Our Last Day of School Tradition + Summer Learning Gifts for Homeschoolers

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to Swock Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be about one of our favorite last day of school traditions, which is the welcome to summer gift. So, we homeschool year round. We've homeschooled year round probably since the beginning because well, learning is always happening. So, it's kind of hard to be like, we're not learning, we're learning and turning it off and on, but we needed to pick like a this is the last day, this is the first day because I needed a start and stop for our portfolio mainly. So, it made the most sense for that to be like when we consider summer to be officially in session, if you will. And that's Memorial Day. Memorial Day weekend for us as Flidians means the pool is going up. We're having a barbecue. We're going to be swimming and it's like beach time and it's all things summer. So the Friday before Memorial Day is our last day of school for all intents and purposes. And the Monday of Memorial Day is the beginning of summer. So one of the things I have done for years is that Friday, our last day of school, is I give Emily a last day of school gift. Now it's a lot of gifts. It's a lot of things. I used to try to keep it to a basket. Her things have grown in size. the basket no longer works, but it's things I probably would have bought anyway, like books to peique her interest and keep her reading over the summer, games to add to our game school shelves, um, hands-on activities, things that she can do in the afternoons because in Florida it rains every afternoon during the summer. Um, or things she can do while I'm reading aloud because we do a lot of reading aloud in the summer because it's either too hot or it's rainy. there's like a good three or four hours we need to be indoors in the AC and that's a great time for me to be reading and her to be doing something hands-on. Um, it's also something that we always like add to our pool schooling. We add uh something new every year, either a new waterproof game or floats or whatever we can use for the pool and to still be learning because in Florida, if you're going to be outside, water needs to be involved. So, I thought I would share with you basically what her last day of school gifts are going to be this year in case this is something you want to incorporate or just in case you want to see some really cool things. So, the first thing that we got this year is this two pack of Riverrun floats. Um, we got these because we needed new floats for the pool and we figured these are great floats for like taking the springs or if we go somewhere as well. Along with the whole pool schooling thing, I also grabbed this color hit game. So, it is um basically balls that you throw. If you're hit with red, you're tagged, yellow means you're frozen, and green sets you free. So, it's like a bag full of these balls. I'm not sure I want to get hit with a ball, but I thought this would be something really fun for her to play when she had friends over in the pool. Of course, the minute that I saw the Taco Cat goat cheese pizza, which is Emily's all-time favorite game, had a poolside edition, I ordered it. It has been sitting in my office in a box for months now, waiting for this exact day so I could give it to her. I'm not sure how wet hands and being slapped is going to go over. I'm sure we're all going to have like red hands when it's over, but Emily loves loves this game. It is one of her all-time favorites. So, I'm sure she's going to be thrilled to be playing this in the pool. And then the Aqua Bingo. Last year, I got her the animal edition, and this is the fun in the sun edition. So, it has things like popsicles, baseball hats, sunglasses, hot dogs, bonfires, you know, fun in the sun. The way it works is you throw the tokens down in the pool. Those are like sinking chips. Um, and then you dive down and you try to fill your bingo board. We actually all play this and it is a lot of fun. I would actually even cons consider buying another theme just to shake it up if another theme came in. Um, okay. Let's do some books. Emily has recently like in the last year year and a half gotten into graphic novels. So that is the majority of what I got her for summer reading. I got like the first of series if there were series because if she's interested I'll obviously get her more. This is Barb the Last Berserker Dragon Kingdom of Renley. Zeta the Space Girl, Five Worlds, The Sand Warrior, and Amulet. Now, those came highly recommended from a lot of you as well as friends. So, those are the five that I grabbed. And then I did also get her The Book of Mysterious Magic. Um, this is actually a sequel. Oh, I don't know if I have it out still. Um, there's a mythical creatures book by DK. It may even be magical creatures. It's one of the main books that we used when we did our impromptu magical creature study. And this is like it's not really a sequel, but it's the second one in that series. So, it's the book of mysteries, magic, and the unexplained. And she really really liked that book. She likes how pretty it is. Um, as well as how informative So, I figured she would really enjoy this one. And if you watched um our recap with her, you're going to know that Mythical Creatures was like her top favorite thing. So, I grabbed the game Mythicals to kind of go along with that book as like a we're going to do a followup to that. I also grabbed Life Goals, the card game. I'm planning to do um a financial literacy kind of like course with her this summer. I'll share more about that very soon, but I thought that having the card version that plays a little bit faster than the board game would be nice. Uno is probably Emily's second favorite card game. So, when I saw that they had a new one, which is House Rules, I picked that one up for her. We love Everything by Grandpa Beck. And when they had a new game, which is 321 Countdown, I picked that up as well. Sky Joe is probably a top three for all of us in our family. We really love that. And Don't Go Boom is supposed to be a a more explosive version of Sky Joe because you have bombs involved. Um, but I think the gameplay is very similar. It's just there's there's bombs. We'll see. Hoping that it levels it up a little bit. And then I wanted to add a single player game for Emily. So, I got her an exit game. This is the Mysterious Mansion. I'm sorry, the Mysterious Museum. Um, and then for some hands-on stuff, uh, she has officially completed most of the Legos that she has. So, I got her just a few Lego kits. She loves animals, so I kind of combined the two things and got her animal based Legos. So, we have this one, which is a threein one, so she can do a parrot, a frog, or a fish. Sorry. Another threein one. This one is a bunny, a seal, or a I'm going to call it a llama or an alpaca. I'll let you guys look at the back so you can decide for yourself, and y'all can tell me what y'all think. Uh, this is either a cat, a bird, or a dog. It will be a cat cuz that's Emily's favorite. And then this is a dog set. So, there's three different style of dogs that she can make. And that is it. That is going to be her last day of school gifts. Like I said, it's some books to keep her reading, some games to keep us playing and sneaky learning, some hands-on activities with the Legos, and then some things for us to add in the pool or some pool schooling and family fun. Do you have any last day of school traditions? If so, let me know down in the comments. I'd love to hear about them. [Music]