uh she would write the synonyms antonyms and she made a journal of all of her vocabulary words using the vocabulary cartoons you don't need to do the journal aspect of it this just made it fun for uh my daughter but I love these sat power um word word power studies because it gave them like funny little uh I guess like uh sayans for to help them remember the word and she really really retained the vocabulary and uh this is just fun these are definitely great like morning starters for vocabulary uh so I enjoy using this uh vocabulary for her uh the next set of vocabulary that I used was we dabbled into daily word letters for her this was just like I guess corny brain bricks is what I would say I really don't know if she really retained much vocabulary from this but it was just fun little lad puzzle she could do and I did this for the first part of the semester because I knew I just wanted to enhance that area once we got into second semester uh what I did was I picked up my word roots level one I definitely know she would not have been ready to do this at the beginning of her sixth grade year but second semester she was ready for it especially after having practiced with the uh sat uh vocabulary cartoon word power so I was so happy when I added this in our home school in January you guys I seen so much growth in her vocabulary using the word roots word roots focus on the Greek and Latin root words I love how they break up the words and it's just the repetition that they do uh in these lessons I like how after every two lessons there's a review they're writing sentences um I don't know what it is about the critical thinking company but I really enjoy a lot of their workbooks you guys uh and this one uh it did not uh leave me underwhelmed I definitely seen growth in my daughter and I loved it uh we got about maybe 3/3 of the way through with this book and we are going to finish this off in her seventh grade year and then move on to the next levels this is definitely something that is in my homes school to stay especially for this Kido uh we're just going to do as many levels as we can uh but I love this one um something else that I used from the critical company which was something that we passed over from fifth grade was she completed her uh reading Detective a higher order of critical thinking this is like um this is really really good for that inferencing skill it's really really good for allowing the kids to really critically think about uh the passages that they're reading I like that the critical thinking company their reading comprehension doesn't just have multiple choice there's filling in the blanks I love how after they ask a question they have to refer back to what paragraph they actually got that answer from I will say this was not my daughter's favorite when she first started doing this um in the fth grade however uh when we picked this back up in second semester to prepare her for her standardized test I definitely seen so much growth in her reading comprehension the fluidness of it those inferencing skills those critical thinking skills I love how this book took real passages from like literature like uh the W The Witch of Blackbird Pond Allen of the Blue Dolphin they had like a lot of non-fiction uh she read about like Jackie Robertson Booker T Washington uh they talked about plant science it was so many different excerts that they use and it really really kept the kids brains fresh and um I'm definitely continuing to use this in my home school for my younger ones uh as they get up here when they will be ready to do the first level of this I think this starts off maybe in the third grade I think this level starts off don't quote me but I definitely know um I will use this for my younger ones when they rise up as far as um my oldest I think this is going to be the last level of rooting comprehension because she is going to now get into more like literary analysis she's going to be doing more novel studies these upcoming years I don't think I'm going to need to test her comprehension because I'm going to have that when we do our literature studies but this was great in prepping for uh testing so if you do have to uh test in your state I definitely would say grab this one spend the extra money on this book not necessarily the cheapy reading comprehension books and you will see value of this in your home school so I love this one love the critical thinking company now as far as history goes I did supplement history um in the beginning of our first first semester this was my oldest daughter's first time doing a cycle through ancient times and I just really want to try out this curriculum to really be honest with you guys so I had the digital format of curiosity Chronicles ancient times and um I'm going to go ahead and see if I can put like a screenshot of some of the how the textbook and things like that looks on the side of my screen because um again I have this all digital so you can kind of see how the textbooks looks but my daughter absolutely loved doing curiosity Chronicles what we did was whatever time period we were in in our Oak Meadow so like let's say if we were talking about ancient Egypt I would pull out the um units on Ancient Egypt and we would listen to uh the book from Curiosity Chronicles to kind of pair with it she did the mapping and she did all of like the activity pages when it came to curiosity Chronicles and it really just beefed up our ancient history experience and I'm happy that we did both did we have to we absolutely didn't have to do both but it was just fun and I'm happy I tried out this curriculum with my oldest because this is definitely something I'm coming back to with my younger kiddos we are definitely going to do curiosity Chronicles um I like how the dialogue is not like a traditional textbook that you're reading it's a dialogue form between two characters called Ted and Mona and they go back and forth given historical facts and um I listen to we listen to the audible version but you can read the textbook you know between you and your kid especially if you know it's just you and one other kid uh that can make it fun too but we primarily listen to it uh at the end of each lesson they had like some um vocabulary they had like some critical thinking questions some uh reading comprehension questions and again the math work the coloring pages they always had like fun activities and and engageing games and things you can do uh we didn't do those uh things within this curriculum when I do it my second girl run I'm definitely going to do that with my younger kiddos but uh we just mainly focused on the meat and it really was so much fun this particular level is geared for grades 1 to three however in my experience after completing it I definitely can say you can do it with a first through a sixth grader is what I would say that this beginning ancient um times is geared towards but overall it was it was really really fun and I really really enjoyed doing curiosity Chronicles if you guys again want me to make a dedicated video all to curiosity Chronicles I will but it was great her history notebook is fat and she had so much fun doing this as far as science schools we started off our homeschooling year doing oakmeadows life science and the only reason why I stopped the oakmeadows life science really was because it was too teacher intensive and I really should have like going back thinking about this I really wish that I would have just made it work because I really enjoy Oak metal just overall and I enjoy the science and how it's laid out but I I should have like dug in deep however I just wanted my daughter to have a science that she can do more so independently uh she was really focusing this year like again we've had a heavy history and writing year is really what I would say our Focus hat was this year so um I I kind of did have to lighten up you know in one area so you guys I already had this on my shelf which was the apologia Exploring Creation and uh physics uh curricula on my shelf and um I pulled this out it was just like you know I needed something for her to be able to do independently I will say like I said before I do prefer using more like secular curricula this is a Christian uh science uh christianism science curricula which you know again I don't mind I feel like in this subject area of chemistry and physics it really to really be honest I really felt like it was more neutral it really didn't have like a heavy biblical emphasis in the curricula like again I don't mind using Christian curriculums but when it comes to science I do want more of a I guess a wider nck to be able to cover when it comes to science um this was independent this did allow my daughter to really practice on the note taking skills um she really utilized The Notebook a lot and it really helped her be able to like read the science understand the text that she was reading and work on those notetaking skills that I really wanted her to hone in on this year so I definitely will say for that it was great um I love how the information was presented in more of like a narrative format uh and it didn't it wasn't dull you know sometimes science can be dull and I loved how it read really really easily sometimes we would uh read it and then other times we would listen to it with the audible uh the experiments was really really fun you guys I definitely will give them tops Notch the experience was great um I will say the experience in this book was really scattered so when we first started off doing the curca it was a lot of experiments a lot of fun but as we were getting towards like the middle and the end the experiments kind of like you know lacked off which you know it's okay uh but I will say I wish the experiments was more evenly distributed through the curricula um but overall I will say out of all of the science curriculums I ever used in my home school my daughter said this was her absolute favorite so that definitely said something um will we continue with the apologia series moving forward I don't know cuz next year we are going to be doing Oak metal science and in high school I don't know if uh it if we will continue using the apologia series in high school but it's definitely on the table because she loved it and at the end of the day I will say even though I do have preferences in certain things uh I do want to continue to bring curricula and pieces in our home school that's going to Aid my kids and it's going to work out for us I loved how all of the apologia curriculars does have a lab kit because you guys like science is my weak area and having that lab kit with everything in it we were just like on the ball with science and I'm I'm really really proud of myself so um like again this definitely it was a hit uh it wasn't the necessarily the direction I wanted to go in our home school year but it worked out so you know hey you know what can I say but um you guys this is my end of the year curricula review part two for the other pieces of curricula that we used in my home school for my sixth grader I definitely will say as much as I try to be like a minimalist when it comes to my curriculum I'm just going to be honest and say I really don't think I ever will be a minimalist I do like pulling in a lot of resources and I know for some this may seem like a lot but it just worked really really well for my oldest daughter it worked well for us in our home school and I seen so much growth in my daughter and I think I seen so much growth this year was because I really was consistent other than science I didn't have any curriculum switches for her what we started off from the beginning we ended off and I'm so proud of us for being consistent and I definitely know moving forward being consistent and my curricula and my choices really helped me hone in and focus in on the skills I wanted my daughter to learn and um I had to learn that the heart way it's you know sometimes you do want to switch things out sometimes you switch curricula out a little bit too soon before really diving in deep into it and I learned that lesson the hard way but this year uh really even when I was having quirks about things sticking it through really just helped us have a great year so uh you guys I really hope you enjoyed en watching my end of the year sixth grade curricular review um I'm so happy you guys it's summer I've been having fun making more videos for you guys and I hope you've been enjoying them too so as always you guys I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye [Music] w