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HSBA wants to know what sort of games you use for learning in your homeschool!
We use an assortment of games, including ones we made up ourselves. Dominos is a wonderful game to teach children matching and numbers. (And it's Sonlight approved!) We also play cames like Memory to teach different things as well. We have the official Memory game, and have made a cards of our own to play Memory and teach colors, shapes, numbers, letters and more. We play alphabet Memory on a near-daily basis. The children have to match the upper case to the lower case letter. When we first begin playing, all of the cards are face up. As they get better, we turn the cards face down so they actually have to play the "Memory" part of the game.
We also love to play hopscotch. This was one of my favorite outside games as a kid, one that is easy to create with a piece of chalk.
A while back, I made up a game to help my children understand directions and placement. This is also a great game to teach prepositions. When they were younger, I went through the house and specifically named parts of the house (the nook, the entry, the guestroom, mom's side of the bed, dad's side of the bed, the hallway) so that they could easily understand directions when I asked them to get something or put something away. I found this to be most helpful. I would often become frustrated when I would ask them to do something and then had to keep giving them directions because they didn't understand where I wanted them to go!
We've gone on to expand this into a game, as I said, and I'll place things throughout the house as a treasure hunt of sorts. They must follow my directions to find each treasure. For example, I would tell them their treasure would be in the sitting room, to the side of the couch, and near the wall. Now they are learning left from right, so this is a great game to help them with that.
We also play games like tag for exercise (and I join in, because I definitely need exercise!).
As the children get older, they'll be able to play games like Monopoly (and, hey, there are new Monopoly games out that younger children can play), Scrabble (love it!), and trivia style games.
What sort of games do you like to play?
4 comments:
Oh, hopscotch! I love hopscotch. So many games are lost by us homeschoolers. Like Double-Dutch jumprope and 4-square. When I taught at a co-op I tried to teach the kids these wonderful games. To me, that is the one disadvantage to homeschooling--the loss of those old, playground games. But I tried to teach them to my children and to any others at gym day and other places.
Sonlight approved! Hee hee!
Wow, you just managed to prompt a 5 part series on games. Thanks a lot. ;P When mine were little we played games all the time, many similar to those you are talking about. Now that they ar older we still play lots of games, so many that I needed to breaks them up into categories so I could share them. :)
We play Set (looking for alike and different patterns), Scrabble, Volleyball (bumping it over the swing set:).... but we do need to play more games.
Thanks for sharing your list.
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