 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldeck Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be all about homeschooling when mom is sick. Now unfortunately, I have firsthand recent experience with this exact topic, because after the holidays, Kevin and I spent two to three weeks in bed with the world's worst flu ever. And while Emily did catch it, she had it for a lot less time, thank goodness, than we did, but it really left us in the position that had me really kind of scrambling for how we could still homeschool or how we could still keep her entertained or do something that was somewhat educational to make me feel a little less guilty while I was quite literally indisposed, like not able to hardly do anything. So I came up with some really great ideas that will keep kids engaged and busy while you are indisposed, whether that's because you're sick, whether it's because it's that time of the month, whether it's because you have a chronic illness, migraine, depression, whatever. These are some of my top favorite resources that worked super well for us during that time period. So I am just gonna go ahead and get started. One of my top picks is gonna be books. Now books can come in many different forms. It can be string and encyclopedia. If your kids love that, it can be audio books. If you're like, oh, my voice hurts, I can't read. But some of my favorite books, the ones that I found to be the most successful that kids will actually want to engage with are these Usborne, like tactile type of books. So the ones that are like the look inside ones, where they're actually opening the flaps and engaging with it. Beautiful illustrations, giving them something to do. I find these to be very, very wonderful for kids. Also, these Shine the Light books from Usborne are great. So I'm sick in bed, maybe have a migraine, the lights are turned off, I just hand them like a flashlight. And she thinks that's super fun. They're educational, she's reading. And there's topics that range from dinosaurs to animals to secrets in the winter. There's wonders of the US, all kinds of really, really wonderful things. And they're fun, like even now that she's 11, she still enjoys them because I only pull them out at certain times, I'm like, oh, here's the flashlight, it's really fun. Mommy doesn't feel good reading to me. They work wonders. And then the questions and answer ones are really fun too. They also are a lift the flap. The see inside, the big book of, all of them are wonderful. But I find the question and answers to be really fun because there's just so many things to learn about this specific topic. Like how did knees bend? I don't know, let's open this flap and find out. And so, really fun. Also, there's so many different topics in Usborne that you can probably find the topic that you were already planning to learn about. So maybe it was the human body, maybe it was dinosaurs, maybe it was the weather. There's probably a book that's fun, tactile, whatever, that's around that topic. And it doesn't have to be that topic, but you could essentially still be learning what you were planning to learn anyway, but without you. In addition to those, like those type of books, I also really, really love activity books, especially ones that don't require a lot from me. So some of my favorite are also from Usborne. They are this Write Your Own series. I absolutely love keeping these on hand because I can easily be like, oh, hey, you know what, we haven't done a lot of poetry. So let me just throw this Write Your Own Poems book at you. It pretty much gives all of the examples and walks her through everything as long as your child can read, they're not gonna need you for anything, other than to probably come read you the poem that they wrote because they're super proud of it. Same thing, maybe you have one that's into comics. They can write and draw their own comics instead. Maybe you really want your child to practice writing a story. They can write their own storybook. They also have a first storybook version that we did when Emily was younger. It's really great if you have younger kids. Maybe you want them to write their own script. And how cool would it be if they wrote their own script and then maybe went and actually tried to film it or did a stop motion of it? Like, super fun, super educational, requires very little from you. Or maybe they want to write and design their own magazine. Again, this is just a super fun thing. Maybe it's a magazine about sports. Maybe it's a fashion magazine. Like they can be pursuing their own interest and also learning at the same time in a sneaky way that doesn't require anything from you, hopefully. And then along those same lines are the math workbooks from Usborne. I love these. They're amazing. We have not ever completed one entirely, but they're perfect for throwing at Emily when I'm sick, when I don't feel good, when I need five minutes alone when we're in the car. They range from adding and subtracting to telling time, measuring things, times tables, multiplying and dividing, graphs and charts, and fractions and decimals. And all of them are colorful. They have stickers. You know, the instructions are there for them. So they're a lot of fun to make it feel like more fun for them, less guilty for you because they're still doing math. You could either pull one that's maybe a little bit below where they're at for review. You could pull one that's what they were gonna be doing anyway. Maybe you give them one that's something they just needed extra practice on. Either way, you can check off math and it didn't require hardly anything from you, which is fantastic. The other thing that we really, really used a lot of was single-player games. Now we use single-player games because if Kevin and I are both sick, well, Emily is left by herself. But even if you have a homeschool with multiple kids, I still think single-player games are fantastic because if you are a sick mom or you're having migraine, the last thing you need to do is be trying to like diffuse sibling squabbles which are bound to happen. Single-player games hopefully will create less of those because they're playing by themselves. If you got a handful of single-player games, each kid could have one and then they could like rotate, right? Like you play this one and then this one and then this one and then they rotate when they're done. So I'm going to show some of our top picks for single-player games. Ones that hopefully will work for the widest range of ages and ones that have a lot of different puzzles so that you can do them for a long time. Like you're not going to just use them one time when you're sick and then not be able to use them again. So Think Fun makes some of the best single-player games. This one happens to be Chocolate Fix which we really, really love. You are basically doing kind of like a Sudoku thing with chocolate pieces. Our other favorite from them is Rush Hour. They do not make a bad single-player game. Like they really are amazing but Rush Hour and Chocolate Fix are the two that we probably pull out the most. They tend to just be the most fun. Also we have Canoodle. Canoodle makes a lot of different versions. They have this Canoodle, they have Canoodle Extreme, Canoodle Junior, Canoodle Gravity. All of the different versions of Canoodle are equally fun. Depending on the ages of your kids is going to depend on kind of which one you want to get but equally fun, neither of these do you have to know how to read for. So like they're both based off of pictures so your child would not even have to know how to read to be able to play them. Haystack is the one I'm showing you. There happens to be, let's see, Catstack, Haystack, Dogpile, something to do with Ocean. All of them are very, very similar gameplay. They're just different little pieces. They're either barn pieces or cat pieces or dog pieces or ocean animals. So you could just get either the one your child's most interested in or the one that's the most affordable. The gameplay is the same with all of them. We have all of them, we've tested all of them. It's kind of like a Tetris style of game. You're trying to fit the animals in the different shapes that they give you. There are, I believe 36 different increasingly difficulty puzzles in here. So again, multiple ages, you can play them multiple times for a long period of time. Really, really great and they don't need to know how to read because there's not like, once you've told them how to play it, they won't need to know how to read. Logic links, this one has 166 puzzles so you could play this one for a very, very long time. Super fun, they don't have to be all ages six plus but they will need to know how to read for this one because it's gonna tell them like red was not next to blue so they will need to have basic reading skills. And also cat crimes. This is another they're gonna need to have basic reading skills for because it's gonna give you those clues written out. There is a dog crimes version of this as well. They're very, very similar in gameplay. One's just cats, one's dogs. We have them both. If you have a cat lover, get the cats. If you have a dog lover, get the dog. If they don't care, get whichever one is more affordable. Okay, next we have subscriptions. Now, if you are sick as a mom, you're not gonna be doing like science experiments or be in the kitchen baking. However, depending on the age of your child and how much you trust them, there are a handful of subscriptions that have like videos that go with them and so they really almost could be a substitute teacher. You have the subscription, you have the video that's gonna tell the child what to do as long as you trust your child to either deal with chemicals or build something or whatever, they should be able to do these. These I would let Emily do all of these by herself. She's 11 though, just so you know that. Mel chemistry is one of them. This is 10 plus. They also have a Mel physics, it's eight plus. Both have videos. Both, your kids could easily do by themselves at those ages. Crunch Labs is one. It has slight videos. If their kids are ages eight and up, they could totally do it. Probably even a little bit younger as long as they could slightly read and follow the directions. I would say if you can do a Lego, build a Lego, you could probably do this one. Generation Genius is science experiments. There are three to four different experiments in each box. Again, there are videos, so they can be the substitute teacher for you. Their recommendation is, oh, I don't know if they have one on the box, nine and up for their subscription box. It's recommended for ages nine and up to do independently. Now, I also have something that we, I actually kind of created after I was sick with the intention of having it from now on in case I was sick. And that is our discovery decks that we recently just made. I will actually link a video up here in case you wanna see more. But it is essentially just a card with a QR code. The card has a question on it. The QR code is a YouTube video that answers that question. I have been using them in our homeschool as shrewing. We have topics covering human body, ocean animals, animals in general, plants, interesting inventions, how things were made. So this was basically a way for me to be able to feel less guilty about her using screen time. And these will definitely be something that we are using in our homeschool anytime. I'm not feeling well or not 100% or need five to 10 minutes of peace. Now that we have talked about screens, I also want to say I will link down in the description my guide to using screens in your homeschool. It is basically using any kind of technology in your homeschool. In this guide, I tell you how we use it, why we use it, why it's beneficial, as well as some of our favorite podcast, YouTube channels, audiobooks, Alexa skills, all of those things. Which if you have this would mean that you can use screens in an educational way. Like it has the apps, it has all of the stuff, documentaries. So it may be something you just want to download. It's a free download and keep handy for when you're sick. Like, oh, you know what? Here's a new podcast you guys haven't listened to yet. Here's a new skill you guys can try with the dot. Here's a new documentary we haven't seen. It's going to be kind of like your substitute teacher, right, in your back pocket. Like here it is ready to go. So I will leave a link to that because we used a ton of screens and I felt zero guilt because it's what I needed to do and she was learning while using them. Now that I have said that, I'm also going to say it is totally okay if you do nothing educational. I mean, if you're sick and you didn't pre-plan and you don't have the resources, I would absolutely encourage you to do whatever you need to do to get better. And if that means letting your kids watch cartoons and eat cereal out of the boxes and play video games until their eyes bleed, then do it because sometimes that is what's in yours and your kid's best interest is a healthy mom. So whatever it takes for that to happen, absolutely do that. I just felt even worse, especially when we started approaching the one plus week mark of having done nothing. And I was like, man, if I could just come up with some things that were educational, even if it was only 10 minutes and also kind of kept her busy because she was bored to death. She was looking to me to entertain her and I'm like, I got nothing. Like I can't breathe. I can't stand up without getting dizzy. Like I have nothing. I got nothing for you. But now I have tips, I have plans and I have resources. And so now I know what I'm gonna do. The next time I'm sick, I need a substitute teacher. And now I would absolutely love to hear from you. So when you are sick and you are looking for something, I mean, other than just doing nothing, what are your go-to resources or go-to things that you use when you need a substitute teacher in your homeschool? Let me know down in the comments.