Homeschool Favorites | What We're Loving in Our Homeschool Lately

[Music] hey everybody Welcome to the L way I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be a homeschool favorites video I realized I haven't shared homeschool favorites in a while and that's something I used to try to do a lot more frequently so I thought it was a good time to share some favorites with you so Emily and I ran around the house sourced some things that have been either utilized the most or some of our most favorite things in the last few months and I'm going to share all of those with you today so we are going to go ahead and start with books first um I have two book series that we have been reading like crazy the first one oh if I don't drop them all are The 39 Clues this book series is so much fun it is basically mainly a boy and a girl brother and sister who have been told when a relative has passed away that there is like this scavenger hunt for something that is going to change the face of the world like it's the most valuable most amazing thing ever so all of their family is now after this um they can either take a check or they can take the clues which they all take the clues to try to find it and it is 11 books basically of them going around different places in the world discovering that they're related to some like amazing people like Benjamin Franklin and Mozart and you know learning more about them it is it's a really really great series Emily and I both agreed it's similar to like a Magic Treehouse fill because you've got the brother and sister and it has like that sneaky learning happening because they're traveling to real places they're talking about you know real landmarks and historical people um it does take some fact you know and run with it and turn it into fiction but it is a really really fun series now along with this series we paired it with another favorite which was or is our scrunch map we have the world scrunch map and the US I probably have shared these in multiple favorite videos um they're pretty awesome they're mostly indestructible uh you can ball them up that kills Emily's OCD so I nicely fold it up uh but basically we had the book and essentially the scrunch map was our bookmark in the book and when we would read we would open the scrench map and find the different locations that they were traveling to because some books they may visit three or four different locations you know within um that storyline so that was kind of like a favorite favorite of ours we enjoyed really really really enjoyed doing that another favorite book series we haven't finished yet but we are absolutely loving it is the Explorer Academy series these are a National Geographic or they're published by National Geographic it is basically an Academy of elite um and these kids are all training for Missions they're doing simulations they're from all over the world um that's really fun and then along with that book series we have been pairing it with this Explorer Academy codebreaking activity book which there are like six missions in here but each Mission has multip Le little codes to Break um Emily loves codes and ciphers and that kind of thing so this has been a really fun way I've been just kind of strewing this or we'll do it you know alongside when we're reading the books she'll do it while I read it's been really really fun and super awesome on logic and then another thing we've been pairing with it is they have this future Tech book so some of the uh Tech that they're talking about in explorers Academy is kind of out there um one kid has glasses that are mood glasses they change colors and shape based off of his mood or how he feels super cool obviously not real but everything that they talk about in the book was inspired by something real and so this book kind of explains what it was inspired by like the actual Tech that inspired it or you know where they got the idea for that or maybe even if it is real what it was based off of so a fun tie in that gets you know you learning even more and then another book that has really really been fun in our home school is this DK how everything works I love just about anything by DK this book is pretty hefty um it's like easily over 300 pages but what is so awesome about it is just about anything you can think of like I want to know how a drone works here you go um maybe you want to know how let's see how brick houses are built or more about brick houses I mean it's says from brain cells to black holes and it really does have that much stuff it is split into like sections so you have a u section which is like everything body a home section um a city and Industry section uh Living World our planet and space and so like I said within that there's tons of just how it works so like here is your immune system this has been a great addition to our home school it's gone really really well with our um Discovery Cards because we have a whole like how it's made and how it was invented deck um and so we can pull this out and kind of go even further with them and and speaking of Discovery Cards that is actually a favorite as well we have all of them right here um I have basically been strewing one of these pretty much every day and just leaving it out next to her breakfast U and she watches the video while she eats breakfast for the most part if we miss it then she watches it while she eats lunch and I love it I feel super amazing that she is learning something and learning something new um every day or at least being refreshed of something that we've learned in the past I love that it's 5 to 10 minutes so she's not on the screen a lot but I also love that she is getting educational screen time so I don't feel guilty about the screen time she is getting um and the topics range from like I literally printed all of the cards cut them out and then shuffled them so she's not getting like the same topic every day I mean sometimes she is but it can be ocean it can be animals it can be plants um it can be interesting inventions it can be uh how things are made it can be weather like there's some sort of really fun topic that she's learning more about and then it gives us the opportunity to go down rabbit Trails um if she wants to learn even more about it like I said that book has been an amazing one for that okay we're going to talk about games next Emily's favorite game or one of her favorite games has always always always been Uno we've been playing a ton of Uno lately but because Uno is one of her favorite games for christas she also got Uno all wild and Uno flip both of which have been a super fun addition um to our game school they are quick they're fast-paced you have to kind of think on your feet um it's just been really really fun and because most people know how to play Uno it makes these two really really easy games to learn to play for like if we have friends or family over it's different but it's similar enough that they're not having to learn like a whole new game play so those have been really really fun additions and then the other set of games that's a lot so I'm going to show them one at a time um have been the guest in 10 this happens to be the Marvel but I have to explain first we since oh probably around the co time started playing games with dinner because well life was crazy and we needed something to look forward to and as Emily has gotten older I've I've really really kept that alive I've strived really hard to keep that alive because she's a tweenager now and connecting with them isn't always super easy um so at least making sure that we're like having that dinner connection conversation whatever has been really really important to us so we've continued since then to play games over dinner together so at the very least on a crazy day we've been gone all day we you know have have crossed paths been ships in the night whatever we're at least going to play a game at dinner together as a family minimum so it started out originally with the headbands um I don't think I have one I can put my hands on but it started out originally with the headbands game where you like wear the headband and you have the card on your forehead we played original headbands we played Harry Potter headbands we played you know animal headbands and we would all basically just come to dinner with this crazy headband on um and spend our dinner while we're eating trying to guess you know what we wor based off of yes or no questions uh after that we used our professor Noggin deck for a long time um we would just you know roll the dice while we ate ask the question you know if they got it they got to keep the card that kind of thing whoever had the most cards at the end of the dinner for us was the winner um we have played let's see other trivia based games not anything that requires a board and moving and if it did we would just take the trivia cards out of it and ask the questions and then just collect the questions um we played like Christmas trivia over you know the month of Christmas uh we just whatever is simple and that we can you know do we've done but the guest intends because there are so many of them and because they're pretty simple to play even if you know again we have a family member saying you know with us for dinner or we have a friend over like it's easy for them to jump in and there's some in here that are just super fun there are some that are educational um it is just it's it's been perfect like we've gone through I I don't even know how many we have I think we own almost all of them and we've gone through all of them at this point and we're probably going to start again cuz they're just they have been our absolute favorite so we have the guess in 10 Marvel version which was a lot of fun we have guest and 10 deadly dinosaurs Emily won this every single night I'm just going to go ahead and be honest uh guess in 10 foods around the world this was really a fun one because because as we played this there would be something that would come up that we would be like oh that looks really good and we would maybe like add it to our meal plan for the next week and have something for dinner like for example we made a Falafel because it was one of the cards that Emily was like oh that looks really yummy um guess and 10 inspiring professions this was another fun one that led down some rabbit Trails where we talked about professions that maybe weren't as common guest and 10 World of Sports this was a fun one because if there was a sport we didn't recognize or we didn't maybe Emily was like wait what is that we would watch a quick you know video clip on whatever it was like Suma wrestling Emily was like wait what they wear diapers and wrestle each other um so we had to watch you know something on sumo wrestling so again super fun rabbit Trails guess and 10 things that go Kevin won almost every night on this one guess in 10 Animal Planet you guys know Emily won that one every single night guess in 10 underwater animals this one just so happened to like come out right as we finished or we bought it right as we finished our ocean unit so it was a lot of fun to do this one because we had finished our ocean unit and we were like doing it and then we were still learning even more after having spent 3 months doing it like we would look up you know one of the animals and learn even more about them you know it was it was a lot of fun uh let's see guess in 10 States of America and I'm going to also go ahead and throw out the guest in 10 countries of the world now with these what we did because Emily was was not great with geography Kevin and I are not really great with geography either we printed and laminated depending on which one we were doing and use it like a place map like a US map or or world map and we would say things like are you in the southwest are you in the Northwest like are you in Africa are you in Europe and so these we were playing guess in 10 games we were connecting as a family but we were like really digging into geography too so it was so so much fun like I can't even tell you how much we all learned doing these two and then as a followup after we did the country countries we went ahead and did the legendary landmarks because at that point we felt like okay now we kind of know what the countries are maybe we can do the landmark one and it was again a lot of fun to do and then the last one which is probably all of our favorites cuz we're partial was the guest in 10 Disney um and for this one what was really fun is we would see some of them and we'd be like oh man we haven't watched that movie in a while same thing with Marvel and we would end up watching that movie for family movie night so so what I really loved most about these is it was a game that was super easy it took zero setup I mean once you learn it you've learned it it was easy to play um we would just you know grab the deck we would do a few that night and we would put them to the back of the deck and so then when we started the following night we would just start with the ones we hadn't done it would take us about maybe a week to two weeks to get through you know all of them and they all led to something like the food one we were you know making different dis is the Disney and the Marvel we were like oh let's watch that movie for movie night this week um some of them LED down rabbit Trails like some of them we had genuine conversations about like oh that's a sport I would like to try or that's a profession I would never want to do and it just a really it was really fun like we've done a lot of games at dinner but that have definitely been our top top favorit so if you're looking for like an easy way to get more games in your day like add food have do it do it with snacks do it over lunch over dinner sometime when all of your family is going to be together anyway and I highly recommend and pick a topic they like you know do they love Marvel grab the Marvel one like it's still super educational okay because this is sitting right here next to me this has become part of our homeschool like daily skills demands to-dos whatever it's not really homeschool but it's on our homeschool to-do list anyway these are archery trainers um basically each one is a different pound this is 25 lb this is 35 lb and this one is 45 lb and each of us do at least five every day with each arm to just kind of train archery takes a very specific set of muscles even as much as Kevin and I work out it is still muscles that we don't necessarily hit at least not in the correct ways so it's really easy you hold it in one hand I'm going to probably not be able to get it on camera and you're like pulling it back with the other and essentially sem ulating the movement that you would do with a bow um to strengthen those muscles and they're cheap they're like $14.99 it's so much easier than having to cuz we only do archery one or two times a week because it's so much equipment to like get out and to string your bow and to put your glove on and to put your armu on and we love it but this is so much easier to like still get in that daily um practice without having to get everything out and plus dry firing a bow is a really bad idea so this allows you to do that and if you were to you know Let it go it it's not going to mess your bow up so those have been a favorite we all got one um for Christmas and our stocking I'm not going to tell you who uses what pound I'll let you guess but it's probably not what you think Emily has shot a lot longer than Kevin Na I and those specific archery muscles are a lot stronger than ours um okay subscription box the favorite subscription box lately that Kevin and em have been like doing on repeat that Emily begs for has been the crunch lab she absolutely know her address sorry has been loving it like if he gives her a choice when they sit down to do subscription boxes it's can we do a crunch lab please she really likes Mark Rober in general she likes watching the videos that he makes um she likes that they're like interesting and you know different they've done uh recently they just did like this little mini foosball thing they also made a car that is really Nifty because it goes forward however many feet and then it stops and turns around and goes backwards without having to like do anything she loves them she would do them every day if that many of them came in so that has been Hands Down The Homeschool favorite subscription box lately okay I think I just have a couple of mom type of things left this is pins I got new pens in my stocking at Christmas time Emily has been stealing them Kevin has been stealing them they have become everybody's favorite it is a Sharpie gel pen um normally I prefer like a 0.9 mm or larger because I tend to write bigger and I like that these are 7 they're so so smooth um I've been homeschool planning with them journaling with them writing to-do list daily with them hands down my favorite and everybody's been stealing them from me this was a box of 12 and I think there's only five left in here so I'll definitely be buying another box of these very soon I will say I do wish they came in more colors I think they only come in four colors I wish they had like the pinks and purples and all that stuff that would be amazing um okay so technically we're just going to go and show this my Kindle paper white has and will always be a favorite of mine that's not actually what I'm showing you guys and don't judge me because what I'm about to show you makes me probably the laziest person on the planet but it's amazing so I begged for this for Christmas it is a Kindle page Turner you clip it to the side of your Kindle and then basically you push this little button and it's going to let's see if you can see it it's G to turn the page for you now yes I know I can easily just tap this and it turns the page again I said this is going to make me the laziest person in the world but the the more that I have read because of the stinking page clicker is crazy because I can especially now that it's like winter and I'm cold I can be bundled up I can prop my Kindle up on a pillow my arms can be in the blanket I don't have to keep taking it out to press the thing um I've been reading for 75 hard and I tend to read on my Kindle because then I don't have to turn lights on and disturb Kevin first thing in the morning and I can prop it up on my nightstand on like my cup and read you know still laid in bed still half asleep and I'm getting my 10 pages read that way so much easier um also I've been doing it you know when I didn't feel well like in January we were I don't know probably two to 3 weeks sick down like horrible flu and my entire body hurt but I could prop this up on a pillow and I think I read like 12 books in January while we were sick because I could just not really move like you only have to push a thumb or even a pointer so epitome of lazy yes I know but I've probably read at least twice as much because it's just so much more convenient like so much easier so there's that um and then the last thing I have is a book that I have read and I'm rereading because it was so good and it is called more than a mom it is how prioritizing your Wellness helps you and your family Thrive um and it is kind of something that is really near and dear to my heart it's a book that I read probably over a year ago and I like read it skimmed it whatever you want to call it quickly and it's kind of part of what was like okay I can really do this and I can do this without feeling guilty when I started my health Journey or my Wellness get better become a better version of me whatever you want to call it Journey um and I was like I can do this because it's going to benefit my family and I I'm not going to feel guilty about it and I totally did and so now I'm rereading it because now I'm ready to hear even more of it like I wasn't ready to hear and process all of it then like I am now and and it's even better than I remember it being um so basically like the little synopsis on the back is Empower your kids by caring for your own soul which obviously we know is true even though we have a really hard time doing it as moms um and so it talks about developing 10 attainable life habits that will strengthen your mothering by strengthening you build friendships that bring true encouragement into your life quit the negative selft talk and make peace with your body develop effective ways to conquer Stress and Anxiety and then know your worth so you can embrace your purpose so this has probably been one of my favorite books so far um in this journey I have a few others but this is definitely up there in a top five and that's it that's all of our homeschool favorites from the past probably I would say 5 to six months um and now I would absolutely love it if you would tell me down in the comments what have been some of your favorite things in your home school in the past you know five six seven eight months because maybe I need to add them to [Music] ours