 Hey everybody, welcome to the Lotakway. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be our homeschool plans for the new year. Let's talk about what we are going to do this winter in our homeschool. I don't know about you, but returning to homeschool after the holidays always feels super difficult. And not just for Emily, but for me too. You've had this high of the holidays and now it's time to get back to the everyday life. And while I love homeschooling, it just always seems hard. There's not all of this holiday excitement. Winter is now upon us. So the days are shorter and they're colder and it's just kind of like the homeschool blobs. So I asked myself years ago, what are the two things that we love most in our homeschool? And the two things that we love most were reading and playing games. What if we took the two things that we love and enjoy the most? And that's all we did when we came out from the homeschool holidays. What if that's all we did for homeschool? And so that's what we did. And it turned out to be something we loved. And out of that are a book in a game a day challenge was born. And so every single January after the holidays when we returned to homeschool, we challenge ourselves to simply read one book and play one game a day. That's super simple and we can do it in under 30 minutes depending on what book and game we choose. So it took very little for me. I admit I didn't have to play in. I admit I only didn't have to spend hours at the table. It made us excited to come back to homeschool. And so that's what we have been doing for the past five years is simply committing to reading one book and playing one game for the month of January. Now, sometimes we'll get on a roll and we'll even go past January which is kind of what I've planned for this year. But that doesn't mean that you have to. We have printables that you can do with us that check off all 31 days of January. And there's all kinds of things in this printable pack. I'm gonna link in the description box in case you want to join us because we would love to have you. And it's just simply a way to restart your homeschool in some part of enjoyment that you and your children are gonna love. It doesn't have to be anything special. You don't have to even own a game. You can own like a deck of cards and you can play 31 different games for your deck of cards. You can let your kids pick the games. You can let your kids pick the books. Whatever it takes, the month of January is more about returning to some simple routines, doing things you and your kids are gonna enjoy and making connections because that's what's most important is making those connections and letting your kids know that you're there and it's time to spend time with them. Especially after the busy holiday season, sometimes we can get caught up in all the things and all the to-do lists and we've forgotten to make those connections and I'm so guilty of that. I'm like, let's do all the things and make all the connections and then I don't do those things or I don't make all the connections I wanted to make with her. I don't take that slow, quiet time. And so I make sure that we do that in January. Now, in years past, for the past five plus years, we have read a picture book and played one game every day for the month of January. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I loved it. I would do it again. But I thought we would shake things up a little this year and our personal homeschooling, you don't have to do this. You can read anything you want. It can be a picture book. It can be whatever. But this year, we are going to read chapter books. So me and Emily sat down and went through her long waited to be read list of mine. And we picked out seven chapter books just to make sure we had the entire month covered because I have no idea how long it's gonna take us to get through these books. We may do this all of January and a large portion of February. We'll just have to see how it rolls out. But this is basically my plan for the February, January, blah, mundane homeschool that just gives us all the dreary winter weather stuff. As we're going to read those books. And then what we did when we picked the books as we tried to pick kind of a theme that took place in the books. And we picked anywhere between four to five games that would tie in well with that book. And my plan is that while we're reading that book during the duration of that book, I'm just gonna put those games on our coffee table and we'll just play them. At minimum, we will read one chapter of the book and we'll play one round of a game. Now, there will be no rules. So if she wants to play the same game every day for a week, that's fine with me. If we read 10 chapters instead of one, fantastic. But minimum, my homeschool must do is for the month of January will be to read one chapter from a book and to play at least one game. So that's it, that's the rules. Now, because I know you're gonna ask, yes, I have all of the books and all of the games picked and I'm going to share them with you right now. The first book that Emily chose is Stella. This is a book about a dog who deserves a second chance. She was trained as a like a rescue cop type of dog and then she has an owner who I believe has some sort of anxiety attack or some sort of seizure and the dog thinks that she can tell the owner or the girl that something is happening. So Emily was super excited that basically the dog was gonna get a second chance and it was a book about dogs. So the games that we chose have the dog theme. We have nuts about muts. We have the top trumps, lovable game of pooches. We have dogs and puppies, a memory game. And then we have dog bingo. The next book I picked because I'm personally dying to read it and it is Willow Dean, although I know Emily's gonna love it because she loves everything by Catherine Applegate and the theme that we kind of picked for that book was magical creatures because that's the premises of that book is that there is this like whole forest with a magical creature in it and they're disappearing. So to go along with that, we picked the game Creature Clash. It is a really fun card game where you are trying to make a creature of all of these little parts, beginnings, middles and ends and you're trying to make the creature that would be the most points. So I'm sneaking in a little math with that one. Then we also have the Create a Creature which is really, really cool because you have these cards where it's like the subject, the details and then you have the habitat and you're basically trying to draw the creature. So that will be fun. We have Cover Your Kingdom which is you're the ruler of a magical kingdom full of magical creatures. So that's going to be a blast. And then one of our all-time favorites, Dragonwood which is a game of dice and daring where you're trying to kind of collect all these different magical creatures. The next book that Emily picked is The Kingdom Keepers and this is Disney After Dark. Now this is book one. Obviously this is a series. She just wanted to start with the first one and see if she liked it. You can kind of see that now the books that we're picking are getting a little thicker. So this is the point at which I made sure that we had at least five games because I figure it's probably gonna take us a little longer to read the rest of the books I'm gonna share because they're getting a little bit longer. More pages, bigger books. So the games that we have to go along with that one are Monopoly Villains. We have Clue Villains. We have the Villains Labyrinth Villainous. And then we have a few of the expansion packs of this too that I will put under the coffee table. And then last, because we just really like playing it, I grabbed the Pictopia Disney, which is an ultimate trivia game. I thought it would be kind of cool to see how much we know about Disney with that one. The next book we have is The Simple Art of Flying. This was one of my picks. It was in an Alcret Junior box and I have wanted it ever since it came out but I missed that box. So we are going to read it now. The games we have to go along with that are the Top Trump's Birds. Now, in case you've never seen a Top Trump, we really, really like these. They have realistic pictures of the thing that they're talking about. And it's basically a war with all these different facts. So for the birds, it's their wingspan, their lifespan, their clutch size, their independence and their cute rating. So essentially you're playing war with one of those ratings. We also have the Professor Noggin Birds. In case you've never played Professor Noggin's, you have easy and hard questions and you roll a die that has one through three on it and then you answer that question. If you get it correct, you get to keep the card. Whoever has the most cards at the end is the winner. Then we have Mashapara Birds, Bird Bingo and we have Bird Spotting Opoli. We also have wingspan to go along with this. I just don't have it right this second because I loaned it out to somebody to see if they liked playing it. So we will also have wingspan under the coffee table which is an amazing bird game. The next book we have is The Secret Wild which is when this little girl moves to a city. She realizes that basically the plants are all over the place and they're kind of growing out of wild. It's a mystery that she's trying to solve about why the plants are growing and how to fix it before they take over. So this one seemed really, really cute. And of course the theme for that is plants. So we have Wildcraft which is an herbal adventure and all this is a cooperative game so it's great for younger kids because you could all play together. But Emily has been playing it since she was like four and loves it so I have that one for her. We have Planted which is a game of nature in nurture. We have Flower Families, Matcha Leaf which is a memory game. In case you can't tell we love Lawrence King and then we have Tree Bingo which is another Lawrence King game. We really, really love the quality of those games and the illustrations of them which is why we have so many of them and why those are the ones we chose because we love playing them. All of us love playing them. So I picked as many of those as I could. The next book was one of my picks and it is City Spies. This is another book that is a series. This is just the first one in the series. It's been on my To Be Red List forever and so when I read it to Emily, she was like, oh that sounds really cool. So it's one of the ones that I picked. So the games, the kind of the theme for it is like Code Cracking, Spy, Sleuth kind of thing. So we have Figure It which is a crack the code type of game that's based with numbers. We have Mastermind Kids which is just the one that we have. You can have Mastermind or Mastermind Kids. They both play great but it's a code maker versus a code breaker so another break the code kind of game. We have Codename Pictures which is trying to figure out the location of the spies and secret agents based off of the team. So we'll play in teams for that one. Sherlock Express, you're trying to race to solve the mystery of who done it. And then Super Sleuths which is really a vocabulary game but it's kind of met the theme of spy and that was a great way for me to sneak in some grammar and vocabulary so I thought why not? And then the last book is called Time Sight. This was one of the few ones that Kevin requested. It says castles, battles, the ancient Scottish highlands and a boy who is determined to bring everyone home safely in this absorbing time traveling adventure. So he is like traveling through time and trying to bring everybody home safely. So we decided that we would go with throughout history kind of time thing to make sure that we were covering all of the time traveling that he was doing. Kevin loves history so he was like, yeah, that sounds great. So the games we chose for that one are all of our timelines. We really love these. So this is the classic timeline and then we have the timeline in Vincen's as well as the timeline events. So we will have all of those to play. The similar history which is kind of a guess who type of game. It reminds me of guess who. You just don't have the board and you're trying to guess which historical figure did it. This was my favorite pick for this because trekking through history kind of sounds like it's perfect for a time traveling game. So we will probably be playing tons of rounds of that. And then journey through time, I found it hidden picture. This board actually lays out to like six foot. It's almost our entire dining room table. And then you're just trying to use the little thing to find the different things. But it goes through ancient Egypt, medieval age, the age of piracy, Wild West and the future. So it will be a fun thing because in the book they are trying to like find the clues when they're traveling through time. So this game was gonna be really, really great because we have to find the clues throughout the history to play it. So that's it. That is the seven books and all of the games that we have picked. Now that doesn't mean there won't be any more but that's kind of what our plan is for the winter which is probably gonna be most of January and February basically until Emily's ready to dive back into school and until we figured out what our next unit study is going to be. This is going to be the basis of our homeschool. If at least we read one chapter and play one game I will be happy and count homeschool is done. But what I love about our book and game challenge is that it gives us the space and the room for rabbit trails. And I can already tell you there's gonna be a ton. I mean, time traveling, dogs, there's gonna be so many that she's gonna wanna go down. So I'm sure we will be watching YouTube videos or documentaries. We will probably be doing some research. That's what I love about these few months is it really helps me to see kind of what she's interested in what she's gravitating towards. It gives us time and blank space in our day to be able to be more creative, to be able to do the things that maybe we weren't able to do during the holiday season. It's just really honestly one of my favorite times of year because we're kind of free. We're just, our only must do is are to read a book or a chapter and play a game which those aren't even must do, it's like those seem fun. And then we have all of this space to do whatever else to go down whatever rabbit trail she wants to go down to follow whatever lead she has. It's just super exciting and I can't wait for January so that we can start this. Now, if you are thinking that this sounds fantastic and you would like to join us, I'm gonna leave a link in the description box for you with all of the things. There's principles that have check marks where you can check mark what you've played. There's game suggestions, there's links. There's all of the past books and games that we've done throughout the five years if you need some inspiration. We have a hashtag that we use on social media to make it easier to find each other. So if you are thinking this sounds great and this is exactly what I need in my home school starting January, please join us and make sure you click on that link because we would love to be able to follow along on your book and a game of date journey as well.