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Games for Homeschooling?
During my workshops about creative homeschooling and living math, I often talk about incorporating games into the school schedule. If your family has an established game night, you probably already know how educational many board and card games really are. Math, language, history, science, logic and so much more can be practiced without your kiddos ever catching on that real learning is taking place!
We take games seriously in our homeschool and use them at least a few times a week! To get fidgety minds focused, we might play a “brain training” game like Blink. To review US geography, we might play 10 Days in the USA. Or to quiz recollection of animal groups, we might play a quick game of QuickPix Animals.
Using games is way more fun than flashcards or worksheets! And, as a bonus, most games require at least the skills of strategy and/or speed, too.
Games make great gifts for all occasions, too. We buy games for Christmas and birthdays for our own children – so often that they look forward to the next game we will add to our collection. We also tend to buy games for friends when invited to birthday parties. Giving games allows our gifts to be put to good use for years to come – and games pull families together. We consider it a good bang for our buck.
Our Favorite Educational Games
The question that always follows is, “Which games are your top picks for each subject?” So,I’m posting some of my favorite games for homeschooling for various academic subjects.
Bible and Character Building
We love to play these on family games nights. Several of them are great when company is over, too.
Logic and Critical Thinking
The games in this set are great for waking brains up in the morning before jumping into book work. They are also appropriate to use as part of living math or logic lessons.
Math
These games can even be used as math lessons occasionally. They work well for practicing a large variety of math skills.
Language Arts
Spelling, vocabulary and sentence structure are reinforced using the games in this set.
Science
Science games can help teach everything from classification and body systems to electrical circuitry and food chains.
History
After learning about wonderful events in history, the games in this group are perfect for review.
Geography
My children have learned U.S. and world geography mostly through the use of these games. Of course we complete maps and read literature as part of our studies, but the memorization of states, countries and locations has grown almost solely via games.
I would love to hear about some of your favorite games! We’re always up for something new!
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WE LOVE GAMES!!! Would love to win the giveaway. It is one of the (few) we don’t have yet! LOL Thanks for the chance.
We are just beginning to play games together. In fact I wrote it down as one of my goals for the rest of the calendar year: play more games! Thanks for this list.
Blokus is our favorite
UNO!
Dominos are a favorite here!
Thank you for the great ideas for now and later! I pinned this to look to in the future since most of these are still for children older than ours (6 and 8).
I think my favorite educational game is either sum swamp or chess 🙂
SUCH a great list, Cindy!!!
Love this list! We love Set. There were quite a few on your list that I am not familiar with and want to check out. Thanks for posting this.
We like mancala and blokus.
I love this list of games! My goal for the rest of the year is to play more games with my older girls. My 5 year old and I like to play Zingo!
My kids like UNO.
LOVE LOVE LOVE all the 10 Days games!
Qwirkle is one game that even my not game liking daughter will sit down and play as a family. Blokus is a lot of fun too.
Settlers of Catan.
How to pick just one favorite?! Qwirkle, Scattergories, Animalogic, Rush Hour, Blink…
We are just starting to build our game cupboard. Right now we are playing Monopoly Jr which is great for my 5 and 8 year old to play together without adults to be present. Checkers is another good one.
Hands down, Apples to Apples and Monopoly! We get our whole family involved …
What a fun list of games!! Some of these I hadn’t heard of before.
These are FANTASTIC! We love games in our house and I’ll have to pick some of these up!
We plan Uno almost every night!
Our family loves Settlers of Catan and Monopoly Deal!
We love games & picking a favorite is hard, but Settlers of Catan is always a hit.
I love these games! My daughter just wrote ‘games” down on a Christmas list. Right now, we’re at the age where we play uno and connect 4 a lot. I’d like to expand.
I have and love most of the games listed above. Difficult to pick a favorite. The Brain Box ones are great to use with a class. And Rush Hour is great for kids who need a challenge to work on by themselves. I use the 10 Days ones in my Geography Class. And our family likes playing Bananagrams on vacations.
We love Speed, checkers and Dinopoly. My daughter is turning a standard monopoly game into a dragon version as well
Some of Our favorite games are, Rummikub, Domnioes, Apples to Apples….
Scrabble is my favorite.
I grew up playing a lot of games for our schooling… so now I am starting the same tradition with my kids! Right now they are really into a plain ol’ deck of cards : )
UNO and Monopoly are our favorites. I couldn’t name just one.
We play Can’t Stop – an old game, but really great for learning addition. And truly fun.
My husband is a board game designer. Our family loves games almost as much as we love books. Lots of favorites on this list!
Here are a few more strategy Euro-type games our kids enjoy: Carcassonne, The Little Prince, Forbidden Island.
My husband is actually teaching a game design class for our homeschool co-op and our daughter has made and sold her own game, which a game company will be releasing (hopefully soon!). There are so many great ways to learn with games, whether making them or playing them. 🙂
Karen, how exciting about a game company picking up your daughter’s game!! Carcassonne is a new favorite of ours. We just love it! I’ll have to give The Little Prince and Forbidden Island a try. Thanks for the suggestions!
I know this is a few years old, but I just came across this list — thank you! We have and enjoy some you’ve listed, and haven’t heard of others but I’ll keep an eye out at thrift stores! I love the out-of-print 1975 Klondike board game by Gamma Two Games (haven’t played in a long time, but from what I remember it’s well worth seeking out a used copy, which I plan to do), and 1984’s Play on Words — that one is definitely a great travel game since there’s only the little pencils that can be lost! I’ve never played Settlers of Catan but recently bought a used copy of Settlers of Canaan. We haven’t played it yet but I’ve also bought a used copy of the Camp board game. I love the idea of it being a true family game, for kids age 4 on up to adults. Wildcraft! An Herbal Adventure Game sounds like another good one for ages 4+. Tenzi is a fun dice game that can be played in different ways. We also like Rory’s Story Cubes, and Imagidice, and I am intrigued by the Once Upon a Time storytelling card game I’ve recently found out about. I think Spot It! Alphabet, Numbers & Shapes, Words, and Jr. will be great for younger kids. Pictionary was a favorite growing up, but I haven’t played it in years.
Ooh, I haven’t heard of a few of those, Jessica! Looking forward to checking them out. I noticed the other day that our library has board games now – and a lot of those were new to me. I <3 games!