The Johnson Crew!

Hi today we're going to be looking at our curriculum picks for the 2022 to 2023 school year for my fifth grader so stay tuned hi welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is Sarah and we are a homeschooling family we have four kids from the ages of nine to three and I am just delighted that you are here today and I am so thrilled that you are a homeschooler or are interested in homeschooling because it is amazing and not to say that we don't have hard days

But homeschooling is is really a blessing and I am learning that more and more as things get crazier out in the world so I am excited that you're here today um if you have seen any of my other curriculum pick videos then you know that I have what I like to call curriculum fomo and so every year I end up watching other youtubers videos and I'm like oh look at that curriculum that looks way cooler than what we're using I gotta try that and so it never fails every year I end up going back to like reinvent the wheel

And look at every different type of curriculum that's out there and comparing them all and trying to find what's going to be awesome for us the next year so this year I was kind of proud of myself we are sticking with a few things but we also have some new curriculums coming up so I'm excited to show those to you the first subject we'll touch on is english this is for my soon-to-be fifth grader my nine-year-old oldest son he has been doing the ron paul curriculum for some subjects for the last two years

So if you haven't seen that curriculum before go check it out if you are a freedom loving american you will love this program and it's a video based curriculum which is what I was really desperate for last year I was starting to feel really overwhelmed having four kids now and feeling like wow how am I gonna teach the older three and chase after my toddler there are a ton of other amazing homeschooling families that are on youtube that you can watch their day in the life videos if you also feel that stress

And that worry they really help give you some great tips and ideas on how to put those fears of these and I'm hoping to make some more of those videos this year as well but anyways I'll just say that the ron paul curriculum really we discovered that at the right time it was a need that we had he did english with them last year and the english course includes english language arts and grammar vocabulary reading and writing the third grade course did include spelling but fourth grade did not

And so it's a different teacher for the different courses and so the third grade english teacher is different from the fourth and fifth grade teacher the fourth and fifth grade teacher is the same so I'm assuming that spelling is also not a part of the english course this year so in addition to ron paul we got a spelling curriculum and I'll show that to you in a second but furthermore I need to do a full-on review video of the ron paul curriculum but so far we really like it the way that it works is it's typically like an eight-minute average video for the english course

And it's just a slideshow that the teacher has created that they're talking over and underneath the video is a link to the book that you're supposed to be reading and of course you could go to the library and rent it out but that link pulls up like a pdf version of the book that they can read on their computer or they could print out a little bit every day and read it that way then there's a link to another pdf which is their language arts worksheet for the day every fifth day is a review day

And that's when they get a writing assignment they do one new vocabulary word every day and they've got to write a sentence with that vocabulary word every day we've really enjoyed this workflow I got my sudden involved this year and asked him what do you like about the curriculums we're using what do you not like do you want to keep using these trying to get a little buy-in you know if he had a hand in the decision-making then maybe he will complain a little less when there are hard days right that's the hope

So he's really enjoyed it so we're going to continue with the romp curriculum for the english class for his fifth grade year and then in addition to that we got um a new brand new to us spelling curriculum which is called sequential spelling um level three I am really intrigued by this I saw another youtuber give a review about this curriculum and I was really into it so they use word families which I'm really preferential to and it's set up for like a four day school week

And with the word you're kind of starting with the root word and then each day you're adding on to that word so for example trespass trespasses trespassed and trespassers so you're learning the root word and then how to add on to it you're learning the different variations of that word and I find that really interesting so I am excited about this curriculum I'll let you know how we like it as we get into it but this is what we're going to be using this year for him

Okay for math we have stuck with matthew c from the get go and I think we we will probably continue to stick with them I do have family that has used matthew c and they loved it all the way throughout so big fan that's also a video based curriculum which is I'm a fan of it's great you know take taking things off mama's plate is fantastic so the way it works if you haven't used it or seen it before is it comes with a dvd or you can even stream it on their website if you prefer

And then that way you've got lifetime access for all your kids then all you would have to buy is the workbook every year you don't need the the teacher's manual because the video is the teacher oh so great so they watch like a like a three to five minute long video they're not very long just one video per unit it's not like they're having to watch it every day so one time and that teaches them the concept of course if they needed to watch it again they could or you could reinforce those concepts with them

And then they've got a workbook okay and they'll do a worksheet um now for my kids we do math three times a week so typically watching the lesson one day and doing a worksheet and then have two other days that they do a worksheet for what's great about homeschooling is that you can let your kids go at their own pace right you don't have to force them to move ahead when they're not ready which is going to cause problems down the road or you don't have to make them sit around

And twiddle their thumbs if they are they're really great at a particular subject and want to move forward at lightning speed so I feel like my son was like that with math back in third grade he was like eating it up and going faster and faster and loved it and then this past year like really slowed down so he will be finishing up the delta book from matthew c in the beginning of his fifth grade year and that book is mostly about division single and multiple digit division

And then he'll be moving into epsilon which is about fractions so we're excited about that okay moving along science let's talk about science so last year I discovered the holy grail of science curriculums it's called science shepherd if you have not heard of science shepherd go check them out go to their website I'll put these links in the description box below for you guys um but they're awesome also another video based curriculum are you surprised you're not but it's great the curriculum is coming from a biblical world view on science

And last year I told my son you only need to do two science lessons a week that's fine and he just flew through the astronomy course not because it's easy in fact I was shocked at the fact that he could riddle off at me things I've never heard before it was not easy but he loves space so much so it was something that he was very interested in another reason I love homeschooling if they're interested in something they don't have to sit around and go through these other topics that they have no interest in just because that is the way the curriculum lays it out as their teacher you can you can ask them what are you interested in

And you can let them devour that subject it's just it's such a much better way to learn and then they love to learn instead of grow to hate learning so I love this so he did astronomy ate it up loved it I feel like he could debate a naturalist at this point just from the astronomy course like legit I'm really impressed with the course so it's like a three to five minute video and then they'll have a worksheet for each video so each class is a video

And a worksheet now we're going to be doing physical science he actually asked for physics this is not my kid but it is my husband's kitten my husband is super science nerd um but I'm I'm thrilled about it and then for history he's going to be using the ron paul curriculum which like I said before is a video based curriculum and it is a slideshow with a teacher narrating it and I really like the teacher that they have for this level I think he does a fantastic job the course is about let me read this to you let me see this course resumes a study on the history of inventions starting around 1800 a.d where fourth grade history leaves off it proceeds in chronological

Order up to the modern day and it helps develop a sense of how inventions influenced history so it definitely brings science into that as well which I think is why my son loves it so much but I love that he's learning about inventors and inventions I want to spark that entrepreneurial spirit in him and I think this is a great way to do it so big fan of that class and that's the bulk of our school I've got two other things I'll show you that we're we're doing as

Well we're going to be doing some handwriting practice because his handwriting needs some help I don't know if it's just a boy thing or we just haven't like practiced it enough but that being said I got the level one handwriting book from the good and the beautiful for him and actually my third grader and first grade are going to be using this as well you can look through the pdfs on the good and the beautiful website you can look um at sample pages of the different curriculum that they offer

And it just seemed like the level one was going to be the most repetition for letters that I feel like he needs practice with so um give you a little view into this you can see it um so we're going to be doing that this is kind of on me like it's one of those things that feels like it's not a huge necessity so it ends up getting bumped a lot um but what I really want to do is like start our school day with just five minutes like hey you only have to write for five minutes it's not that hard right a jedi mind tricked them a little bit

And then for bible class we're going to be using veritas press we actually got this curriculum last year and again this is on me like we just haven't used it very much it's a video based curriculum it's set up pretty cool like it's very interactive for the kids on the computer they're they're clicking through it they're answering questions on the screen and it even has like actors that are giving the stories and talking about things to them so it's done really well it's just on me that we haven't done it as much as I wanted to we start our day every day at breakfast time with a little bit of bible time um usually it's my husband that's reading them some scripture or out

Of like a devotion book talk about it for a little bit and pray to start our day and so I think because we do that sometimes if the rest of our school takes so long then I end up bumping the bible curriculum which is like going to be getting more in depth into like old testament events and then um I saw this on someone else's video I've forgotten who it is by now I'm sorry this is from the daily grace company definitely check them out because they're having huge sales right

Now this spring this was only five dollars it's called my scripture workbook and it has memory verses in there beside every memory verse is a blank page for them to copy it and write it on there and as as you know copy work can be a great way to commit things to memory so I love this and also it's just great for me to have like a whole set of memory verses already picked out I'm hoping that this will help keep me accountable to having my kids memorize scripture because we have really slacked off this last year which I don't like

So I'm excited about this so yeah check this out five dollars on sale hopefully it's still on sale we also do piano lessons online um on youtube you can look up the hoffman academy and just do free lessons through his youtube channel or he also has a paid membership on his website where you can print out all the different music sheets and worksheets to go along with each lesson and it'll like keep track of where you are in the lessons it's a it's a pretty neat program he has set up

But if that isn't in your budget or you're just dipping your toes in you can use his youtube channel for free for your kids and I think he does an excellent job teaching piano so we do that as well for my two oldest and then my third child who will be going into first grade this year he's also going to be starting it so I'm excited about that so yeah that is everything that sounds like a lot like I talked for a long time but it's really not like my kids typically finish school by lunchtime

Now sometimes that means lunch time is a little bit late in order to make that happen but typically we're finishing by lunchtime so we start our day at eight start school at 8 45 and finishing up around noon or a little bit after it's a big fan of homeschooling I feel like we can make our schedule and it really works with our lifestyle so if you are new to homeschooling and you have questions please feel free to write those in the comments below this is an amazing homeschooling community here on youtube lots of families on here

So hopefully that would be a great place to meet some other homeschooling moms as well so after watching this video I've got another video for you about our other curriculum picks so you can watch that next and if you're new here please consider hitting that subscribe button below and join us here every week thanks so much happy schooling