 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be all about our homeschool plans for the new homeschool year. Now I don't know about you, but easing back into the homeschool year after the holidays has always been a little difficult. It is so easy for me to like overwhelm us with all the new shiny things. It's a new year. I wanna add all of these things. However, that is not ever a good thing because it's very overwhelming to Emily. We've had three or four weeks of break or chill homeschool and coming back full force never is good. So because of that, years ago, I instituted what we call a book and a game a day. And we've almost always for at least five plus years done that as a challenge for the month of January. So we simply read a book, play a game. That is our homeschool day. That's all we do. Sometimes we do other things, but that is like the basic bare minimum. My plan, if you will, for the entire month of January to ease us back into homeschool. However, we did not start that on January 1st this year like I would typically have done because we got the world's worst flu that lasted about three weeks. And so we are just now mid to end January starting our homeschool year back, which means we need to ease in more than ever because we had essentially six to seven weeks off of our traditional homeschool between Christmas and being sick. So I need to ease in. Like I really, really, really need us to just kind of have a smooth transition and ease into the new year. So we will be doing a book and a game, but I'm going to let it last six weeks. So then instead of us just doing it one or two weeks in the January, we'll do it for the rest of January and February. And I decided to change it up just a little bit this year for a couple of different reasons. My first reason for changing it up is I really did not want to invest anything or very little financially into a book and a game challenge this year. I didn't want to buy any new books or any new games. I wanted to essentially read and play off of the shelves, everything that we had already existing. But Emily still really likes them to match and she likes a little bit of guidance, but I didn't want to give her a ton of guidance. I wanted to just be like a little bit of random guidance and then she could just go pick a book and a game. So I decided to create what I have called discovery decks with topics that we have either already learned about in a unit study or Emily's been very interested in. So I know that we have a lot of these books and games kind of about these topics. And when I was making them, I decided wouldn't it be cool if instead of just a book and a game, we could answer this question and also include a video because that is one of the main ways that Emily learns is through like YouTube videos. And so this new kind of product, if you will, came to life based off of the need that we had in our homeschool. And so I created six different for now, there will be eventually be more discovery decks. We have one that is all about animals. We have all things space. All things weather, the human body, interesting inventions, and how things are made. And basically what I did is I came up with what I thought would be 20 very interesting questions that kids would be curious about within these topics. So for example, we have who are the best animal dads, do animals fart, because let's be honest, kids love that kind of stuff. Do woodpeckers get headaches? Why do some animals glow? And each of these discovery decks has 20 questions and each card has a QR code and that QR code links to a YouTube video that answers that question. So for us for the next six weeks in our homeschool, that is what we're gonna do is I'm going to basically let Emily randomly pick a card every day. She will pick the card. We will have a question such as, can a mountain turn into a volcano? We will scan the QR code, watch the video, and then once she's watched the video, she will get to pick a book and a game that she feels like will kind of correspond with that or that sounds interesting to her that day. The reason that I am so excited about these is because while they're gonna work great for a book and a game and to kind of give us a base for that for the next six weeks, they're also going to help us review topics that we've done in the past that we haven't approached again in years. They're going to help us go down rabbit trails, which by the way are hands down my favorite way to learn in homeschool. Seriously, rabbit trails are my absolute favorite. They're gonna give us a little bit of structure for our book and a game. They're also gonna give us a little bit of leeway for our book and a game by allowing us to just be like, oh, the topic is mountain or volcano. So let's just go pick a book and a game off the shelves that we already have or whatever. I'm just really, really excited about it. I also think these would be great in the future for the ones that we don't get to over the next six weeks for strewing. I think that would be great to throw on our morning basket, especially if we're learning about a specific topic, like if we're learning about weather in the spring or whatever to stick them in there and add a quick little YouTube video to our morning time each day. I think there are so many different uses for them, but I love that now that they're made and they're done, the thinking is over, they're gonna be super easy for me to implement and it's not like any extra on me on a daily basis or even on Emily. All of the videos were probably 10 minutes or less, so that's not adding a ton of time to our homeschool day and now I've taken our book and a game a day, added a video and so we're gonna be enriching that learning just a little bit with so little effort and I'm thrilled about that. Now that I have given you all of the explanation of what we're gonna do and why, let me give you just a few examples of what this might look like in our homeschool, keeping in mind that I have chosen these books and games and when we actually start doing this, Emily will choose them. So if we had chosen the card, can about and turn into a volcano, we would obviously watch the video and then that might look like us reading a book about volcanoes and playing top Trump volcanoes. These were already on our shelves, I just went and grabbed them. Okay, next up we have how do germs get inside your body? So that might look like us reading the Usborne See Inside Germs book and then playing Viralence and Infection card game. Again, already off of our shelves. It might look like us answering the question who created constellations and then reading the skies above my eyes and playing Starlink. Let's see, we also have how are airplanes made and we have the ultimate book of airplanes and airports and then this super fun game, take off, or I'm sorry, clear for take off. And then the last example I have, which Emily did actually pick this one, she was so excited for it, would be why do animals become endangered and she has this Save Our Species book, which this is a very large book. I doubt we would read all of it but we would definitely read quite a bit of it and then playing Endangered Animals Bingo. So that is our homeschool plans for the next six weeks. That is going to be how we ease back into homeschool. We are just going to use our discovery decks to answer a question every day, watch the video, learn more about it and then kind of shop our shelves, if you will, for books and games that would tie along into that. We're gonna use this as review for unit studies we've already done. We're gonna use it for rabbit trails to learn more about topics that we're interested in and I'm so, so excited about that. Now, in addition to this, once we get through January, in February I will start having Emily do a teaching textbooks lesson as well so that she can keep up with her math, not because I'm worried about falling behind or anything like that, just because I wanna make sure that we are getting in a little bit of math most days and while I know that math can come in to play in a lot of these topics, it is not super relevant in them. So, come February we will start adding teaching textbooks back in around three or four lessons a week. I don't require it every day and I kind of just let her do it at her leisure. So, three or four lessons a week will start happening in February. Now, I would absolutely love it if you would tell me down in the comments what your plans are for the new homeschool year. Have you already started back? I actually got a ton of comments on social media that a lot of you guys were suffering from illness too. So, maybe you haven't started back yet in which case you are so not alone, there are way more of you than I thought. But if you have or if you already know your plans, I would absolutely love to hear them and I would love your tips and tricks for easing back into homeschool after a prolonged break, if you will, whether it was an intentional or unintentional break.