I paused this video to download a Cubes poster for my kiddo. I really liked how they have taught spelling in the Learning Strands of Core Knowledge. All the different spellings for a sound, how common they are etc.

If she is doing Lightening Literature mostly independently, do you feel like having the Teacher Guide is still helpful or unnecessary?

Do you have them use ckla on a laptop or desktop?

Look into FlavCity’s protein shake powders… I have celiac and use and it’s very super clean ingredients as well

How long do each of your kids spend on math per day? Thanks for this video!

When you get to AAR4, I’d love to know your thoughts around its usefulness for a fluent reader. I’m curious about the opportunity cost, and if the time spent makes sense. Thanks for continuing to make videos! Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year, Michelle 🎉

I love that you’re religious but still teach inclusivity and that you are aware of the need of more peer interaction!! I’m definitely subscribing!! My kiddo is only 3 but we intent to homeschool and I worry about the line between keeping your kids with parent orientation but also giving them their peer relationships. I loved the book Hold On To Your Kids. It explained so much of my teen struggles lol.

It’s wonderful insight Thank you

This video was so helpful for me. I will be adding a preschooler into our school in the coming weeks. Definitely going to try some of your seasoned tips.

So fun! Such a funny movie! National lampoon's christmas vacation is my favorite and my kiddo loves the home alone movies.

Your suggestions are helpful , thank you ! I’ve had some of the same issues finding a group . The library is a great idea . 👍😊

My oldest tells me how I ruined my kids childhood because she didn't do elf on the shelf. 😂😂 She's just joking but I just don't have the capacity to remember to move the thing around the house. lol.

That movie is hilarious! Every time we see a frosty, my kids and I start chanting "Free Frosty"😂😂 Love how everything is part of the theme. Very cool. There are so many great Christmas movies! Home Alone is my favorite.

This looked like so much fun!! Thank you for sharing. Gave me ideas for our Christmas vacation. Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Agree with many of these! No elf over here. I think I buy my son Christmas pajamas every other year, just because I buy a size up every time, so he's got a year to grow into them. lol

We don’t do elf on the shelf either.

Interesting video! We are also a single income family, so we keep a modest budget but still have a fantastic christmas. We dont do special clothes or professional photos either. Guilty of having the elf on the shelf. Hes not naughty, really, though. I dont have time for allllll of that. He does move around the house and hide in silly spots. Brings doughnuts for breakfast on the day he arrives and always leaves a book when he returns to the north pole for the year. We do a Christmas Eve box with new pajamas, pop corn, cocoa mix, a new Christmas movie for our family collection, and the book my husband reads every Christmas Eve at bedtime. We do 3 or 4 gifts from us and then a gift from Santa as well. We do stockings as well.

Does your daughter do any OT? I am having my child referred for a diagnosis, and looking into OT if we receive an official diagnosis.

Thanks for sharing!

I really enjoyed your Day in the Life video. I took away some good points when you talked about structure and routines. I’m working on getting better with my wake up times. Very encouraging to see how disciplined you are. Lastly , it was great to see how you get some reading time. I’m going to try get some more time in and not always feel like I need to be doing something house related. I need to be better at filling my own bucket and not feel guilty for that. Merry Christmas! 🎄

I really want to get my kids on a schedule but it’s so hard for me to implement it I’m not sure how to get into that routine. 😭

Thanks for sharing, Michelle! I'd love to see a day in the life of a break week. I find the routine of school is so helpful in our home and when we break the kids (all 7 and under) actually require a lot more from me than on school days. I'd love your seasoned tips!

Thank you for sharing your day! I have naturally curly hair and I spend a lot of time in a braid for protection. It really helps! The bonnets do as well!

What a fun unit study! MSI’s Christmas Around the World and Holidays of Light display is one of the things I miss most about living in Hyde Park. It’s so lovely!

Hello! At what age are you thinking about bringing in the girling up and boying up books? It sounds like maybe 13/14/15? I'm not feeling very confident about this topic, but these resources sound really helpful.

Thanks for sharing all of your tips! I just love your channel and the Momma Librarian's channel. Both of you share such great ideas and resources!

It makes me so happy you guys go to the museum of science and industry every year to see the trees! I did that as a kid with my family and it was always a highlight of my year. ❤🎄

This is so helpful! I just instituted 'mandatory' independent reading on our 7 year old's daily checklist and this helped me return to my original thought of not mandating reading. I love to read, and even though it is hard to find time with 4 young children, I need to do a better job of modeling.

My library has “24 Christmas Stories: Faith and Traditions From Around the World” there is a story in there called Christmas Tree Kitten from Switzerland

Maybe you can find something about Heidi for Switzerland? Or about St. Nicholas? Both Germany and Switzerland celebrate him on December 6th. Kids leave their boots in front of their doors, and Nicholas brings them sweets and mandarins.

I love the way you talk about your daughter. Question: have you considered she may be dyslexic? It's on a spectrum and 30-50% of people with ADHD have some form of dyslexia. I thought my son's reading struggles were ADHD (and it's related) but ultimately he's dyslexic. His reading skills don't match his reading ease. Basically, you're doing everything right anyway for dyslexia but it's helped me understand better! It can affect other areas, too.

Hi Michelle, since you'll be studying Germany - would you be open to receiving a Christmas card from here? (I couldn't find a way to send you a private message, sorry)

So full of a great ideas. You discuss so many details about the difficulties of as well as finding the fun in reading. You smartly invested a lot of time and love into it. Very helpful video.

I loved all the tips and enjoyed hearing all the progress your daughter has made. Great job ! I will definitely try some of the tips for one of my kids who needs a little more confidence in reading.

I love hearing about her progress! She’s doing awesome!!

Michelle your channel is like water in the desert. Please don't ever leave this platform. You're viewpoint is desperately needed, especially now.

About the CGF products that also say they may contain wheat, what I've read is that it would be safe for people like me that has Celiac, BUT NOT safe for people with a wheat allergy. What that wording means is that the gluten from the wheat is taken out, but other parts of the wheat stalk might be in there.

I agree with the commenter who warned against "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." Every textbook has bias-most of them far more insidiously than Joy Hakim, who makes hers explicit (see James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me). Hakim's series is actually very good as long as you use it with a critical approach to some of the parts you point out. The text features are excellent! I use this book with my fourth graders and here's how I handle the sections you mention: depending on the class, I either (a) skip the questionable parts altogether or (b) teach the students to recognize bias in a text and have discussions about the parts in question. Two corrections of your critique: •When Joy Hakim talks about "wasteful people" bringing the buffalo to near extinction, she is foreshadowing the white European Americans who came later. She is NOT talking about Indigenous people! •When she talks about European colonizers enslaving Africans to be "field workers," she is explaining specifically what kind of forced labor the European colonizers forced enslaved people to do. She explains about the rise of tobacco as a profitable crop-the "gold" that the Europeans finally "struck"-and explains how the tobacco economy and the Europeans' desire for maximum profit made them want to use enslaved people instead of paying for indentured servants every few years. A closer read, a critical approach with students, and access to additional sources makes Joy Hakim's History of Us series a great source in the classroom.

I've grown up with (and still use) a Velcro Advent calendar, where each day you put another figure of the Nativity scene onto the top bit (which has the barn and hills of Bethlehem stitched in so that you know where to put the various figures). I love it because it's reusable each year and it drives home the meaning of the preparatory Advent season before baby Jesus is finally put up on December 25 at the start of the Christmas season (which runs through January 13).

We have a family advent calendar that we do every year since my son was born. At the end of the season, we take turns putting the toys back in the boxes and closing the doors for the next year. Last year, we added to it with a one-time use advent calendar. This year, we'll still use our traditional yearly one, plus my son is doing the Lego and I am getting my own!

Thank you for this ! Very helpful

We’ve done Lego advent calendars. Still debating which one to get for this year. I know I’m getting down to the wire. Thanks for the ideas!

That book one is cute!

❤

Thank you so much for this list! It took me twice as long to watch, because I kept adding to my library holds! That being said, what did you do for your turkeys on the wall in the background? My daughter would love to make those!

I have a question. This is our first year homeschooling, and my kid is doing this LL grade 4, and my kid hates the amount of reading. I did think it was a heavy material. How did your daughter make it through reading all those pages and still remember the details? TIA

You must complement Maus with the graphic novels Palestine and Footnotes on Gaza by Joe Sacco ... Will be a good study. Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela y Davies is Awesome . Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said is another great book . Hegemony or Survival ; Americas quest for global dominance by Noam Chomsky is another good one . Orientalism by Edward Said 100 years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi , a very very good book . So is Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé . Caste by Isabel Wilkerson Except for Palestine: The limits of progressive politics by Marc Lamont Hill

🇬🇧 Our new UK government, FREE SPEECH HAS BEEN COMPLETELY CLOSED DOWN. Prison just for a tweet . Police calling round. YOU ARE LUCKY IN AMERICA.

Thank you for this. We are on a similar journey/struggle.