Hi ,

So, last week Amazon had their Prime Days. I was all excited to send you some good deals, but then three things happened:

• It was my daughter's birthday, and she decided she wanted a party sort of last minute. We had a whirlwind week that I'm just starting to recover from!
• The deals really didn't seem that great. I still remember when you used to be able to get things 80-90% off, but this year, most were only 15-20% off. Anyone else notice this?
• Did I mention I was swamped? Between my daughter's birthday, work, and scrambling to keep up with posts (I'm finally caught up on those for a bit - hurray!), I simply ran out of time.

So, I'm sorry that I went temporarily MIA on you and totally dropped the ball on Prime Days.

However, I wanted to share some things that have been working really, really well for my family lately:

1. I'm really excited about the writing program we finally started! My kids are ... not enthusiastic about writing. Hey, I can't blame them. I hated writing all the way through school and even now it's still not my favorite thing. However, we recently started Write By Number and I gotta tell ya, it's been a game changer! It provides explicit, step-by-step instructions and my kids are actually writing. (I really need to write up a review!) WBN physical books are pretty expensive (though they're supposed to work k-12, so you only need to purchase once), but the digital access is only $5/month. They don't even seem to have an affiliate program, but I know writing is a pain point for so many so I just have to tell you about what an amazing program WBN is!
2. Speaking of writing ... I'm really excited for this (affiliate link) lined writing notebook I made! We're printer-free right now so I kept looking for a blank notebook and they were never right! If your kids also still need that dashed middle line yet are writing smaller, check it out.
3. Khan Academy + Crash Course have been amazing for science and history for us. They don't always line up perfectly, but it doesn't take too much finangling on my part to make it neat. Khan Academy goes into more detail while Crash Course keeps it really exciting and fun.
4. I recently got to play (affiliate link) Trekking Through History at a friend's house, and I have to say - it's amazing! I knew it would be (we have and love Trekking the National Parks, and it's by the same company), but it was so much fun to finally be able to play it! I don't have a review for it because I only played it the once and didn't take any pictures, but now I can at least say that I know it's awesome. The only downside is that it's a big, expensive game, and we can only have so many of those at a time.
5. We've been learning about chemistry this summer, and have been having so much fun with these 7 chemistry games! (Most of the reviews don't drop for a couple of months, so these are mostly affiliate links.)
6. Chemistry Fluxx (review)
7. Covalence (review)
8. Periodic
9. Subatomic
10. Valence
11. Compounded
12. Ion

Games really do work for learning, even high school! My kids are getting to the age where they can play these more complex games and really enjoy them, so I'm excited to be reviewing more games for older kids for you.

Okay, this was a lot longer than I thought it would be. I hope your summer (or winter, for those in the southern hemisphere!) is going fantastically. Until next time,

Happy Gaming!

~Ashley

Gypsy Gameschooler

P.S. To maybe make up a bit for missing Prime Days, you can use code HQFALL25 for half off any unit study in my shop! (Yes, I'm early on this one and it will be active a couple months into the fall. If I get any new unit studies done, it'll apply to those, too!)