END OF THE YEAR CURRICULUM REVIEW SCIENCE HISTORY GEOGRAPHY 6 TH 9 TH GRADES

hello and welcome to home with Sarah Jane in today's video wanted to share kind of like an endof the- year curriculum review when it came to Science History and geography if you're new here welcome my name is Sarah and I'm homeschooling mom to two girls Bella is in the ninth grade and Lydia is in the sixth grade and like to talk about all things homeschooling and homemaking on this channel so welcome today we're going to be discussing like said History Science and geography now we had very successful homeschool year feel there that's not saying didn't have hiccups we had hiccups you guys but just feel like everything once we we kind of did couple of curriculum switches at the beginning of the year when we noticed that things weren't working once we did that the rest of the year just kind of was pretty smooth curriculum wise so we were very happy with lot of the options after we made that first switch now when it came to science for my nth grader she had started the year using dive biology or shoran biology can't quite remember the name I'll put like little picture or something here but she started off you know really it was hard it was challenging curriculum for her it was lot of work it was cutting into lot of her day and it was actually really starting to stress her out now don't want to say that this is bad curriculum it is very thorough curriculum you know it requires your students to do reading to watch videos like lecture videos you know they take notes they have study cards they you know there's lot involved in here but it was just so overwhelming for my daughter Bella and she is not she is not looking to go into anything that's very sciency guess we can say she actually wants to be writer she she wants to be pastry chef so me pushing this curriculum on her that really seemed extremely College Prep biology it just wasn't good fit for her she was getting stressed out so even though she was able to complete the work it was just taking her almost 2 hours day to do and that was just not something that we were willing to do for science program so we did actually switch her can't remember how long into the school year but think it was few weeks we we ended up switching her to Friendly biology now this was much gentler approach when it came to biology and again we weren't looking to find any kind of college preparatory class or anything like that when it came to biology for her it's just not subject that you know she enjoys very much like she finds it interesting but this isn't the path that she's going to be following so when found friendly biology this was much better fit so with this one would say that this is very basic to the point easy to understand biology lessons now these still took her about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how long the video portion was because we did opt into the video option as well where she could get like lectures and stuff that go along with this but these are this is much more basic and straight to the point program and that's kind of what she needed to just kind of get it checked off the list because it is requirement in our state now there was wiggle room in this so she is going to be finishing this on time even though she sto started this late because there are only 28 lessons in this each lesson takes around week again there is video component to this as well to where the way my daughter set it up is she watched the video the first day then she did the text reading then she would work on some of the worksheets and then she would kind of follow up with like the the weekly end of the week test type of thing so she did find good schedule that worked well so this is the textbook and we did get the secular version they do have Christian world view don't know much about it just know that they offer it for friendly biology there's also the lesson test and answer key in the same book and then we have the student workbook now again with this one this is not like college prep anything like that feel like it is very gentle so if you have student that is maybe struggling with science with Biology maybe it's not their favorite subject and you're kind of like me where you just kind of wanted to check it off and say yes we did complete this biology requirement for graduation this would probably be really really great course now sometimes their videos could last you know 20 minutes sometimes they were 45 it really all depends on the video now there wasn't any kind of like dissection kit included in this but we added that in they did have videos on dissecting think it was like Cowart and they did have like videos on labs and stuff and there were like Labs included in here but like little tiny Labs like it wasn't anything there's lot of household items that you'd be doing these Labs with but when it came to like dissection and stuff like that there was video option for it but we did end up using the dissection kit that had purchased at the beginning of the school year for dive biology because for one didn't want to waste it and another did want her to have some experience with some dissection so that's kind of how we switched it up little bit to make it work to get dissection in here other than just the video but overall she really loved this program really like this program it was easy to follow it was easy to correct her work it was just easy overall very friendly so we did really enjoy this one and she is considering taking the friendly chemistry course next year we haven't 100% you know decided but it looks like it's going to be that one only because she liked this one so much again she is not going into career where she needs lot of like college prep science or anything like that so this was definitely something that we enjoyed and it just fit her so well can't say that it was like super thorough program but she did get all of the information that she needed out of biology course can say that so again she's just wrapping this one up and she she does really like it so we are looking into another version of The Friendly Sciences now for Lydia my sixth grader science was little crazy this year so started the year not really knowing what wanted to do for science other than unit studies and that style really fits Lydia so have stack look at look at all of these unit studies that we completed for science this year so do want to start off by saying that we ended up finding new to us curriculum called add the Wonder nature curriculum that use primarily for science unit studies this year and that's what I'm going to be sharing with you so will tell you that one of her favorites out of the ad the Wonder was the mushroom unit study she really loved this one she thought it was so much fun she loved researching the different mushrooms trying to find them on nature walks we had blast with this unit study now if you're not familiar do have flip through on add the Wonder nature curriculum will link it down below but this is only two week long unit study it's 8 days worth of lessons and they are very you know short and to the point it this curriculum is kind of more about you know getting some basic information about the topic but then spending time in nature going outside you know you're not supposed to be stuck inside indoors or anything like that this is really meant to you know get your kids thinking about certain things this did make my daughter want to do lot of research which really enjoyed it got her researching different mushrooms different types of things so this was overall huge success in our home school this year and so she just kept on wanting to do more and more and more add the Wonder so again like said do have flip through on my Channel that will link below but today I'm just going to kind of share some of the units that we completed and we did complete mushrooms we also completed their owl unit study caves sunflowers glow things and animal Travelers animal homes scat and tracks and odd couples so these are the ones that we created through ad or that we created that we completed through ad the Wonder we did do couple of other unit studies that I'll share with you in minute but again like said these are only two weeks long she really really loved it and when asked like said her favorite was the mushroom unit study her least favorite was the scat and tracks so just keep that in mind from Lydia's opinion mushrooms was awesome scat and tracks was okay is what she said but we do plan on doing some more of these probably next year as well cuz she just enjoyed them so much and do feel like it it kind of gave her this like confidence to start doing research and to look into things which at first thought when was going through this curriculum don't know how I'm going to feel don't know how I'm going to feel about this where there's not like links or videos or you know anything included but that was like something that Lydia kind of took off with she enjoyed these so much that those things that was looking for in this curriculum me for me personally she kind of just reached out and kind of did on her own so and they do sometimes have like other subjects kind of included like they talk little bit about geography and history and things like that but we just primarily used these for Science and that was it like we did do those lessons but didn't like count it towards you know like geography program or anything so we just use this for Science and she loved these and we will probably continue like said to use these next year now the last two unit studies that we used were towards the end we just finished up arthropods couple of weeks ago from the good and the Beautiful now this was actually unit study that we had completed towards the beginning of our homeschool journey think it was the first science unit we ever completed completed with the good and the Beautiful years ago like this was our first good and the Beautiful product and we really liked it but since they've done the revision of the unit studies and they added you know the binding to it and they added videos and the student Journal we just love these so much more Lydia did really enjoy the arthropods unit and what ended up doing was just ended up kind of switching up some of the books that we read alongside this instead of reading the ones that we had read in the past so she did enjoy the videos that were added in the activities in the student Journal were not hard to complete could just show you it was like very easy and basic you know like draw line type of you know work and then she did actually really enjoy the lesson extensions for seventh and eth grade it's just additional reading but she got lot out of these and would say that if you are looking for something little bit more allinone has videos that has like book recommendations that has that has it little bit more complete and little bit more thorough would say go towards the good and the Beautiful more than add the Wonder now add the Wonder does have like book recommendations and things like that but this one is very short straight to the point type of unit study which to us we love but if you're looking for something maybe little bit more thorough would recommend the good and the Beautiful over add the Wonder but that doesn't mean that we don't love add the Wonder it's just you know this one does come with like the YouTube videos and and all of that so it's little bit more of all-in-one type of curriculum I'd feel when it comes to tying in books when it comes to tying in videos and activities and all of that so add the Wonder had some of that but we had to do lot of our own research when it came to videos and stuff now the science unit that we are wrapping up the school year we're still currently working on we're almost done is space science through the good and the Beautiful again this was something that we completed years and years ago but feel like it was nice refresher she is really enjoying this lady has always been interested in outer space and planets and the moon so this was perfect one to kind of end the year with so overall we loved ad the Wonder and we loved the good and the Beautiful so we had really successful like science year feel so let's talk little bit about history now when it comes to history with my oldest daughter she didn't really take history program she ended up taking one semester of geography so for her she used Memoria press's geography 3 and this is exploring and mapping the world so this is supposed to go over kind of like the whole world and mean this one was rough you guys this is definitely something would not be able to use with my youngest daughter because this just would not be good fit for her and let me just say don't want to talk bad about this curriculum because do think that it was ver very thorough curriculum no bells and whistles it is straight to the point it tells you what you need to know so you basically just read some information answer questions and do some map work for my oldest daughter that's okay it worked okay for her for my youngest daughter this would not sit well at all my my youngest daughter likes to be more Hands-On she's not so much want to be stuck in book all the time she likes watching videos she likes doing that kind of stuff so decided to kind of switch up how we do geography in the future when it comes to my youngest daughter but this one overall Memoria Press do have flipr through on it it is very thorough it also had flashcards that go with it where you could study flags and stuff but do want to say think the biggest issue that we had with this program was that we were doing it in one semester my daughter took this as an elective for her nth grade year for one semester elective and do want to say that think that was the problem it was requiring her to try to remember so much information in too little too little of time frame so it was actually kind of stressful for for her there was lot that it covered and it covered it really quickly so think that if we would have actually stretched this curriculum over year it would have fit her much better but we didn't do that and she didn't enjoy this program at all she did say that she liked that she just got her credit and she was able to learn you know more about geography but overall this was actually kind of stressful to her because again so much information in short amount of time will link the video flip through or the flip through video that have on this down below if you're interested again don't want to say it's bad curriculum but it's not necessarily fun curriculum either it just gets the job done and it's lot of information to remember so if that's something that is going to stress your child out this may not be great fit again we are looking for something different for Lydia because won't reuse this one just feel like this would be this would be something that really stresses both my youngest and myself out if we were going to use this one for her so Bella said she didn't really care for it so that's all can really say this one was no-go for us this year but do think that this would work really well for somebody that just want something straight to the point and just getting geography done but just keep in mind that it was lot of information for one semester okay now for history for my sixth grader Lydia wanted to do something little bit different this year we did start off with the good and the Beautiful history year 2 and we worked through pretty much like ancient times in that program and we just stopped we weren't enjoying it as much as we did the first time around cuz we have completed the good and the Beautiful histories year 1 through 4 in the in the past and we just we weren't feeling it we weren't feeling it this year so did stop using the good and the Beautiful history year 2 pretty early on in the school year and what decided to do was something wanted to bring in fun wanted to bring in something different something that Lydia hadn't done in the past and that was kind of study the holidays little bit more now we have done unit studies that you know went over Thanksgiving and Christmas and and things like that in the past and kind of wanted to bring those back so the first unit study that we did to kind of celebrate that holiday season was for October and we decided to try out child's guide to All Things spooky Halloween history and activity literature study now this one Lydia loved it she loved it so much it was just kind of like little history about like spooky things it was really perfect for October you know it went over like deadly plants and zombies and werewolves and vampires and you know just the history of Halloween in general and Lydia said that this was one of her favorite unit studies this year and think lot of it has to do with we had never done anything like this before in our home school mean not even with my oldest daughter so this was extremely different for us and she just loved learning about all of the history behind all of the different spooky Concepts and you know subjects and stuff like that so do want to say that some of it might be little spooky for some younger kids so you do want to kind of take look at it to see if it's something that would be good fit for you and you're kind of having rough couple of years when it came to history with her we just really couldn't find good fit and when decided to switch to unit studies with her to study history it just started working out so much better for her it was much better fit and she was able to have little bit more control over what she was learning about to make it little bit more fun and I'm totally okay with kind of like that child Le learning because feel like there's only certain amount of time that they get to do that before they jump into high school and now there's all these requirements you know so I'm glad that took this year to really just study history through unit studies because next year we are looking at whole different approach when it comes to studying hisory history and geography so this one was huge win for Lydia she loved it so much and this is actually the only time I've ever used this company too it was by Barefoot within the trees we have never used anything by them before and we haven't since but this one was huge win for Lydia she loved it now the next thing that we studied for history after we completed that one was in the season of Thanksgiving hang on have clear cover on it that's shiny here we go so this is by campfire curriculum and we have used couple of their unit studies in the past and we have enjoyed them like earlier in the year we had used the military unit study and we really like that one and so decided in instead of going with one of our old approaches when it came to studying Thanksgiving that would give campfires unit try and we actually really like this one did actually learn lot myself there was lot of things that were mentioned in here in the later lessons that wasn't even aware of so this one is something actually learned from as well it was really successful now when it came to this one Bella kind of came in and out she didn't really do this with us this was primarily with Lydia but we really enjoyed it mean it was like there we go it was like more of like story approach which is not always our favorite but for this it actually worked really really well so we did enjoy this one we had lot of fun and then next up it was pretty much you know Christmas time at this point and we decided to do two different Christmas unit studies this year and the reason why did that is because the first time we did gather rounds Christmas unit was couple of years ago and had used this with both of my girls but Lydia was much younger and feel like she could have used nice refresher when it came to this unit so did do this one again this only took us couple of days because didn't do like all of the workbook and worksheets and activities we didn't do all of that we primarily just did the reading in here and really like the approach of studying like the holidays and using that as like history it just it worked really well for us so and it didn't make it overwhelming cuz sometimes in the past would do history and like holiday type of study and sometimes it just felt like lot so just using this for history kind of it was just much smoother so we did this one gather around Christmas and then we also used as you can see didn't even bind it but we still used it we used Christmas around the world now this was something that Bella did like to sit in on every now and again to hear about the different countries and how they studied Christmas Around the World Lydia really liked this one and we did learn lot from it we do have lot of books when it comes to Christmas around the world so felt like this was good refresher for us because we had been studying stuff like this in the past but this one overall really really easy to complete during the holiday season and again we didn't add in like the worksheets or workbooks or anything like that we just did the reading and then some of our own holiday books on the side but this worked out really really well she liked it and then we kind of went into studying with Lydia for history we decided after the winter break and after the holiday season kind of let her choose what she wanted to learn about and she said that she wanted to learn about Vikings so did find this Vikings unit study from gather round and she really Lov this one she said that all things spooky and Vikings were her favorite unit stud studies that she completed for history this year so that's really saying something especially because Lydia isn't she's not necessarily like history is not her favorite subject she does she does enjoy science much more so for her to say that she loved this unit is lot like it means that it was good we did enjoy it again it had little bit of like this story that you follow but then it presented lot of like historical information about Vikings at the same time so this was really we felt that it was put together really really well we did really enjoy this one again one of Lydia's favorites and once we completed it she decided she wanted to go into medieval history or the Middle Ages but before we jumped into that it was around Valentine's Day and St Patrick's Day and all of that so we actually paused you know these gather around units and we did their Valentine's Day unit and we kind of use this for history as well cuz it did go over like the history of Valentine's Day so she did like this one this one was only couple of days long we just enjoyed it can say though that learning about where which one was it it was the lesson was it Valentine's Day Traditions when we were talking about that there was lot that actually learned in there when it came to you know Customs from around the world and you know Letters to Juliet in Italy and you know week of sweets in Argentina so this did have lot of great information for only being couple of days long but again it was just it was good we liked it you know there's not much more could say but this one she did enjoy so after the Valentine's Day unit study kind of wasn't sure where wanted to go because knew that Lydia wanted to study the Middle Ages after we had finished Vikings but also wanted to kind of incorporate something about Easter and Easter's history so did end up getting the Easter mini unit he he is risen from gather round now this was something new to us this year we had never completed this unit study before and we did really enjoy it believe it was like 10 lessons long so we did kind of stretch it out and make it last throughout the month of March and it worked out really well for us did add in some readers to go along with this we did watch some movies to go along with this as well so did kind of beef it up little bit and again we were only using it for history so we thought that this was lot of fun am glad that did this unit because there was even some things in here that was like that kind of forgot which kind of made made me feel bad so so am glad that we completed this one and both of my kids did take lot out of this unit study so this one was success as well okay last one you guys I'm on the last unit study and we are just finishing this one up and after we complete this unit study we will not be doing history anymore so not until next year so the the unit study that we are wrapping up the school year with is Middle ages from gather round now Lydia has always been really interested in the Middle Ages she loves you know learning about nights and just that time frame in general and we did do morning basket think last year about medieval history but this is the first time that we actually using like curriculum to study the Middle Ages so she really is liking this one we only have couple of lessons left now am pulling in couple of readers with this we have watched few movies to go along with this as well but we're actually really liking these like don't know these like little History unit studies now again we are not doing any of the workbooks worksheets anything like that we're not really doing any of that it's primarily just doing the reading and just tying in some more books and videos but she's really enjoying this one now did have plans to do the ren think it was like the Renaissance unit as well and we're just not going to have time and don't want to like rush it you know the last couple of weeks of school so we're just going to not do that one and wrap up the year with this one but again we are really enjoying these ones and don't know just felt like it was really successful year overall in history even though feel like was kind of piecing things together this year usually when we do history like said we would do things like the good and the Beautiful or we would use some kind of curriculum to kind of you know do our history but kind of breaking away from from that this year for Lydia was just really good call so that is it for today do think that history science and geography was still pretty successful this year especially when it came to history and science for Lydia she just really had fantastic year when it came to history and science now for Bella we did have some hiccups she did again like said she did switch from dive biology to Friendly biology but once we made that switch everything got better for her and she actually really loved the friendly biology program like was saying and then and also when it came to geography for Bella that was just hard course for her to get through there was nothing really fun about it for her she found it more stressful but again think lot of the issues that we were having with Memoria press's geography was that we had scheduled it in one semester and it that was just bad choice like that was just something we shouldn't have done but by the time we realized what was happening we were already halfway through the course so we really didn't want to slow it down she just decided to keep on going and just get it done in that one semester so those are kind of like our hits and our misses when it comes to Science History and geography hope you lik this video and that you found it helpful as always thank you so much for stopping by you have great day bye