 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be our spring homeschool favorites. So I don't know about you guys, but I have found that in our homeschool each season, there tends to be some things that really stick out, things that are our favorites, things that we tend to return to over and over and over again. So I like to come on here at the end of the season and share with you guys some of the things that were our absolute favorites that we hands down have loved and want to suggest to you. So it always, almost always ends up being books, games, and maybe something else. And it's no exception for this spring. I'm gonna start with Emily's favorite. Her absolute favorite books are the Kitty books. These have hands down been her favorite. There are five in the series so far. Book five was just released, I think about a month ago. So there are five books in the series. And she has loved them. Kitty is this girl who is a superhero. The books are fun and colorful and lively. They were easy reads. I think she's probably read them at least two times, maybe even three. She just keeps returning to them. She's absolutely loved them. If I'm being honest, they're super cute. She's read them aloud to me and I think they're cute. So I highly recommend these. They've definitely been a favorite. And I actually mentioned donating them and she said no, she was gonna read them again. So we are apparently keeping them because we love them. Our favorite read aloud series has been Escape from Mr. Limoncello's library. Now I bought the first one over last summer because I intended to read it aloud. It was one of the books I wanted to read aloud. And I didn't actually read it aloud until I think maybe two months ago. Emily even took a book club class on Mr. Limoncello's library with Mary Hanna-Wilson from Celebrate a Book and loved it. And then after that was over, she said, Mom, I really wanna finish reading the series because I loved it so much because most of the books that I had picked from this school year were a book series. And she knew that and she knew that after we read one if she really loved it, we could read more of them. Some she decided to do that, some she didn't. But Mr. Limoncello's library was not only one she wanted to read more of, but we ended up finishing out the rest of the series. So there is also five books in this series and they are all fantastic. So you have Escape from Mr. Limoncello's library, Mr. Limoncello's library Olympics, Mr. Limoncello's Great Library Escape, I'm sorry, Race, Mr. Limoncello's All Star Breakout, and Mr. Limoncello and the Titanium Ticket. So those were hands down the whole family's favorite. I mean, she thought they were super cute. I loved that there was so many references to great pieces of literature within it and I think she loved that too because they would say something like about Harry Potter or about an author she knew like EBY or Roald Dahl and she was like, Mom, I know them. Mom, I know that book and it just really excited her. So that was really like cool because it gave us even more things to talk about and more things to explore in our own library. And then there was even some authors or books that were mentioned that she hadn't heard of that she was like, oh, Mom, can we make a list from these books of books that we might wanna look into reading? So it was one that was really awesome that provided some really cool rabbit trails. So if you like rabbit trails, you're gonna love those books. Okay, normally I come on here and I share my favorites and my favorites are almost always like homeschool or mom books because I tend to read that type of thing. This spring, I don't know what it was. Maybe it's the pandemic. Maybe it was just life. Maybe I needed to read a book that was scarier than what we were living. I don't know, but I fell madly in love with psychological thrillers and that's been the main type of thing that I have read and so my favorites, I only have two of them to show you because I've loaned them all out to my mom and making her read them, have been Lisa Jules. I've read, let's see, then she was gone. I found you, the family upstairs watching you, the house we grew up in. So I know I've read at least those five. I feel like there's another one my mom has that I've read but I will leave them all in the links in the description box for you but I have not read any of hers yet that I did not absolutely love. They're easy, they're quick reads and I just find them really appealing. If you don't like that kind of thing then you won't like it at all but if you do, make sure you check out Lisa Jules. So sorry, I don't have a homeschool mom book for you. I just totally needed something different. I needed a distraction. Okay, on to the games. You actually saw this game in our winter favorites and I debated not even putting it in here because you saw it in our winter favorites but then I decided you needed to see it because it's been a favorite for both seasons and who cares if you already saw it? So the first game I have to show you is Prime Climb. It has been a favorite, it has been coming out almost at every game night which is surprising because educational games don't always get picked on game nights. So I would say that that means this game is a double win because not only is it educational but apparently it's a really fun game that your family can play even when you don't have to play an educational game because on family game nights we don't pick from subjects or whatever but it keeps getting picked and we actually all enjoy it not just one or two of us, we all really enjoy it. So just wanted to show it to you again because it is still a favorite. Another favorite, that's probably really loud. Oh no, it's not, is Up Words. So it is very similar to Scrabble except you can stack the letters on top so you can literally have your words change, sorry that was really bright, change as you stack. So like you could change the word pig to the word big or however you wanted to do it. This has probably been my favorite, I really like word games and I have also found that it has been really, really fantastic for sneaky spelling practice because Emily is like constantly trying to figure out how many letters she can use and she is trying to change words that are already there or it's been really, really, really great for spelling practice. So if you're looking for one that's fun for your family and you wanna sneak some spelling practice in that's definitely it. The other two games that have become favorites, one has been on our shelf for ages but it took us like until a few months ago to learn to play it and then we've been playing it on repeat and that is Photo Synthesis. My sister and brother-in-law had to come over and teach us to like run us through a game and then after that we have absolutely loved it. It's fantastic. You have these adorable little trees and all the different sizes and you're trying to grow your tree. Like look aren't those so cute you guys and you're trying to go through all of the different phases as the moon or as the sun is rotating and it's just, it's a lot of fun and it still also has that educational value because you have to do certain things and go through the stages of Photo Synthesis and what the trees do. So that one's really fun because of that. And the other one is along the same lines and it is Planet which is also by Blue Orange. This is another one that once we finally learned to play Photo Synthesis I was like, okay we like this so we like those type of games so we got Planet recently and it has been played on repeat too. Emily loves it because you get these little, I don't know, it's not a sphere. I don't know what shape it is but you guys it looks kind of like a sphere but they're magnetic so you have all of these different tiles and you're building your own planet with them. It is a lot of fun and it has some educational value to it. You have to score your own stuff at the end and you have to pay attention to the different animals and what areas they live in. And so there's a lot of education to this one too. I really, really like them both. Sorry. What else I like is that both of those games play and you do like 10 or 12 rounds so they're quick and you're like keeping to go like drafting and moving and you're taking turns so they're very fast paced games. I mean not like speed games but they're fast paced because you're like doing things frequently. So they're not one where you're like sitting there waiting forever like upwards could be if your opponent is taking forever to think of a word. It seems fast paced and I like that. The other thing that I have actually two things that I have I can't show you and they are educational apps and podcasts. And I say that because if you know anything I just told you at the end of school year video which I will link right here for you guys. You know that I said that here in the last few months we were kind of over all of the togetherness that we have been getting. We actually even took a spur of the moment trip because we just needed to leave before we killed each other. So anything that was enabling her to learn in her own space was very, very useful, fantastic and a favorite this spring. And so that happened to be educational apps and podcasts because those were easy ways for her to put her headphones on and kind of play quietly and be listening and me still be able to say oh you got science done today or you know whatever. So if you're in the same situation or you just want to bookmark it for later I will leave a link in the description box down below to our favorite podcasts for learning and 60 educational apps that you can use in your homeschool just in case you know you need some alone time too. So that's it. That is our homeschool favorites this spring. And like I said I will leave links in the description box for everything that you've seen here today. And now I would love to know what have been your favorites from this past season in your homeschool. Let me know in the comments because well maybe I need to pick some of them up.