 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch way. My name is Jessica and today's video is going to be a homeschool challenge for the new year. So every January when we come back from the holiday break, we do a homeschool challenge that we call a book in a game a day. We have done it for the past four years. I think I'm pretty sure this will be our fifth year doing it. And it's something that we took public a few years ago because it had worked so well for us. We wanted to share it with everybody and we wanted to have more fun. With more of you. So I'm going to share a little bit about it, why we do it, how you can join us, some of the free principles you can get to make it easier for you and hopefully you will jump in and do it with us. So in the month of January, we literally bare minimum only read a book and play a game every day. That is what I consider homeschool. And as long as we've done that, we're accomplished and we don't have to do anything else. And there's a few reasons that we do that. Number one is because I don't know about you, but in January, everything was like a clean slate and I either came back full force ready to like conquer the world. And I wanted to throw 50,000 things at Emily like, here's all of this stuff we're going to do. And she would be like, whoa, what? And wasn't ready for it. Or I would be dragging from the holidays and be like, oh, I'm not ready to come back yet or I'm not feeling it. And so we found that something simple, something simple acts that we love doing like reading a book and playing a game was not only fun to come back to, but that we could explore all of the subjects and all of the concepts and all the skills that I wanted to cover anyway, and still have fun, still look forward to it, still kind of like have something exciting to look forward to even after the holiday high was gone and do the number one thing that I prioritize most in our homeschool, which is connect. So we would still be connecting each and every day. And that is one of the reasons why this challenge has become something that is so important to me. It's that coming off of the holidays, it's super easy to be like, okay, it's time to get back to the grind and kind of forget the that that's not why we're doing this, that we're not here to just check the boxes and just, you know, get the bare minimum done. But instead, it's to have fun and to connect with each other and to like what we're learning. And this challenge lets us do that. So we can easily read any book, play any game, have a blast doing it. And then it leaves a lot of space in our day for rabbit trails to so let's say we read a book about a specific animal like we read a book about monkeys a few years ago and we played monkey bingo. And then we ended up watching a documentary about monkeys. And then that led us to learning more about, you know, monkeys versus apes and then like this whole Jane Goodall unit study. So it's a really great way to see what your kids are interested in and to give enough white space to really follow those rabbit trails of interest because there's not a ton of other things that have to be done right you've read your book you've played your game. You've got tons of white space to follow interest and that's one of the things I love it really sets up that second half of our school year with just all kinds of wonder and wonderfulness and it's just amazing. So that is kind of why we started it and that's why we continue to do it. It works so so well for us. It gives us a way to come back from the holidays. It gives us something to look forward to. We love it. We have fun. We are super excited like literally I have already planned all of our books and all of our games and I'm just so excited. So that is why we do it. Now if you want to join with us there will be a blog post in the description and you just click on it and it will have all of the details typed out for you but you will be able to download a book in a game like little packet. And in that packet it has all of the challenge details basically you can read absolutely any book and play any game you can even pick a book that has 31 chapters and just read a chapter a day and that still counts. But in that you will get two different trackers one is a game board tracker so if you have like a game pond you could just move it along the 31 days. Or you can do this one where you would color the 31 days as you move along. There are a few different types of prompts that you can use for your stories or your games or both. And then this is the one we will be using this year and it is where we will be writing down the book and writing down the game and then Emily will randomly pull them from a jar. So I have actually already picked 31 books and 31 games and I have paired them together. I have picked books and games based off of skills or concepts that I wanted her to cover and some that I just knew would be downright funny that she would love. And so we are just going to put all of them into a jar. I picked like I think around 5-6 math, 5-6 language arts, 5-6 science, 5-6 geography and history and then 5-6 like I said just downright funny ones like mythical creatures and poop related. And all of the things she loves. So we will put them all in a jar and she will just randomly pick one each morning and that's the book that we will read and the game that we will play. And I think it's going to be super fun because she's going to be excited each day. Now if you do not have a game collection as large as ours, that is totally fine because also in that download there will be a way that you can play all 31 days with nothing more than just a simple deck of cards. There will be 31 different links that you can click on that are going to take you to directions and instructions on how to play a game with a deck of cards and nothing more. And there will be 31 different games included. So that way you can join us. All you need is like I said one book with multiple chapters and a simple deck of cards that you can pick up at a dollar store and you can still join us have fun ease into the new year and connect with each other. Now if you're curious to see our 31 books and games, let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to share them with you guys since I've already have them picked kind of already have them piled up. I could easily share them on video if you would like but I did want to give you a few examples before I went about how you could kind of get in all of the subjects with a book and a game. So here isn't a language arts example. You could read something like the word collector and play a game like banana grams. So that would be a great language arts pairing for math. You could read a book like circumference and the fraction fair and play a game like these fraction dominoes. So that would be a good math pairing for science. You could read a book like a rock is lively and play a game that we love very much called rock on for geography, probably one of our absolute favorites. You could read the book The Scrambled States of America and play the game. Now we happen to have the book in the game, but if you buy the game, it actually comes with the book. So it's a really, really great one for a book in a game of day because everything you need is already in the box and it's really, really an affordable one too. And then for art, if you have an art lover, you could read a book like Katie's picture show and then play a game like my big art show. So that is just a few examples of how you could pair a book and a game together to cover certain concepts or skills or things that your kids are interested in. But again, don't forget that it doesn't have to match. It doesn't have to be a certain book. It doesn't have to be a certain game. The challenge is really just to spend that month focusing more on connecting and having fun with your kids and not just box checking kind of getting out of the box and just reading and playing every single day. For the whole month of January, so for 31 days. So don't get hung up on it. Oh, I don't have enough books or I don't have enough games. Again, seriously, you just need one book with some chapters and a deck of cards and you can still join in on this challenge with us. Now, if you want to see what we're going to be reading and playing again, let me know down in the comments. And if you are joining us, I would absolutely love to know. So let me know and all of the details if you need more will be in that link in the description box.