Play School

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children,  play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." --Fred Rogers

Hey friends!

So, with 2/3 of my kids down with a tummy bug, so we wouldn’t be going anywhere right now anyway! And when no one feels good, our usual school schedule changes a little...but we don’t have to totally give up on a school day, even then! My number one trick for turning any rough school day into an instant success is...gameschool!

We use games throughout the year for practice of skills (Pass the Pigs, above, is great for quick addition and math facts!). But when we're burned out, sick, or just DONE, sometimes we take a day here or there and just play...and the kids don't even realize how much knowledge they're using, practicing, and expanding!

GUBS is possibly the single most influential reason my middle child wanted to read; I'm not sure why it is so enrapturing, but it really is! Gubs strategy and story has infiltrated a lot of my kiddos pretend play, writing, and logical thinking skills. They even rhyme and write songs based on this game, which is a pretty cool creative writing/artistic exercise for some 4/6/8 year olds! When our cousins get together, adults and children from 11 down to 4 can happily play this game together!

MMRY is basically the memory game you remember from childhood, where all the cards are upside down and you have to try and find a pair by remembering where the one you flipped over last turn was. Except these are awesome NASA photos of all our planets and many of their moons (all the moons we have good pictures of, actually!). A handy reference booklet helps you identify names, and a color-coding system lets you identify at a glance which planet goes with which moons. My kids literally know the names and can visually identify more than 30 moons because of this game. Plus they can play it independently (either with each other or alone!) which makes it a great and flexible teaching tool!

Quiddler is a word-building game, and since my fellas are TERRIBLE spellers, this is a great way to sharpen those skills! Not to mention, one of my little guys really struggles with letter order (I would say he's lightly dyslexic) so this is a fun way for him to see letters in a different context and get a feel for word-building. Scrabble and Banagrams are great for similar (more advanced) skill-building. 

Dominoes is incredibly flexible for learning, we have played a variety of actual games (chicken scratch, mexican train...) as well as using them as kind of "flash cards" for math facts, counting skills, sorting skills, and more! Dice can also be used for may of these skills (and for younger children, we had some large foam dice that got my kids started on their early addition math facts ever since they could count dots!)

Uno is great for learning sequencing and number recognition, especially for your youngest kids! And now, my older kids happily play it with my youngers, so again, it gives me a second to catch up on other stuff and I know there's some useful learning happening while they're occupied and having fun!

I love Guess Who and I always have. It's great for helping kids increase in accuracy with descriptions, classification skills, and attention to detail. Once my kids were pretty good at this and had reading skills, we moved up to Clue for similar (but more advanced) skill-building!

Don't tell my kids that flash cards aren't a game, ha! Go Fish is great for sequencing and accuracy skills, and you can get flash cards and informational cards on tons of subjects at the Dollar Store and elsewhere! One thing my kids love to do with the dino cards is match them to toy dinosaurs we have and have them act the way the cards describe them (herd/independent, carnivore/herbivore/omnivore, etc.) It's not become a thing where they'll look up whatever animal or dinosaur they're playing with in our various science books and do some research so their play is "accurate." I am thrilled at their self-driven curiosity and research skills! And I credit their awareness of these things with the simple start of this dinosaur "game."

Playing cards can be used for literally thousands of games, and many of them teach math skills, sequencing skills, memory, attention to detail, strategy, and more. 

All these games (and more!) have supplemented our usual curriculum in learning key concepts and helped us overcome learning block (or days that would've otherwise been spent crying as we try to GET THROUGH THE CHECKLIST TOGETHER). There are tons of games to help practice skills or spike interest--not to mention inciting kids to practice harder (likestruggling early readers!?!?!?!).

Not to mention, some of these might make great stocking-stuffers (most, if not all are available on Amazon!) 

Happy learning!