The Johnson Crew!

How's the school year going so far oh great question lots to say on this matter and I'm so glad that you are joining me today to hear about it and I'd love to hear about your school year as well so definitely drop me a comment below and let me know what's going great for y'all what you've already had to make changes to I'd love to hear it all we are only three weeks in to our homeschooling year so far on the day that I'm recording this which is sunday september 11th

And already there have been a day or two here and there that I'm like oh man this again yeah it happens fast but what's so great about homeschooling is we have the ability to tweak and make changes and you know we've already been doing that so we are going to make this the best homeschool year yet so I'm determined for that so today I'm sharing with you the good the bad and the ugly we're going to look at it all what's working for us what's not working for us what we like what we don't like there's also a lot of changes that I made already for this school year that are working great

And I'm so glad we have made those changes so I want to share all of those things with you today and hopefully as we kind of hash this out together it'll give you some good ideas for maybe some areas in your home school that might need some changing too that'll make it so much better so much more pleasant for you so I hope that that's the case this video today is actually in collaboration with several other homeschool moms that are here on youtube I've got a link to the playlist below for you to go check out next

And hopefully you'll find some encouragement and some great ideas from those moms as well they're going to be sharing their home school experience and how the beginning of their school year is going so far and thank you so much to davine over at calm in the chaos home school and shauna over at homegrown homeschool for hosting this collaboration so hopefully you will glean some encouragement and tips and wisdom from this whole collaboration of other homeschooling moms who are just like you and want to have an awesome school year with their kids

So stay tuned I'm so glad that you are here to join me today for this video it means so much to have the support of this community and I just love getting to chat with you other homeschool moms you all have so much wisdom to share and I'm thankful for this opportunity so today I want to talk about what is working well for us what is already not working well for us and I can see need to have changes made and where we need improvement

So let's talk about all of it I will start with the good because we all want to hear the good first right what is going well that's the encouraging part right so we'll start with the good I did decide this year that we will start every day with one worksheet of handwriting some days we do start with bible and then that's our second thing that we do but anyways it's right up there at the top of the day and it's a very quick easy win for all of us like whoop check that off the list it's done because last year it was something that I would push off push off to the end of the day

And then if we were all exhausted I'd be like we don't have to do that today we'll skip it it's fine which resulted in us like rarely doing it and you can probably tell by looking at my kids handwriting so we definitely need that practice this year so that's been a good change and they actually don't mind it because it is just one worksheet so that's working well as far as our curriculum choices go if you missed my video from a couple months ago where I shared all of our curriculum choices I will link to that video down below

And you can check that out next just to see in more detail what we're using but um just sort of a brief overview my 10 year old is still loving the ron paul curriculum english and history that he's doing this year so that's going well he's still loving science shepherd he's doing physical science through science shepard that's going great and then something new that we picked up this year is sequential spelling and that's actually going well too there was a little bit of time there where he was like uh like maybe by week two he was like this kind of feels like a lot to write every day because it's 25 words

So we grabbed a little personal size dry erase board and had him write on that one day and he loved it and obviously it's even quicker and easier to erase when you need to rewrite the word that you misspelled so it was like I just like revived him and he was like oh this is way easier and loved it so small change that led to great results sometimes it's nice to just shake things up for them like that like if you do have a white board on the wall or just get the small little white board from like the dollar tree that they can use right at their desk those are great things to use my eight-year-old daughter she is still liking the bju

Press history that she's doing and matthew c seems easy so far to her it's like just starting out and multiplication which is like 2 times 0 is 0. so that's all been pretty easy so far we'll see how she feels once we get into the harder parts but so far so good my six-year-old is enjoying matthew c and he still really loves doing hooked on phonics and that has still been a great thing to like occupy his time with while I'm working with another kid we also recently downloaded the noggin app

And he's been doing some educational stuff on there while I'm preoccupied with someone else so that's been helpful and my six-year-old is liking the good and the beautiful language arts but some lessons do feel a little long for him so sometimes we'll take a break in the middle of a lesson and still come back to it some days we won't finish a whole lesson and I'll let him kind of stop early because I don't want to exasperate him I know that our kids do need to learn discipline right they need to learn to do hard things

And good work ethic but we also have to balance that out with not exasperating them and making them hate school and hate schoolwork you know the whole point is that we want them to love learning so that's something that I kind of trying to like keep a beat on like all right if he is seeming like this is too much the kid's only six we'll learn work ethic maybe in some other ways and down the road but we can go ahead and and close the book for today it's

Okay and then some days I'll actually not do the language arts curriculum and we will just do the hooked on phonics lesson that day he can play the games while I'm working with another kid and then we can do the book together and that might be all we do um as far as reading goes that day because I feel like he's maybe not totally ready to like zoom through the language arts curriculum so I think it's actually gonna work really well to kind of keep a slower pace in that book by doing hooked on phonics on the other days which might mean that he's still doing level one into the next school year we'll kind of see how it goes you know sometimes kids

Get to a point where they sort of like crack the code right and and they're able to zoom through a particular subject but we haven't hit that peak yet so I'll be on the lookout for it if you saw my video from a couple weeks ago about how we prepped our kids for this homeschool year I put in there like kind of how we plan as well and one of the things I mentioned in that video is that I was going to get gum and mints

And I have them in a little container and we've since like bought a ton more gum in different flavors so it has exceeded that container but anyways that has been a huge hit with them they love the fact that they can have gum or a mint for every subject so I do feel like that has boosted morale and it's just a nice little treat that they can have without me having to run back downstairs to the pantry and look through stuff and try to find something healthy it's just

So much easier to be like yeah you can have a piece of gum and that satisfies them so and I do feel like it's kind of like a fidget spinner right they can just be chewing on that while they're getting their work done so that's been a pro I also talked in a previous video about our star system and this is like our behavior system and that is going really well this year I finally created these tracking sheets that are working really well because last year after like the first couple of months I wasn't keeping track of their stars very

Well and it just sort of fell by the wayside and we weren't really doing it anymore so you know if you don't do the reward part of it where they get to like pick a prize at the end of each week then it kind of loses its potency during the school day so this year we have been doing the star stores what we call it at the end of every school week and they get to pick something with the stars that they've earned and the tracking sheets are making that

So much easier and I love having them posted up on the cork board right by my desk so that's all working really well also on the cork board by my desk I have the master schedule of everybody's subjects what order they're supposed to do them in every day and that's super helpful to have just like a quick snapshot where I can reference where everybody's supposed to be at that moment in the day and that's been a huge help I also shared this summer a homeschool room clean out

And makeover and I'm so glad that I took the time to do that this summer because it's freed up space in our room it's taken out a lot of the clutter I got rid of some of the toys that were up here that were causing a big mess every day that my two little ones were pulling out and just reorganized a lot of stuff and so now it just it feels so much tidier in here and easier to find what we need and then I finally put decor on the walls

So if you missed that video go check it out it's nothing crazy and extravagant I'm not a designer but it adds so much and it looks really good and it just gives the room a nice vibe so I'm I'm very glad that we took the time and did that this summer I also mentioned in my prepping our kids for school video a couple weeks ago that I got timers for them there's little kitchen timers they have setting on their desk and they can time themselves for how long it takes to like get an assignment done

And then it's also a timer they can walk around the house with when they're on a break and that way they can press the timer button and then be alerted when their break is over instead of me having to like hunt each kid down like wait a minute your break is over come back come back having to corral kids all day long it really is a waste of time because I could be working with someone else instead of having to do that and then it's obviously very frustrating

So I really do like using the timers that's been a big hit although they have misplaced them a few times which is really annoying one thing that we finally tried this year is we had another homeschool family come over that we're really close with and we did school together last friday so it wasn't like we got together to do some fun thing we got together to do our normal everyday school work and my eight-year-old daughter and her eight-year-old daughter are both using the good and the beautiful language arts

So they were able to do a lesson together which was awesome and the whole day just went so well like everybody was motivated to get their work done faster so they could play with each other everyone had better attitudes because their friends were here I had a better attitude because my friend was here and we just did school together she helped some kids I helped some kids and we just sort of went around the room managing facilitating teaching as needed and it worked so great

And it was so fun so I would love to do that like once a week I don't know if that will fit in each of our schedules you know to line up and do that just throwing that idea out there for you if you have another homeschooling friend that you could get together with that was really a nice change up for us to do that so okay let's move on to what we're not liking or what's not working and needs improvement it is really hard to juggle multiple ages um not gonna lie that's pretty challenging I have a 10 year old eight six

And three year old so obviously they're all doing different levels of work um the three-year-old is really just usually a major distraction and thankfully I'm not so much worried that he's gonna like get into trouble or hurt himself like he's three and a half but he sometimes is just running around and doing crazy stuff and really distracting everybody I mean he is really funny but he is just such a distraction sometimes so sometimes I'm like why don't you go downstairs and play in your room buddy or if my six-year-old is also on a break why don't y'all go downstairs

And play together so that it's quiet up here where we're doing school well that like always results in someone fighting with the other one or someone getting hurt or just you know some type of squabble which ends up requiring me to then go downstairs and manage that and just becomes an even bigger distraction than if they had just stayed up here so um I've kind of stopped doing that and just keeping them up here as much as I can so that I'm not having to go all over the house

And just trying to find things to entertain them in an educational way while I'm working with my big kids so that can be a challenge any ideas you have please drop them below I'm all ears for my 10 year old now we do love matthew c there's nothing wrong with that program but he is still in the book from last year I think that's the delta book and they're doing long division right now it's like three digits going into six digits and so it is a long math problem if you're doing it right

Now or you remember doing it it's long it takes it's called long division right it takes a long time to get through each problem so I get his frustration but he's even been having a hard time like remembering how to borrow when he's going through and having to subtract and so I was talking to my husband about it the other night and and he made a good point that in traditional school when they come back from summer break they do all this review and we did take a summer break

And didn't come back and do a review in my mind I'm like well he's he's kind of behind like I'd like him to just keep pushing through but he's been in like tears over these long division problems so um I don't want that either he used to love math so I hate to see him start to hate it so my husband made a good point why don't we press pause on that book and have him do review worksheets you know go back several lessons go back to just simple subtraction simple multiplication all those things

And just have him review these simple math facts and then after it feels like he's built his confidence back up because you know when they start doing those reviews it starts to click and come back and it's kind of an easy win like okay that's right yeah I know this and it feels quick and easy to get through those worksheets so once he kind of builds back that confidence and that love for math then we'll get back into this long division and moving forward in that book I thought that was a pretty good idea

So we are going to be starting that this upcoming school week and I'll have to do another update at some point and let you know how long that took I'm hoping it's not too long but we'll see but that's the beauty of homeschooling is we can adjust the schedule based on our kids needs and where they are we're not just trying to push them through to be able to ace some test I don't want him to just struggle through it I want him to enjoy it

So we will take the time to get him back up to that point and that's fine the other thing that is like been such a challenge this year is my eight-year-old daughter she can be pretty stubborn and I talked to her about switching up her language arts program from bju press online to the good and the beautiful where I would sit down and teach her because with bju press they separate that subject into three subjects they have reading english and spelling and so by the time she watches all three videos does all three assignments it's like an hour

And a half and so I'm looking at the good and the beautiful that incorporates all of that and we could get through a lesson and her independent work in like 45 minutes to an hour and so I'm telling her about this this summer and she's like on board yeah let's do it and then as soon as we got into it this year she's just like dug her heels in and does not want to do it which has been a huge bummer to me like just just keep giving it a try let's let's give it like another week or two or three

And see how you feel about it I've even told her like I'd be willing to switch you out of this curriculum if you just really don't jive with it but I think you will I think you will and I think you're going to be glad that you are sticking with this because it's going to save you time because if she has a good attitude she can zoom through it pretty fast it's all about attitude so this past week when we had our friends over and we did school together

And she got to do that subject with her friend it went so smoothly and way more quickly there was no digging the heels in like she just she just did it all and seemed to enjoy it so I'm hoping that that's like kind of readjusted her thought process about this curriculum that maybe she will give it another chance and like I said I'm hoping that we can do homeschool with our friends more often and she will not be so stubborn about this program because I I don't see any reason why she shouldn't like it I think it's great

So we'll see I have to update you on that as well later in the school year and a thought that I've had too about that is she's doing language arts pretty early in the day that's like our her first subject after bible and handwriting and so maybe I should move that to the very end of her day like okay you've knocked everything out this is the only thing you have left and then you'll be done maybe that would be more encouraging to her to feel like

Okay this is the last subject you have to do and then you are done for the day so we may try shifting the schedule around that's the great thing about homeschooling is you can do whatever you want you can change the schedule around 50 different times if you need to but you could do trial and error and just see what's going to work best for you and your kids and your homeschool as a whole so we'll see how that helps so that's how our school year is going

So far you know we're not too far into it yet so I might do like a mid-year update and let you know how these changes have helped and what other changes we've had to make but I am glad that we have the ability to make changes and to make things better so whatever that's going to take I don't know yet I'm like seven years into this homeschooling thing and still like changing so many things and figuring things out but that's kind of how it goes with parenting too right I mean we're always coming upon new seasons

And our kids are coming upon new milestones and developmental stages so it's the same in our homeschooling and so we're always having to readjust and figure out what's going to work best because our kids are growing and they're changing we're growing and changing and so we have to expect our homeschool to grow and change with us all as well so if something is not working something is causing you a lot of pain in your home school day give it some thought of how you could maybe change things up to make that better that's kind of where my head has been this whole year is

Okay what are the pain points that we're experiencing and how can we make them better because there's no way I can continue like this with these struggles I'm gonna get burnt out and there are so many other great moms here on youtube that share their homeschooling experiences and advice and tips and I learn so much from them and so don't stop with just my video click on the playlist below to check out the other moms who are in this collaboration who are sharing their experience

So far the school year and how their school year is going I'm sure you'll pick up so many more nuggets of wisdom from them as well you may find some other homeschools that are more similar to yours and that is always very helpful to get ideas from so again thank you so much for choosing to spend this time with me today I'm so encouraged that you're homeschooling I know it's a challenge and it can be hard but it's so so worth it and I'm here for you

And I know the other moms in this playlist are here for you so hopefully that's encouraging for you to know and I'm praying that you have an amazing school year and hopefully some of this like hashing things out today has maybe given you some ideas of some things that maybe could be changed up to make your homeschool experience better too so thanks again and I will catch you in the next video bye