Games and Fun...Some Ideas

Earlier this week I hosted a homeschool support meeting and when you host a meeting, you choose the topic. You sort of "have the floor" to do something. This was my second meeting of the year and the first time I'd poured myself into a discussion on lapbooking and gotten some resources for give-aways and things like that. So, I when I was asked again to host a meeting I had to think a bit on what I'd talk about this time. Finally, given the time of year, I began to think about what we do to make our school FUN when we are heading into March and it's still cold out. That's how the topic Games and Fun was born.

To get ready for the meeting I planned and played out some new games with my kids this month and the night of the meeting I pulled lots (but not all) of our games and fun activities and arranged them around my living room (our meeting space). Dan made all kinds of fun of me during the process, but it made sense to me. I ignored him...he was no help!

The Math Table

Close up of Math- lots of trade books on math (living books some call them), wrap ups, balance, fraction parts, addition/subtraction bingo game, money flash cards, pattern blocks and the activities to accompany them

On the floor- Yahtzee, Equate (another post on this one coming soon), and the notorious Funtastic Frogs with their logs, the pattern cards, and one of many activity books

Yet more on the floor- the Learning Resources cash register we love

The Social Studies Corner- Great States and Great States Junior games, the Global Puzzle, Where's Carmen Sandiego 20 questions cards, sequencing cards, Scrambled States big game (not pictured we have the card game as well), National Geographic Global Pursuits is also in the pile

The Language Table- Here we have FIAR stuff and activity samples, word games like Scrabble, Scrabble Junior, Boggle, letter tiles, Mad Libs and the Mad Libs card game, homonym game (details and pictures of that also coming soon), and the money game (you guessed it another future post on a homemade game)

The Science and Logic Corner- here we have Blokus (good visual discrimination game), Mastermind (remember that one?), 20 Questions Science and Nature, Zooreka, Catan games, and our Concoctions book and up front is the classification game all laminated neatly (well that's what's done so far)

I do have some specific things to say about a few of these and of course some of them I have already highlighted. Some of the moms talked about having a game day each Friday or allowing Boggle to replace Spelling on occasion. I'm looking to playing some sort of game each day in the afternoon or evening after school is all done.