 Welcome to the Wallach way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be an educational gift guide. Abby from rooted arrest and I have been partnering together to do educational gift guides for I don't even know how many years as many years as I can remember and so we are coming at you again this year to do the same thing. Now what's great is that between the two of us we have pretty much all ages and just about all things covered so when you get done watching the gift guide here make sure you hop on over to her channel and watch her gift guide as well because I'm sure between the two of us you are gonna find something that is perfect for your kit. Now I thought I would start out with stocking stuffers because I don't know about you but that always seems to be the thing that is the hardest. So these are all some of the smaller items that would fit well on the stocking that are educational and also would kind of like pack a big punch in the stocking for the holiday season. The first thing that we have is a boogie board. Emily uses hers all the time for math. It's kind of like a dry erase board because you can just write on it and then erase it but I think it's a little bit better because you don't have to have like the markers and the smell and it just works really really well. It's small it can be portable so it can be put you on a backpack and go with you and it's like a modern day at just sketch so that is a really great fun educational gift. The next thing I have are these adorable some pencils which is pencils that have a scent to them. This pack happens to be holiday scents so we have snowberry, mint, cocoa, candy cane, sugar plum, and gingerbread. They are adorable and like I said they smell but there's other ones you don't have to just get holiday. You could get other scents or other kind of themes but it makes kind of a fun gift. Another one that is really popular that we really like is the thinking putty. This one happens to be a scented thinking putty. These are great little fidgets sensory type things give you kind of a brain break. There's tons of them. There's small ones and bigger containers. They are color changing. They're scented so something for everyone if you have a kid who's sensitive to scents they're not all scented and some don't smell like anything. Let's see we also have a reading light. These are amazing. This is one that we will be using this year. It charges and that way you can recharge. You don't have to batteries on hand because whoever has batteries on hand not me and then you can you know reward your kid by letting them stay up later if they're reading using their book light. It's also really great for car schooling because they can read and not disturb the driver. So I really like that as well. Another thing that we have used a ton that would make a really good stocking stuffer are scrunch maps. These are virtually indestructible we've had ours for years now. They're a really really strong fabric kind of thing. They have the world and the US. They're about the size of a poster so a decent size and you can scrunch them. We tend to fold ours. I've seen a lot of people that just follow them up but that would slightly drive Emily crazy. So we fold ours nicely but they are really great. We pull them out all the time for reference. They kind of live in this little drawer right here behind me and we use them for everything. So they will be great especially if you're limited on space and you want to map. Those are easy to put away. Pull back out. You don't have to worry about your kids destroying them. So that would make a great stocking stuffer as well as binoculars or a pocket microscope. These are probably some of our absolute favorite small kind of things that would fit in a stocking. This pocket microscope is amazing and binoculars it could be any set but a set specifically for your child. Another thing along those same lines is this bug catcher which has been a huge hit here. You just pull this little thing back and you would set it gently and kindly over the bug and then you can close it and there's a magnifying glass so that you can observe the bug and then you would just open it and let it go. So you can observe the bug safely and then let it go back into the wild and not have it in your house. If you have a kid who likes bugs or wants to catch things for you this is great especially if they're curious. Another thing that we have in love are these pocket naturalist guides. These would make amazing stocking stuffers and obviously these are the ones for Florida but I checked and they do have them for all 50 states. So we have the Florida Seashore life. That one they obviously don't have for all 50 states because there's not every state is in the sea but they do have the butterflies and moths the trees and wildflowers the birds and the wildlife and so those are our Florida ones so you could look up your state and you could get one or a couple of them. They're nicely laminated so they are waterproof because of that so you could take them in the boat with you. You can take them outdoors and don't worry about them getting rained on and there's just a ton because they're front and back once you fold them out. So tons and tons of information. Okay a few I guess higher ticket stocking stuff or ideas are headphones. Emily does a lot of things either on her tablet or audio books or music or even her math or teaching textbooks. So headphones are something that she definitely needed to have. Now all of us actually have these. These are the aftershocks. They're the bone conducting headphones so I'm not going to put them on because I'll knock the hat off and make a mess but they go around your head and then they sit over your ear and they just sit right here so they don't go inside your ear. I can't stand earbuds. I can't stand anything in my ear. I don't really love the big things on the outside of my ear either because I feel like I can't hear anything that's going on around me. These she can hear we can all hear everything that's supposed to be hearing through the bone conducting headphones but you can still hear like the ambient noise of things going on around you so if I need to talk to her and say like hey do this she's not completely oblivious to the fact that I'm speaking to her which I really like. A Kindle is another one. We all have Kindles. They are amazing. We really really enjoy that we don't have to pack a ton of books when we go places. Typically we would get a book every year for her for Christmas and one year we just did the Kindle in place of the book that we would have gotten for her and then you can have all the books you want. The one that we got her was a Kids Kindle so it came with a year of the Amazon Kindle and that worked really really well. I think we're coming up on the end of the year but we will renew because it has a ton of books available to her utilizing the Amazon Kids so that's another thing you could do is do like a gift card to Amazon Kids or even a gift card to Audible because then they can listen to audiobooks both of which would be absolutely amazing and a stocking and then the last thing that I have is a Fitbit. This is actually Kevin's Fitbit but they have kids Fitbits. There's Fitbits are affordable. We now have the same song watches so it doesn't have to be a Fitbit but some sort of fitness tracker. She did a ton and still does a ton of like stealthy math once we got one because it was like okay how many steps do I still need to get to get to my 10,000 or how many more steps is mom ahead of me or is dad ahead of me. Just all kinds of like competitive kind of cool things so the kids Fitbits are not very expensive at all. They come in adorable colors and there's even a minion one but it doesn't have to be a Fitbit. It could be a pedometer, a step tracker, some sort of active thing but I found that it did a ton for her movement. It helped her get a lot of extra steps in. It helped her do some sneaky math. Even the weather because some of them have weather features so she was checking the weather on it. She was like doing mileage comparisons and just all kinds of stuff that I wouldn't have expected her to do so it's definitely a win in the educational factor as far as I'm concerned. So if you want to get your kid to be a little more active and you want to sneak in some extra education definitely some sort of fitness tracker. The next few things that I have are going to fall into the STEM category. There are going to be some sort of science, building, math type of thing. The first one is brain flakes. These are one of Emily's favorite building mediums. They're great for in the car because they're really small. We obviously don't take the whole jug. We take like a bag full of them. They are for ages five plus is what they're recommended for but there are a ton of different things you can do with them like here is an example of something somebody built and then there's even a QR code where you can scan to get even more ideas. This one comes with I think there's 500 brain flakes in here. Yeah, over 500 pieces. So tons of different colors and different things that you can do. Another thing that Emily absolutely loves is straws and connectors. It seems so simple. The Rambo Toy Frog is my favorite just because I know that it's quality but it's literally is hard plastic straws with little like plus sign looking connectors. When she was four she used them to build a rocket because she was obsessed with space and the rocket was literally big enough for her to get in sit in and stand up inside. She has built a ton of things with these. They are for ages three plus because they're a little bit bigger and they're easier to manipulate but I promise even your older kids are going to have a blast building with them. Another thing that we have are these Lego actually any kind of Lego but specifically these Lego books that have kind of the educational training in them. So this is the train reactions. I also have the gear bots here to show you. I like these specifically because they're affordable. They make a great gift and you're getting you know like the step by step instructions, some of the learning and the pieces and parts to do that type of thing. So the gears or the reactions but any kind of Lego set obviously is educational. You could pick something that your child's interested in and buy specific to that and that would work as well. Both of those Lego books are suggested for eight plus. Another one if your kids maybe aren't ready for the Lego books yet or sorry that was really loud are these learning resource engineer and designing building sets. These are for five plus. The pieces are just a little bit bigger. This comes with 52 different pieces and that's a lot of different ways that you can build this. So you can build a bridge and you can make a clubhouse. Um there's five different activity cards that come with it to show you five different ways to build this kind of play tree house and there's others too. I think there's a playground one. Um I'm not it's not going to show me on the box but I know there's a ton of different ones. So if your kids are a little bit younger and you're not maybe ready for like Lego Legos this is a really great alternative because there are some instructions on how to build different things with it and snap circuits are one that we absolutely love. Most of the snap circuits are recommended for ages eight up. This one says eight to one hundred and eight. This particular one is a snap circuit structure. So it's snap circuits meets like Lego's type of thing because it's brick structures that they have snap circuits. Junior there's regular snap circuits. There are snap circuits lights, snap circuits arcade. There are so many to choose from. Um we have a ton of them. We absolutely love them. It's one of those things that we come back to over and over and over again. The educational value is amazing. This particular one has 20 plus projects. Some of them have 30 projects. Some of them have over a hundred. Um there's an amazing kind of book in it that tells you what to do and how everything works and it's just one of those things that really they don't get bored of because there's so many different options and different things that you can do. Some of the circuits you know sing or make lights or like there was a fan one where motors and all kinds of different things. So it's a lot of fun to be had with snap circuits and then for the science lover in your life any National Geographic science is amazing. We have had all of them. Um this happens to be the chemistry stunning science set. We've had the volcano and the crystals um the glow in the dark the electricity one um I can't there was a rock one there every one of them we've done the air rockets was by far the favorite but what we love most is the quality of them. The quality of the products included meaning even just the manual itself like the science explanation behind it. It's a glossy nice magazine that you can keep versus like this flimsy paper thing the explanations like it just all reads really really well so you cannot go wrong with any of the National Geographic science kits of any kind like even the cheap ones have been absolutely amazing in our home school and then along those same lines we have the National Geographic rock tumbler. Now we have the hobby edition but all of the editions I'm sure are equally as wonderful. I think the only thing that was different with this one is that it actually included it is it actually included four of the things for you to polish and like there's some jewelry things and stuff but the actual machine itself is the same as if you were to just buy just the machine so if you have a kid who loves rocks that is a great option. Okay next I have just a few like geography type things two of our absolute favorites that I didn't want to not make the list the first one is this globe I have had this and multiple gift guides because well it's been around that long I think I bought it when Emily was either three or four and it has standard the test of time. What I really like I don't think you're going to be able to tell is if I click this button right here if it's dark the it lights up and it shows the stars I don't think I'm not going to be able to do it. I'll see if I can find a picture of it but it shows the stars and the constellations versus just the standard map just by pushing that button and if it's a little bit darker obviously but it's one that has been amazing we've used it for forever and then the other are geo puzzles now this happens to be a set of all six I don't know if they sell them like this anymore I think you have to buy them individually but we love them so each of the puzzles is kind of like a different area of the world and what I really like is each piece is what you're actually seeing so like each country is shaped like its own piece making it a little bit more difficult but also a little bit more realistic to the actual map they say ages four and up for this which I guess the little bit of help could be accurate I'm going to say probably closer to six unless you have a four-year-old who's really really good at puzzles because like I said each piece is the actual like country so some of them can be a little confusing but there are maps that come with each of the puzzles making it a little bit easier to kind of look at it and then place the piece where it belongs okay next I have kind of the I guess arts and crafts section so all of the things for your crafty kids the first one I have are these clay beads this was a set I actually got for Emily this year I have the letters and then all of the different clay bead colors it is something she fell in love with she made a ton as gifts here is the one that she made for herself that's super cute that has her name on it but they're adorable let me see if I can actually put this on so you guys can see a little bit better obviously it's made for her wrist not mine but it's all pinks and purples with her name on it so that is amazing if you have somebody who likes to be a jewelry maker or you could also get them this glitter charms kit which is really really cute they would use the clay and make the charms and it has like the little bracelet and everything with it so it has the charm bracelet the shaping tool clay glaze and more so they can make their own charms there's some examples on the back and then this specific company it's called craft tastic we really enjoy all of their kits so you couldn't go wrong with any of them we have the learn to sell one Emily has done the I love mermaids one the I love what is this one rainbows one she's also at some point had the I love fairies fairy potions maybe and I love unicorns so there's a ton of different ones but we really like those kits so if you're just looking for a craft kit for somebody in your life just look that one up and pick one that would fit their personality you can't go wrong with that and those sorry I didn't tell you those are recommended for seven plus and then I also love some good window art and this is recommended for five plus so if you have somebody a little bit younger these are really great options it comes with 20 different window art things that they can make and then the last thing I have for your crafter instead of an actual like kit for them to do is this arts and crafts vault which just contains it's a really nice box though but it just contains a thousand craft pieces so we're talking popsicle sticks googly eyes gyms scissors pipe cleaners chanel sticks depending on what you call them glue pom poms feathers I mean it has peg dolls it's a little bit of everything so you could just gift them this and they'll let them kind of have their imagination go wild this is recommended for ages 8 plus and Emily has already had one of these and she really really loved it it came with a ton of really great quality stuff next up we have games so this is going to take us the longest to get through because I have the most options for this now I tried to get games that would suit everybody's interest and or age bracket so I'm going to tell you a little bit about the game just a tiny bit so this video isn't too long and I'm going to tell you what age it's recommended for so that you'll know what's best so these first few would be able to fit in a stocking in case you were curious we have taco cat goat cheese pizza this is basically a super fun game of slap where you're slapping the different things and they recommend it for ages 8 and up and it can play in about 10 minutes we have Zeus on the loose which is kind of a greek mythology based game that has a little bit of stealth math because you're Mount Olympus your discard pile is trying to go either up and down and within a hundred because when it gets to a hundred the games over ages eight plus plays in 15 minutes or less sleeping queens you basically have queens that are asleep and you're trying to wake them up by doing different things it has a little bit of stealth math because you can discard cards based off of a math equation or problem if you can make one it's for ages eight and plus and plays in approximately 20 minutes Oona which is obviously a game for everybody you're matching the colors or the numbers and trying to get rid of all your cards ages seven plus and there is no time on here because Oona was one of those games that could take five minutes or it could take 50 minutes who knows so there's that and depending on the size of your stocking this would be questionable it's not let me show you just so you know in comparison to a deck of cards it's not tiny but it's also not huge either this is dragon wood this is the game i buy for everybody like a gift they're getting dragon wood it is basically they call it a game of dice and daring essentially it is you are rolling the dice you're risking kind of at all it's game of probability you're trying to capture different magical creatures um it does have some math in it because your dice have to add up to a certain amount of numbers in order to capture that creature it's for ages eight and plus eight plus um and plays in 20 minutes or less my personal favorite none of these are going to fit in a stocking my personal favorite quirkle i absolutely love this game one of the things i love about it is there's zero reading involved you only have to know your colors and shapes to be able to play so it's a really really great game when you have a span of ages in your house um so when emily was a little bit younger it was a great game because me and kevin could play and she could play and we were kind of all on a level playing field let's see ages six plus is what they recommend it for it and i'm not seeing a time i feel like it's like uno though because it could be one of those where you can play it super quick or it may take a little bit longer just depends on how many people are playing and when the tiles run out yatsi this is kevin's absolute favorite this is how emily learned her math fact so there is some serious self math in here um ages eight plus and i don't see a time on it either but we normally play i would say in under 20 minutes racco this is a classic i remember growing up playing this you were basically dealt cards and you have to put them in your little thing here without being able to arrange them as their dealt to you and then you're trying to draw a card and discard a card to essentially get the cards in your rack from least to greatest not necessarily in sequential order but just from the lowest card up to the highest card they recommend it for ages eight plus um in my experience it plays in under 30 minutes oh let's see we have a few ebu games here this one is what is it called the tea party spinner game um it is recommended for ages three plus you are basically just spinning a spinner and collecting the different things that you need for the tea party what is adorable about it is that you actually get like the real table cloth to lay down and play on so it's it's very nice um when emily was younger three or four years old we would always play this when we did poetry tea time we would wear our little tea time hats and we'd kind of get dressed up we drink our tea and we'd play this game it was cute and it was adorable so if you have a young girl in your life and you're looking for something to give them or a young gentleman um this is a really really fun game another one i really like from ebu is lion in my way it is an imagination a game of imaginative problem solving it's recommended for ages five plus basically the lion is in your way it's not just the lion but it's kind of just this long journey maze of hazards there's just different things like there's a ball in the way you have to rock it over it just different things and you have to come up with imaginative ways to get past that hazard using some of the cards that you have like an elephant can knock it down kind of thing so it's really really fun i have a nephew who is getting that this year it is it plays in 15 minutes or less out foxed is kind of a junior version of a clue type of game it's definitely a who done it basically the fox gets away with the pie and you're trying to figure out which of the fox characters is the suspect and the culprit and so you're getting clues like he's not wearing a hat or you know he's got a mustache and you're narrowing down which of the fox characters it is they recommend this for ages five up and it will play in less than 20 minutes that was a favorite here until Emily was ready for clue we played out foxed probably on repeat for years peaceable kingdom is another company i absolutely love the majority of their games are for younger kids and their cooperative so if you have kids who have a really really hard time with the losing and winning i really really recommend their games this is my personal favorite it's a race to the treasure you are basically trying to build a maze to get to the treasure but if the ogre card gets filled first then the ogre gets there and gets the treasure but it's you all win or you all lose so if the ogre gets there the ogre wins and everybody playing loses if you get there you all win together there are a handful of other games by peaceable kingdom hoot owl hoot mermaid island those were two that were played a lot here counter chickens was another all of them are amazing this one is ages five plus and plays in less than 20 minutes hoot owl hoot and mermaid island i believe are ages four plus so definitely look into those if you have younger kids that like i said are having a hard time with the whole winning thing peaceable kingdom makes amazing games for that we also really really love labyrinth we have a ton of different versions of this we have a disney villains version we have a harry potter version there we have a ton of them we have a labyrinth junior which is a little for a little bit younger kids this is recommended for ages seven the junior is recommended for ages five so depending on the ages of your kids but basically the board is moving constantly it is literally a labyrinth and you're trying to move it to get to all of the different places little card icons on your cards to win the game let's see next we have camp i really like this game because it has multiple different levels so when it says that ages four to 104 can play it's really not kidding there's a level one all the way up to a level four and you pick the level ahead of time so your four-year-old would be answering questions like what animal is pictured which by the way is a bear where maybe your most knowledgeable person would be answering something like what is the scientific name of the bear and you're all playing on an equal like level playing field which i really like because most games make that difficult when you have a wide range of ages or people that you know have a wide range in there so if you have kids who love camping or survival or the outdoors in nature and you have you know lots of different ranges this is great they also have expansion packs for it so if you play it so much that the cards seem repetitive you can get an expansion pack and kind of renew the entire game king of tokyo is also a family favorite you basically are picking your favorite monster and rolling the dice to see who smashes in and out of tokyo it's simple and fun it plays in less than 30 minutes and it's recommended for ages eight plus what i like about this as you can play with up to six players which not many games are not a lot of games you can and this is one that you can do that with ticket to ride i happen to pull the first journey europe off yeah this is the europe version first journey but any of the ticket to rides are amazing the first journeys are recommended for ages six plus i believe there's two first journeys out right now basically one that's the us and one that's your up and then the regular ticket to rides are recommended for ages eight plus so again depending on what ages you have and maybe even depending on where you live or what you're studying or what your kid is interested in i mean if they love you know europe or if they love the united states then you could tailor that to their interest and then the last one i have is dixit it is like a picture is worth a thousand words because it has all these beautifully illustrated cards and your imagination gets to tell the tell and see if people can figure it out it is for ages eight plus it plays in under 30 minutes but um you have to have at least three players that's the one downside to this game is we only get to play it when all three of us are home so keep that in mind if you have a small family but you can play it with up to six so if you have a large family you might be interested in this one the last thing on my educational gift guide is subscriptions so subscription letters would obviously be a great thing for your stocking suffers if you do that um some of our favorite subscription letters are writings from the wild um heritage letter letters from afar i have a ton of them i have a whole video i will link them up here so that you can see them actually see the letter and see what would be the best fit for your family but we have enjoyed subscription letters in our homeschool for a very long time i love that it always seems to be have the random pick me up that our homeschool needs and it always gives us an opportunity to go down a rabbit trail so maybe we're not studying i'm going to randomly open one of these so maybe we are not studying the Mandarin fish or anything to do with the ocean right now but we get a letter about one it gives us an opportunity to go down that rabbit trail and enjoy it together as a family and then some of our favorite subscription boxes which depending on i guess if they were to arrive in time if you actually got the box you could wrap it if not i think most of these companies will give you like some sort of certificate that you could put in a stocking or a wrap depending on like i said you may be pushing it to actually get it in time for christmas but some of our favorites are mel science the chemistry one as well as the physics we have received them and love them both but mel science now also has i believe a stem line i think they're coming out with a math line i know for older kids they have a medical line um so there's now range from five year olds all the way up to i think 18 year olds depending on which line that you're looking at so definitely look into that no matter what age your kids are and kiwi co is another one that we absolutely love we are currently receiving the eureka crate we've received the ticker crate in the past as well as the kiwi crate and the koala curate even when emily was younger there another one that have tons of different lines to choose from depending on the age of your child i believe they even have something for as young as two and three year olds so definitely look up kiwi co my zoo box is one of emily's absolute favorites they feature a different animal each month and you get like a stuffy and a book and a craft and all kinds of really fun things to go along with that universal yams is a family favorite of ours you get a box every month from a different country and it has tons of different snacks and information and trivia and a playlist from youtube of music so we really just make a whole family night out of it it's really really fun and then last is a new one we added this year which is history unboxed it has been a fun addition to our home school it is basically you can pick a different time period you can pick a specific box and buy it you can do a subscription to either ancient medieval american or modern i think there's four different history lines you can choose from and they will send you one a month but it has a booklet in it and it includes crafts or activities that have to do with that specific time period or that country or whatever it is i have unboxings on all of these that i just showed you i will link them in the description so that you can actually see more of each of the subscription boxes what comes in it and you'll get to see either emily and i or kevin and emily do one of the boxes so you can make an educated decision on which subscription would be best for your home school i hope you enjoyed this year's educational gift guide don't forget to check out abby's channel for even more educational gift ideas and i would absolutely love it if you would leave your educational gift ideas in the comments for me so that i can check them out