 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica and today we are kicking off our back to school haul week. Every single day this week I will be posting a back to school haul featuring things that we have purchased for our home school from different places every single day. So make sure you're subscribed and click that little bell notification icon so that you'll be notified every single time a new video goes live. We are going to kick it off with a bang today and today's back to school haul will be the biggest one and it will be from Amazon. Now, most of what you're gonna see here today is going to reflect the things that I want us to master in our home school this year. And in order to know what those are, you're gonna have to watch the plan with me video that I posted last week. You can check that out right here. So I'm gonna go over in that video how I plan our home school year and then you'll kind of have a better idea of how we home school and why I've selected the majority of these resources. Without further ado, we're gonna jump in because I am literally surrounded by home school amazingness right now. So we're gonna start with the logic and critical thinking type of things that I purchased specifically for our fifth grade home school year. And two of those are these brain wave games. So these are one to four players. They take 15 minutes or less and there are multiple different ways to play the games. This one is the wise whale and this one is the astute goose. They're very, very similar. There's actually a third one that we already own as well. They're very, very fun and they're just ways, like I said, to get in that extra logic and critical thinking. And then we love games, so that is gonna be a huge help. And I also picked up these fun little university game kind of brain teasers. So we have all three of them. This one is mystery teasers. These are brain teasers. So there's like little thing full of different brain teasers that we will be playing. This one is solve the mystery gram. So you can see on the back that it's like a little mystery gram that you have to solve. And then this one is the 30 second mysteries. I don't know how fast you can read. You probably would need to pause it, but there's the case, the clues, and then you have to figure it out. So again, just lots of ways to work on that logic and critical thinking. I also went ahead and bought the next mine bender book. So we've done, I guess, let's see, three levels. So far we're still working on level three, but we're almost done. So I picked up level four for us to work through. And I love these. Every year gets a little bit more difficult, but basically they give you a situation and then they give you clues and you have to figure out who or what is, you know, each one about putting plus and minuses in the boxes. And there are answers in the back in case you need them. To our critical thinking, I'm also adding the critical thinking detective. Now we haven't done this book before. So I got level one, which it says is for fourth through 12th grade. Again, we've never done this one, but it kind of gives you like a case and your suspects and then you have to figure it out. So I thought that one would be really fun. So that is the majority of our critical thinking and logic stuff. Next, I thought I would show you guys some of just like the generic back-to-school supplies that we purchase every year. The first one being the Expo Ultra Fine Tip. These write almost like a pin, but they're a dry erase. So you can use them on anything laminated and they would erase right off. I like that they have that pin tip. A set of paper-made pencils. These are M.L.A.'s absolute favorite. They're mechanical. They're like 0.9 millimeter lead. I believe, let me see if it says that. It doesn't, but it's huge lead. It never breaks. One of these will last for all year long. They're triangle shaped. So they make sure that her pencil grip has never been an issue because of that. They're her favorite. They last all year. I have no problem with them. So I buy a new one every year. My personal favorite erasable pens. These are the Fine Liners. They write very similar to like the PaperMate Flare pens except these are erasable. So I get a new pack about once a year. Maybe twice a year. Sometimes there'll be some in my stocking at Christmas time. But those are my favorite. I like to refresh my stock for that. And then the big Gelocity pens. I really like these too. They're not erasable. So I'm very conscious of what I write with them. But I love the way these write. They're fat. Like the pen itself is kind of fat. And I like a fat pen. So that's the size of that. And it's gel, so it writes very smooth. And then, let me, I should have taken these out. Sorry guys. But I also grabbed a set of these zipper pouches. They come in different colors. They are, I believe the 9x13. So they fit a full sheet of paper that's laminated in them. They're a nice mesh pouch. And then they have a nice zipper. So none of that, like plastic with the plastic zipper. I find that those don't last as long. But we keep all of our printable games from our unit studies in these. So on most of the Waldoch way, unit studies come with some sort of printable game. And we like to keep them in here so that we can keep them all together and we don't have to worry about it. So these are also really great for puzzles and games too. If you messed up the boxes or have lost the boxes. So this was a set of 12. And we just, we use them for everything. So I went ahead and grabbed another pack of those to add to our home school supplies. Next up, we have what your fifth grader needs to know. I have been buying these, what your insert that you're great here needs to know since I might as in preschool, we do not do them like they're written. I mean, it's written as if it's a read aloud and you could literally read from front to back and your child's supposed to know everything they need to know. We don't do them that way. I do reference them quite a bit. I do like to have them on hand. I will say that up until this year, I've been able to always buy the newer revised version of this and they didn't have a revised version for fifth grade. So I'm a little sad because it's not as bright and vibrant as the past years have been. But the information in it is still really great. So I still like to have this on hand. I don't know what I'm gonna do when we grow out of those as far as age-wise. I thought this would be kind of cool to have on hand. I don't know why I had never bought it before. It just popped up in one of those like, if you like this, you'd also like this. It's by the same makers and it's books to build on. It is a grade by grade resource guide for parents and teachers. And so as Emily is getting older, it's harder for me to pre-read the books that she's reading. So I like having things on hand that tell me what kind of grade level books are supposed to be. That way I don't have to always read everything before she does. So it's just nice to have things like that on hand. It makes it easier to suggest books to her. So that is the majority of kind of like our, I guess, back to school resources as far as like the standard stuff. I did also pick up these versatile math and literacy sets for her. I thought these would be really, really great for days that I'm not feeling so well, but she's still wanting to do school. They have kind of like a workbook inside them. Let's see if I can get it out. Full of different math or literacy type concepts. And then instead of using pen and paper, you use the versitiles, which come in this cute little package. And if you get the pattern that they show at the bottom of the page when you flip your versitiles over, then you know that you've gotten it correct. So it's self-checking. It reminds me of hot dots without the interaction. We loved hot dots when Emily was younger. Hot dots are not something that go up to fifth grade anymore. So I kind of was like really, really searching for some sort of self-correcting something that she could do when I needed a minute by myself or I needed her to work independently. And these looked like a really, really great option for that. So I did add these in just for like I said, those days when I'm not feeling it or I have like an interview or, you know, the refrigerator repair guys here or something. And I need her to work without me. These will be really good for that. And then she can move on because they're self-checking. Okay, next up, we're gonna get into kind of the language arts portion of things that I purchased for our homeschool year. If you watched the plan with me video, you know that a few of the things I wanted to work on were different types of writing, as well as figurative language. So a lot of our purchases are gonna reflect that. One of the first things I have here is the hundred task cards for figurative language. I thought this would be kind of cool just to pull one or two from a day. Here's the task cards. They use things like personification, a metaphor, understatement, onomatopoeia, simile, idiom, alliteration, and hyperbole. And each task card just has like a few different questions. So like you would read the little thing and then it has like four or five different questions on it. So it's going to really give us a great kind of way to work on that figurative language. I also picked up the secrets of storytelling creative writing book. It is, let's see, 100 short fiction prompts for ages eight to 12. I don't know if I'll have her do all of it, if I'll have her even do it in this book. I just kind of like the idea of having writing prompts at my fingertips. So I didn't have to, you know, go search on teachers by teachers or come up with them myself. So I just thought that would be really cool to have on hand. I also picked up this, don't forget to write for the elementary grades. It is 50 and thrilling and effective writing lessons. So again, I'm not sure if we'll work all the way through it, but it looks like it would be really cool even just for me to read, to know how to teach her better. It has, you know, like make believe science and then it has everything that you would need as well as, you know, like the pages that they would actually fill out. And it's teaching writing at the same time. So I thought those would be great to have on hand. And then I also grabbed the once upon a word, word dictionary. It's where do words come from? Learning new words by understanding their stories. I thought that would be kind of cool to have on hand because it's, it was interesting. Like for instance, Ardvark, and it talks about how it comes from, let's see, it's a noun, it's a mammal that eats insects and looks like a pig with a long nose. And it's from Afrikaans Dutch word meaning earth or dirt. That's the Ard part of it. And then the Vark means pig because the animal burrows into the earth and resembles a pig. So it's just kind of cool to see like where our words come from and how the sections of the words make up something that makes sense. And Emily's really into that kind of stuff. So I thought she would enjoy just being able to look up any word in there and see where it originated from and why. And then a lot of these books that I'm gonna show you are for that figurative language concept that I wanted to work on. So this one is called It Figures. It's fun figures of speech. And it just kind of works through all of the different figures of speech explaining what they are and giving you examples. Your toast and other metaphors we adore. Crazy like a fox assembly story. And then we have these really kind of fun ones. You're pulling my leg. 400 human body sayings from head to toe. And there's a frog in my throat which is 440 animal sayings. Then a little bird told me. And then to go along with the poetic forms I got a kick in the head which is an everyday guide to poetic forms. We got quite a few other poetry things that you'll see in an upcoming video. That's why you're only seeing one here. There are tons of different poetic forms in here though to work through. And it gives you, it doesn't really teach you but it tells you which kind it is. So like here's the poem and then up in the corner it tells you what type of form that it uses. So it's a great way to expose and get used to and start kind of trying to pick up the different types of forms that are being used. The next thing I have to show you are books and it is a ton of books. This first set are going to be for her book club that she takes on out school with Mary Hannah Wilson. This year she will actually be taking two book clubs with her because Emily is 10, like ish, 10 and a half. She had the option to take the eight to 10 year old or the 11 to 13 year old. And instead of choosing one she chose to take both because she loves the book clubs with Mary Hannah Wilson. And some of the kids that have been in her book clubs this year were moving up and then some of the kids that have been in her book club this year were staying. So this way she still gets to stay with all of the kids that she's grown to love and she'll get to meet new kids as well. So we have double the amount of books because of that. I don't like depending on the library for her book club books I want her to be able to read them at her leisure and not feel rushed to get them back. And if she finishes one early I want her to just be able to have it on hand. So these are all of the books that she will be using with that out school book club. And I will link all of this stuff in the description box including the book club classes. So we have Love Ruby Lavender Orphan 11 by the Great Hornspoon. Mr. Popper's Penguins because of Winn Dixie. Elijah Buxton, When You Reach Me. Emmy in the Key of Code. Frendle, Restart, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Juliette and the Diamond of Enigma. Willow Dean, Wings of Fire. The Wednesday Wars. And the Inquisitor's Tale. Now I didn't have those split in any certain way so that's just all of the ones she'll be doing. I'll have to actually look to see which ones are for eight to 10 versus which ones are for 11 to 13. But either way those are ones that we purchased for this year. I also picked up the Unicorn Quest series. She asked for this for this school year. There's three at least right now. So we have the Unicorn Quest Secret in the Stone, the Unicorn Quest which I'm sure is the first one, and then the Unicorn Quest Fire in the Star. So that is another series that she asked for. This is a series that actually one of my followers recommended and Emily caught me looking it up. And so then I ended up buying it. It is the Animal Ark. It's where animals need you. Amelia and Sam love helping out at Animal Ark. The vet surgery in the village. Join the friends on their adventures. They discover how to look after all sorts of pets. So it's a 10 book collection that is supposed to be perfect for young animals. I'm sure she's gonna speed through them and love them. Some of the titles are Kitten Rescue, Bunny Trouble, Puppy and Peril, Doggy Drama, Guinea Pig, Superstar, The Lost Kitten, Lama on the Loose. So it sounds like something she's absolutely gonna love. I also grabbed, if I can do it without knocking everything over, the 39 Clues series. This is another series that a follower had recommended. They said it was kind of like an older version of the Magic Tree House books. And so they asked if we would read them because they were hoping for a study on them. We will see, we haven't read them yet, but if we enjoy them, that might actually happen. I also grabbed her one that she's been begging me for, like, for forever. And that is the How to Train Your Dragon book set. She is in love with the series and the movies and she's actually listened to all of them on audio but she wants to read the books. So I did go ahead and get her the books. And then I also got, I guess us because I'm hoping that this will be a read-a-lot because I personally want to read these. And that is the City Spies series. So there's three books in the series, City Spies, Golden Gate and Forbidden City. And to answer a question, because I've been asked this quite a bit, how do I decide what is a read-a-lot versus what she reads independently? The answer to that is simple. It's whether I want to read it or not. If I want to read it like City Spies, it's a read-a-lot. If I don't want to read it, then it's independently read. It's literally that simple. I just decide, do I want to read this? And if so, then I read it aloud so that I can enjoy it with her. And if I don't, I'm like, well, you can read that yourself. There are a few of her book club books that I actually do want to read, especially the 11 to 13-year-old ones. So we may read some of those aloud and then she'll do the book club herself. But that's how I decide that. Next, I'm going to show you the games that I picked up. You guys are going to be super surprised because it's a lot fewer than usual. I was kind of surprised that I didn't need as many games this year. The first one I picked up was the Mathological Liar game. This is the fifth grade version. We've been using these since, I believe, second or third grade. And we really, really like them. They are cases, basically, that you have to solve. The one that has the math incorrectly is the suspect or the person who's guilty. What's really cool about them is sometimes there's more than one. So even if you've solved one of the equations on the cards, you still have to solve all of them because they could all be guilty or only one might be guilty. So we got the fifth grade version. They always use math that's appropriate for that age. So obviously, like some of the younger ones were more addition and subtraction based where we've been doing more multiplication, division and fractions lately. Her and Kevin normally do these along when they do their STEM day, their kind of lessons. And they absolutely love them. So they requested that I grab fifth grade. I also grabbed the Tall Tales Expansion Pack. I didn't even know that this existed. I don't remember how I came across it. I'm sure it was in one of my story telling type of searches, but Tall Tales is a game that we absolutely love. And so when I realized that there was an expansion pack, which includes, I think it's like 12 more, 14 more game pieces and four more story cards. I knew we had to have it. So it's a game that we still enjoy frequently even now. A little wordy, this is rearranging your letters until you've come up with a word and then using clue cards to try to figure out each other's secret words. And you're also writing it down to keep it safe. So it seemed like it would be a really great two player game, which finding two player games is kind of difficult that are two players and fun. But it looks like it would be a great two player game that would work on spelling and just word fun in general, but like vocabulary. And I really, really love when we can do that with a game. And then Steal the Bacon is by the makers, Dolphin Hat, which are the same people who make the game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. A friend of mine recommended this to me. And so we bought it because Emily is obsessed with Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza and I'm sure she will be equally obsessed with Steal the Bacon. So that one is just a fun add. And then I also added the 24 game. I got the two pack that has the single digits and the double digits. This was kind of a two for one. So I actually bought this initially for our logic and critical thinking because that's our one thing this year, but then it also happens to be math. So this is one of those two for one things. You have to look at the card and figure out a way for it to be 24 based off of what you're looking at, whether that's addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. And like I said, you have the single digits and the double digits. But I just thought if I can get logic and math in and one fell swoop, I'm all over that. So that was a given. Blobby's Pizza is a super fun game. We've played it with friends and it happens to also incorporate fractions using pizzas and monsters. Like how can you not love that? So you get like the little guest checkbook and everything. And it just looks like a really fun way to get some fractions in. Like I said, we've played it with friends and we enjoyed it. I think we'll really like it as a family as well. Fracto, again, you guys fractions was something that we really wanted to work on is a fraction card game. The winner is the king of the jungle. Anytime I can incorporate animals and games, she's all in, so fractions that way. And then technically I could have printed something like this. I didn't really need this, but it wasn't that expensive. And I just liked that it was already done for me. So it's fraction war. So you can just play war using fractions. And she really likes fractions, but you get to compare them because you can see them there. And then it kind of lists some of the equivalent fractions on the bottom. Anyway, I just thought that would be kind of a really quick way to see like how good is she using her fraction skills. And then we grabbed outnumbered. This is a really, really fun math game. Like I've heard so many good things about it. I knew we needed to add it to our collection and it's cooperative. Finding a cooperative math game is next to impossible. There's not a ton of them. There's maybe a handful. So the more and more I kept hearing about this when I saw it on Selen Prime Day, I knew we had to have it. So I grabbed that. And that's it for games, you guys. Look, didn't I do great? Okay, next up we have art. I picked up these Spot the Differences books. These are gonna be one of those kind of double duty things. It's art and logic and one. These books are amazing. They have 25 different masterpieces. And there is the original masterpiece and then a kind of different one to the side of it. And you have to spot however many changes it tells you. And then there's also these little facts all around that tell you about the masterpiece and about the artist and the kind of where it's at now, the medium that was used. We have book one. We've gone through it multiple times. And so I decided to add book two, three and four to our collection so that we could have more of them to do. I also picked up the Discovering Great Artist to add to our collection as well. This is really cool because it has like a biography of the artist on one side and then an example of a way you can recreate their artwork on the other. And there's 60 different artists in here. Now we do have a subscription to Chalk Pastel and Masterpiece Society and they both are amazing art programs, but they don't have all of the artists that I was hoping we would get to this year. So that's why I picked this one up. I figured between the two subscriptions and that book we could cover the majority of the artists we were wanting to cover. And then along those same lines, obviously to do art, you need art supplies. So I picked up quite a bit of art supplies. So we have 12 canvas panels. We have some basic liquid acrylics. We have a new set of Prismacolor pencils. This is a set of 48. I only got one set of these. I'm hoping that we can all share because those are really expensive. I also got a set of liquid watercolors for us. I got two sets of micron pens in the varying sizes. Let's see, we have some white gel pens which are great for highlighting a set of charcoal pencils. Three of these drawing gum pens that way we could each use one at the same time since there's not multiples in the pack. I got us these brush sets. I'll just show you, there's 15 brushes. And so I got three of those so we would each have our own brush set. We'll be writing our names on them. I also got two packs of these Arteza. They're multi-medium mixed paper pads. So it gives us four total. We really only needed three, but it was more affordable to buy the two pack than it was to get single packs. So that way we have four of those to go with all of our art supplies. And then for some of the taping off, I got some of the artist's tape so that we hopefully won't rip our paper. I've used paint or tape before and I always have trouble with it. So I'm hoping that that will work better. And then because we love nature journaling as much as possible, I got us new sets of these like little Windsor watercolor travel sets. They're very small. You can see it's like literally the size of my hand. So I got us three of those. So we'll each have our own and these Arteza landscape books. So there's one for each of us. They are, I believe the five by eight size, they have the ribbon in them so that you can mark your page. It's a watercolor or mixed media. So it's very thick. It doesn't go through. And then I just got each of us one. So we'll just have these three books and then these three things of watercolor and we'll be good to go for nature journaling for the year. And then the last thing I have, if you watched our Reflections video at the end of last home school year, you heard Emily say that the one thing that she wish we had done more of was bake together, getting the kitchen baked and cooked together. So I got this set of Kid Chef Everyday books. It's Kid Chef Everyday Cookbook for Foodie Kids. And then the Kid Chef Bakes for aspiring bakers. And then a Kid Chef Bakes for holidays because we do a lot of holiday theme poetry tea time. So I thought this would hopefully encourage her to take charge more. I'm happy to get in the kitchen with her, but I was hoping with these kid-friendly cookbooks that she would make a list of supplies and just kind of take charge and say, hey, this is what we're baking and this is what I need and let's just do it because then I'm not gonna argue and we will definitely get it done because getting in the kitchen is one place I'm not the strongest in. So that is my hope for that. And then I also grabbed these two 500 fact books. We have similar ones that we've really enjoyed by the same company. So this is 500 Facts about American History for Kids. And then we have 500 Facts about World History for Kids. And Emily just likes having these on hand. It's, I mean, it's very short and concise and it's a different place or time or event. And then it gives her a place to start and a place to find out more information. So it's just, like I said, little bite-sized piece of information, nothing huge, just enough and then she can go further and dig deeper if she would like. So that was the world one and here is the American History one. All right, that's it. That is our Amazon haul for back to school for our fifth grade home school year. If you enjoyed this haul, please make sure you're subscribed and that you turn that notification little bell on because you're gonna have a haul coming to you every single day this week and you're not gonna wanna miss it.