 Hey everybody, welcome to the WellDoc way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be my spring and summer homeschool favorites. You guys, I normally do a homeschool favorites every single season because I find that we kinda dwell in things that we love and I wanna share those things that we love with you. I didn't even notice that I hadn't done one for spring until one of you asked me for a homeschool favorites and I was like, oh, I do one every season, except I didn't. So today's video is going to be spring and summer put together. I really only have one top favorite for the spring because, well, COVID and then I have quite a bit to show you guys for summer. So my top thing for spring was out school. Coronavirus, COVID, all of that had us locked down and it was just crazy and honestly, out school saved my hide. It gave Emily a way to have interactions with other kids when we couldn't get out and we couldn't do anything and we couldn't go anywhere. And it's just a really, really great service because there are tons of classes on any topic you can think of. So there was literally nothing that she couldn't find something on. So anytime she came to me and was like, oh, I'd like to learn more about this. I'm like, oh, there's a class for that. And we would just find her one and sign her up. And we still love out school, but it was like vital in our homeschool for spring. It saved our behinds. It was survival of the fittest and out school was the fittest for sure. So that is hands down all three of our favorite homeschool thing from spring. So now onto summer. So I actually sat down with everybody and so there's like some things from everybody in here. Kevin's picked a few things, Emily picked a few things, I picked a few things. So you're gonna be seeing our homeschool favorites from all of our points of view. The only thing that all of us said was the homeschool favorite from summer. Hands down that we all agreed on was the pool. And I'm not even sure that that's a homeschool favorite, but yeah, as we live in Florida, it's summer, the pool is a must. The first two things I have for you are homeschool planning related. And so they were used a ton during the summer and that is the home learning year by year book. You guys know that I absolutely love this book. It is the homeschool Bible as far as I'm concerned, not really, but I love it. I plan with it like crazy. I use it a lot during the summer to make sure that we've kind of hit those goals I had from the year before and then to plan my goals for the following year, which I will link a video up here about goal planning in case you wanna see more about that. So that is definitely a favorite of mine all the time, but especially this summer, because I planned with it a lot. And then another favorite of mine all the time, if it just happens to be an extra special thing during the summer is my pro click binding machine. Now I have gotten a ton of messages from you guys. This is apparently really hard to find right now and I'm sorry, but if you can find it, grab it because it is amazing, I love it. It's super simple. You just slide it, it punches holes and the spines that go with this reopen like a free ring binder almost. So it's like the best of both worlds, spiral, flat, lay flat binding, but you also get that opening, back up and closing. I have a video on this as well if you wanna see more about it, which I will link for you guys up here. But those two hands down are favorites all the time, but especially in the summer, when I am planning for the upcoming home school year. Okay, I'm gonna start with books now. So we all picked a book to share with you. Emily's books were series. She picked the Kylie Jean books. Now you guys might remember I actually got these for her as an end of the year gift last year and she has read through them all and actually there's one missing because I believe she's starting on them again for a second time around. She really, really enjoyed these books. Kevin's favorite that he picked was The Green Ember. He's actually been wanting to read this. Me and Emily have listened to the audio before but he actually read it with us this time and he really, really enjoyed it because it's a really great book, has a great story and just so that you kind of have an idea. His favorite series is Lord of the Rings. So he said it still kind of holds up to Lord of the Rings in a more child-friendly way and he really, really enjoyed that. So that was his pick. My pick wasn't one that we read together. It was one that I read personally and it was Adventuring Together by Greta Eskridge. I devoured this book. I really, really liked it. I think I've already read it three times. It was just kind of the perfect book just to, you know, because everything's about wanting to create that connection, right? At least for me it is. So it just spoke to my mama heart. It's really, really good. I really suggest you buy it if you wanna create connections with your kids. So next up, we have Games. And again, we each chose one game to share with you guys. My favorite game was Exploding Kittens. This is one that, you guys, this is gonna sound so silly because you know I love games and I own games but I buy them like crazy but this is one that I had not purchased because it is $20 for a card game. And that just seems kind of ridiculously expensive to me just for a card game. Like card games are like five or six bucks. So I kept putting off buying Exploding Kittens. But once we finally got into our household I can totally see why it is priced where it's priced. It is a very well done. It's high quality and the gameplay is so much fun. Like we played this all the time in the summer. It's funny. It makes you laugh. It's hilarious. It keeps you on your toes. Like it really is a great game. Emily's pick, sorry, was Clue. She loves this game and you guys, she loves the movie too. Like every single night, the summer, she was like, can we watch and play Clue? Can we watch and play Clue? So she likes to watch the movie and then play the game or sometimes play the game and then watch the movie. Her and Kevin are constantly doing the joke like one plus one plus two plus one or I don't know, whatever it is very in where they're trying to figure out how many shots were fired. So this was her favorite. We've played it more times than I care to count. I actually even laminated the sheets that come with it so that we didn't have to buy any more because we were starting to run out. So I laminated them and we used dry erase markers so we just erased them and reuse them. So that is a favorite and a game tip for you. Kevin's favorite was Labyrinth. This was the one that the very first time he played it he lost miserably. Like me and Emily were almost done with all of our cards that we have to find and he hadn't even gotten to one yet. And he was like, I don't like this game. I'm like, you have to give it a chance. So we played it again and he ended up really, really liking it. And so he's really enjoyed this the summer. We've played it quite a bit as well. We also have the ocean version and the Harry Potter version. I think we may even have a fourth but maybe not, maybe it's a junior version. Anyway, we have quite a few of these because they've been favorites of mine and Emily's for a while but Kevin just got on the bus to it. So this was his favorite from the summer. All right, the next thing I have for you guys is this metal caddy. So this is something that we've had forever. We actually own three of these now because we love them so much. They're really, really sturdy. They actually fit. I don't know if you can see but they can fit like full size books in the back which isn't normally common. I find a lot of them been the bottoms of the books cause they don't quite fit in there but this fits full size books. And it's just really convenient especially during the summer when we wanted to like go outside or school wherever around the house to have like color pencils and markers and our scrunch maps and all of those like things. And then I would just fill this with activity books or fun hands on thing and be like, here let's just go wherever and do school today or even on the go. Not that we were going on the go a lot but it was nice to take outside or poolside and just kind of enjoy school outside using this. So, and that is definitely a favor all the time but it was extremely useful this summer. The last favorite I have is actually our snail mail subscriptions. And these again have been a favor all the time but it was just such a nice thing to look forward to this summer when so many things were closed and so many things were being shut down and so many things were being like taken away it felt like to be able to open the mailbox and have some sort of special surprise in there. So these were just a huge, huge hit. The ones that we are getting currently are the Heritage Letter as well as the American Heritage Adventure. So those are actually both by Heritage Letter. One is a famous person for American history and the other is a famous like American site. So we've gotten Yosemite, The Great Smokies and the Liberty Bell. Both of those have been very, very nice to get. Can actually show you guys one. I have a video, which I will link up here for you guys of all of these subscription letters that we have gotten and tried over the years. So this would be the Heritage Letter and this is one from Norman Rockwell. And then here is one, this is actually our newest American Heritage Adventure and it is from the Biscayne Bay National Park. Then we also get letters from afar, which this is our newest one from the Serengeti. And then the last one that we get is, let me find one from them. Sorry, you guys, is writings from the wild and this is the Lions one. So that is what we're receiving right now. We are constantly going through and changing things up. We also have a few subscription boxes that we get, which we obviously love, but there was just something nice, especially because we get three letters a month and they kind of all come at just different enough times that when we went to the mailbox, it was like something exciting, at least for about two weeks. There was a letter coming and then another letter and then another letter. So it was really, really exciting to be getting something special in the mail during the summer when things seemed kind of doom and gloom, it was like it brightened your day. So those are some of our favorite things that brought joy to our homeschool from the spring and summer of 2020. And I would love it if you would share some of the things that brought joy to your homeschool over the past six months, or if you have a homeschool favorite, please share it in the comments down below.