Our Homeschool Favorites: 2023-2024 Homeschool Year

[Music] hey everybody Welcome to the wock way I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be homeschool favorites now I'm going to be sharing all of our homes School favorites from Emily's sixth grade year so from our 2023 2024 home school year and like the things that really really stuck out is top resources now as always our favorites typically include some books some games and some additional things books and games tend to be the resources we use the most they also tend to be our favorites so that is what I'm going to start with um and then again I'll show you some additional things that just really kind of stood out this year the first book series is the who headquarters book series so this includes the who was the what was and the where was or where is where are books we really really love them they're probably one of our top resources are the thing we use the most in our home school Emily has loved them from the time that she could refer to them as bige head books so probably since she was 4 or five um and we started writing many units to go along with them because they were such a favorite and something we used so frequently in our home school this particular home school year we really enjoyed the what was the age of exploration along with our exploration study but this one was probably one of our favorite reads from the series um because it Sparks some really really fantastic conversations between Emily and I and that is something that really stood out in our sixth grade year that I can't physically show you um is the conversations that we had I talked more about that in the reflections video that I did last week which I will link up here in case you want to see more about kind of how our homeschool year went um but that is definitely why this one stood out among all of the ones that we read Emily's personal top favorite book series was Wilder I have the first three here um she has the fourth one somewhere in her room she's rereading the series she absolutely fell in love with the characters with the books in fact she read them she listened to them she's reading them again um but each time she tells me that there's more coming out but they're coming out like one a year but each time she reads them she tells me like is it normal to be sad that a book series is over even though I've already read it and I know how it's going to end like she really really loved that series I haven't read it yet but that was her personal favorite um and it is on my reading list so that I have more to converse with her about um the book series or the two book series that she loved so much she did talk me into reading were City spies and Explorer Academy both of which were fantastic um she is reading I believe the fifth City spies now I've only read the first three um I think the fifth one is the new one it's Manhattan whichever one the Manhattan one is is what she's reading currently um and we have made it through a handful of the Explorer Academy together I think the first five and there are seven so a ton of us to read for us to read 's read them but she wanted me to read them too so we've made it through I believe five of the seven of those but those were kind of the book series that she loved so much we read together um and I give them both two thumbs up so fantastic books okay we're going to move along to games um the game that became like the family favorite was past the pandas because it is so quick and easy like you only need a handful of dice and that's it like there's you don't need anything else you just need a handful of dice so it doesn't take up a lot of space it's super easy to learn because basically you have four options for Rolling you can roll water which just evaporates and disappears bamboo a panda which you just pass to the next player or a blank tile or blank dice which you keep the bamboo you just have to try to roll more bamboo than the person who rolled previous to you um if not then you get the difference so like if they rolled two and you rolled one they would give you one of their bamboo but it's super quick to play it's super easy to learn it plays well with I would say three or more players it does say you can play with two but we find it not nearly as much fun when just two of us play but I love it because it can fed my purse I can take it on the go we can play it while we're waiting at the restaurant it's a quick easy game to teach new friends or like if we're over with family or whatever and it plays up to five players so you can have people join in um it's just been super it's just been a really super fun game like we've played this this is hands down been the game we've played the most in the past year now to follow that up with probably the second most played games this year um have been genius square and genius star now both of these games can be played as single player games or as two-player games which I love um Emily also loves that because games like this I typically tend to be better at than her so the fact that she can play them one player and get better at them is a win for her um and I love these kind of like abstract puzzle building games they're my favorite and it kind of has like that Tetris feel anyway it it makes us all very very happy you roll the dice you put like little blocks in the way um which kind of feels like Battleship because of the the graph or grid that you're building here and then you have to fit all of the other pieces in and there's I don't even remember how many possibilities it's a lot like 62,200 and if you're going to start with one the genius square is the easier because it's a square grid where genius star is very similar in gameplay um there's more possibilities though you have 165,000 puzzles because it's star versus square but it also makes it slightly more difficult to fill a star puzzle versus a square puzzle um so this one they recommend for eight up this one they recommend for six up both are fantastic if you want a challenge get star if you want to something a little bit easier you have younger kids get square but Emily and I have loved those like we have played them constantly this year if just her and I are sitting down to play a game we're typically picking one of those up along with that we have been playing games at dinner um we like to play trivia games or guessing games over dinner cuz it's one of the few times of day that all of us are sitting at a table well we're sitting still together um and so it's been really fun to just kind of add in something that brings us together while we're eating and the two top resources or games that we've played the most during that time have been the professor Noggin uh this happens to be explorers because that's what we were playing most recently since that's what we were learning um and they have easy and hard questions on the back of them and all you have to do when you play is you just roll a dice and then you ask that question so they're easy to just leave sitting on the dining room table we sit down for dinner one of us picks up a dice we roll the dice we ask the question you know if they get it right they get to keep it so you don't like it you don't need a lot of room to play you know you just need to not in our household talk with your mouthful um so we take turns but we can get through probably 6 to9 cards a night and we will play through the whole deck on easy um and then we will play through the whole deck on hard so it's kind of like we can go through the deck twice so that will last us probably about a month per Professor Noggin trivia deck um and we have like 32 but that has just been a really fun way to get in some extra learning to have fun we like trivia games as a family anyway so it's been a way to connect um and kind of like end our day cuz dinner is the last thing we do you know like end our day on a Connect Ed fun kind of note and along that same lines we also started this year with guest and 10 um over dinner because you just [Music] need you know the guessing card so you just need a stack of cards and you're just trying to guess whatever it is um kind of same principle we just leave this comes in the box with all the cards we just stand it up on the din room table we just pull the next one we typically can get through about 9 a night so one of these will last us probably two weeks cuz there's not quite as many you can't go through it me you could go through it twice but there's not like easy and hard like the professor Noggin so we were going through a different topic about every two to three weeks um and there's so many topics to choose from this is States of America we have things that go um food around the world underwater animals Animal Planet countries of the world deadly dinosaurs legendary landmarks let's see inspiring professions and then we also have I don't know why they're not here I didn't grab them um Sports which is the new one that we just got for the summer we have Marvel in Disney as well um there may even be one or two I'm still missing because I think we have 15 total now so more than enough between Professor Noggin and guest intents you know for to keep us going but that being said if you have a fantastic guessing or trivia game that doesn't require a lot of components would love to add even more to our dinnertime game playing so please let me know down in the comments because you can never have enough okay a few of the additional resources now Emily and I have done poetry tea time for years um but I had found in the past year or two that it was becoming more difficult um especially as I started my health Journey because she would want like more sugary things because poetri te time is a treat time for her um and so we were not ever drinking the same thing so it was kind of becoming not a I mean it's not a pain but it just wasn't as easy as it was before so I finally got us these adorable t for one sets and it is literally like your own little saucer your own little teapot and your own teacup and it just Stacks like this all nice and neat in my cabinet but then when it's time for us to have poetri tea time I can just pull two of these out each have one and I can make like if we're going to have pink lemonade I can make you know regular pink lemonade for her I can make like a sugar-free light one for me or if she wants you know a sweeter drink and I want actual tea like it's easy because now we can just kind of each have our own drink of choice and we just you know pour for ourselves which she also loves because before um our teapot when it was full was a lot larger and a lot heavier and so she was kind of scared to pour her own tea she would like Mom will you do it for me and now she 100% can handle it herself and pour her own tea because it's lighter smaller she feels more in contr so that has been a huge win for multiple reasons because we can both drink what we want now it makes tea time even easier for me which I love because it means I'm willing to do it more often um and it's made her a little more independent so wins all the way across the board on that with tea time in mind um and poetry in mind we love to do poetry tea times during or around holidays she loves it when I get you know like Valentine's candy for Valentine's Day or green cupcakes for St Patrick's Day or some sort of red white and blue cookie for Fourth of July she's just always loved the themed snacks and the themed tea times but I was finding it Again difficult to Source poetry books for each and every holiday so I finally picked up two that cover a lot of different seasons and holidays and I can kind of pull together a tea time on just about anything like and the snap of a finger so one is this poems for all seasons and it's Julie Andrews which I love um it's poems and songs to celebrate the year so the way this one is kind of split is by month so like in January there is New Year's Day New Year's resolutions Martin Luther King day I dream um Cardinal the snowflake kitten skating and happy Winter February you have groundhog New Year's Day and Chinese New Year um I made my dog a Valentine and a valentine George Washington's birthday Abraham Lincoln's birthday we cannot all be Washingtons and Lincoln's you get the idea so if I wanted to do something for President's Day mean there's three poems right here in this one book that are back to back because they were genius and separated at by months of the year um that I know we can read during our tea time at the very least like even if I don't have anything else this one book will give me three poems to read to go along with that this other book which is days to celebrate it's 366 days a leap year is split separately or similarly too so you have like January February March and we'll just pick um May for example there's mother to son um there was an old man with a beard Memorial Day so they give you a calendar at the beginning of each month and then the calendar kind of goes along with the poems that they share so these two have become Staples in our poetry tea time this year because I can just pull these two out and pull our tea time for one pot and I know that without really a ton of thought or even effort for me I can have a fun tea time that Emily's going to love around a holiday or theme like I don't have to try to worry about thinking super far in ahead and making sure I get the books from the library or whatever I know I'm going to have enough so favorite of hers because we had more tea times favorite of mine because it made my life so much easier and again we were able to connect and enjoy tea time more because of it um also a favorite this year has been this question and answer a day Journal when Emily was younger we had one that was like 3 years worth of questions um it was smaller and I would ask her the questions at bedtime and I would write the answers for her we had it in our morning basket for a while then we had it in our bedtime basket this year I wanted something that she would do more independently um and something that was kind of creative writing for her and this has been that so it doesn't have dates it just has here I'll turn to the back where she hasn't finished it yet um it just has like day so like day 365 and you write the date so you can start anytime like you can start today and run it for 365 days which I also loved because we were starting it at the beginning of the school year which wouldn't have been January 1st obviously um anyway some of the questions really made her think and some were just funny so I like that so if you had to leave your house and never come back what three things would you bring with you and why uh let's see what is something you would like to do in the mountains climb ski hike C Camp bird watch and why what would you do if you could be invisible for one day if someone gave you money could you if someone gave you money you could only spend on someone else what would you do with the money and why what is your family favorite tradition what do you like about this tradition what is something that you dream of doing someday uh what is a toy that you wish you owned and why do you want that toy what is the best thing about being a kid if you could go back back in time what is one thing you would change uh what do you like to do during school recess and why who do you talk to the most and what do you guys talk about do you like spiders why or why not so it was just kind of a very wide range of questions um and it got her you know to write a small kind of paragraph each day so she started her days with this um as independent work is a great way to get her to practice some creative writing to get her to also kind of be mindful um and it was perfect for independent because she was doing this when I was in the gym most mornings so again it was a win for both of us which is why it made the favorites list along the same lines of independent work is mind benders these have been a favorite from ours let's see this is level four so I don't know four or five years however many years it's taken us to get to level four um I think we started level one in kindergarten maybe maybe she did that through kindergarten and first but I love them I love that it makes her think literally outside of the box um I love that they have so many and that it gets more and more difficult as each level goes that they kind of build on themselves I love that it's deductive thinking skills I feel like that is something especially I think that that's something all kids can use more but especially I feel like as we get into the tween years some of that like Common Sense kind of I don't know it disappears it becomes mush so I love that they not only have little kids but they have big kids so that she can keep growing with it um this is grades 3 to six she almost finished level four so we'll move on to level five next year because I love it that much if you are not familiar with mind vendors I will show you an example real quick it does also have an answer key which is fantastic so basically one page is a mind Bender there are kind of things up here that you read and then you use the clues that they give you as deductive reasoning to cross off ones that can't be possible and figure out what is possible so let me start with one of in the beginning this would be the very first one so a boulder a cobbler and a pebble Cobble and a pebble are all in a Gorge a lake and a valley read the clues to find out where each rock is located so this is what kind of the Box looks like cuz you only have three and then they give you a clue The Rock in the valley is larger than the Cobble and the Cobble is not in the lake so you automatically know that the Cobble is not in the valley or the lake so it has to be in the gorge and then use process elimination for the rest um and like I said it gets more and more difficult because this is what the last puzzle and level four looks like um but again there is an answer key so that is a win for me as well those have been favorites forever they will probably stay favorites that is another thing um that she does independently along with her journal in the morning when I'm working out um and then the last thing for independent that absolutely became a favorite the last half of this year were our Discovery decks they were the perfect way to start the day they were the perfect way to get five more minutes of independent work out of Emily that she enjoys because they were just her watching a video um it was a fun way for her and for me to expose her to a lot of different topics and then kind of see where she springboarded off of based off of those um so these were the three things typically that she was doing in the morning when I was working out was her journal the mind benders and watching a discovery deck video it became the perfect amount of independent work for her it became the perfect kind of subject based because most of the discovery decks were geography or science or history so she was getting a lot of that in um she was getting some creative writing in with the journal and then I feel like mind benders is deductive reasoning and also like kind of spatial mathematical so she was getting a little bit of everything with these um three things and even if the rest of the day went crazy and we didn't get anything else done I felt like she had a good base for her day she got something accomplished she was happy because she loved these things um and I felt really great with what she learned in like 20 30 minutes of time and then typically I had gotten my workout in so I was also a much nicer person um and so even if we just did that and then ran out the door to run errands or whatever it was like okay I got a workout in she got these few things done our day started out fantastic we were ready for whatever else got thrown at us so it was kind of a win there um another like favorite has always been unit studies we love unit studies we do them in our home school pretty much primarily that's how we learn this year our personal favorite unit study ended up being traveling the parks now we've done we've dabbled in traveling the parks on and off for years but it was our favorite this year because we got to do it and then also go on a cross country road trip and hit eight new national parks that we hadn't visited yet so this unit study really lends itself well to being able to be brought to life um and even if you can't actually go to the national parks you can still bring them to life because there's videos included and there's just all the stuff that feels like you're there even when you're not there but being able to actually be there and have the unit study and kind of partner them and pair them together was fantastic and a favorite of all of ours like hands down that month that we traveled that we did the the unit study that we saw it in person that we brought it to life that we got to talk to the Rangers you know go on some of the guided hikes it it was an experience that we will never forget um and I can't wait to continue to do more because we still I think we've decided we've been to 15 out of 63 national parks so that means there's still a lot left on the list for us and then the last thing I don't have anything to show you because I literally cannot hold it on camera um and it be seen is one of our bows because archery became a favorite of all of ours this year um it is something that we can do as a family and we can like kind of compete but we're also not competing um you know like we can all compete at our own level which makes it even because any other like sport or activity that we tried to do somebody was better at it than somebody else um you know Kevin can run faster like when we're doing the 5 case he's a faster runner in general um there's just you know different things that we're all physically able to do with archery like for example a lot of the archery shoots that we do have a Stak in the ground I and they're different color Stakes so like the youth stake is at one distance from the target where the women's is at a different distance from the Target and the men's is at another distance they also have separate Stakes for traditional which is what we do traditional shooting versus like compound shooting um which is the bows that have you know like the wheels and all the sights and you know extra you also pull back and it kind of lets off a little bit um our traditional bows don't have any of that we shoot recurve um hopefully we will also shoot long bow soon we will see um if we're going to add that but for now we all shoot a recur bow and so it is essentially a riser or a handle two Limbs and a string and then you put an arrow on it uh so we have three different Stakes when we shoot shoots and at home I have like those little yard landscape Sur survey Flags if you will and we all have a different color and so I can put the flags there and we can like compete at our own levels because it's like she has her steak I have my steak Kevin has his steak we can compete with each other because you know we like a little competition in our family um and see who can score higher um we went so far as to build our range in our backyard we have seven 3D targets now because we love it that much so it has just become a fantastic sport for us as a family it has also become something that I have seen Emily grow so much because of like between archery and 4 and the shoots that she did with them and the shoots that she's done with us I can't explain it like her confidence her um ability to regulate her emotions uh her concentration her willingness to do math like she would fight me anytime I'd asked her to do math before and now she will volunteer to keep score um for everybody when we do most of the shoots you have to keep score and keep a running total um and she'll volunteer for it most of the time not all of the time but most of the time and so there's just been so much growth that I've have seen in her because of it not to mention like I said we've all really really fallen in love with it um so I'm excited to continue to do it um and see where else it might lead so there you have it those are our favorites from em 6th grade 2023 2024 home school year always some books always some games and then just some extra resources that added enchantment to our hes school year but now I would love to hear from you what were some of your favorites from this past homeschool Year let me know down in the comments [Music]