It really wasn’t until I began homeschooling that I realized how many skills are used during games and how much one can learn. It was easy to add games to our learning shelves, especially when my kids get them as gifts or I grab them at a fraction of the retail cost by shopping consignment.
You can see our math games here and our literacy games here. Here is how we use them.
One-on-One parenting time- We regularly connect with our children individually through a game. It is incredibly simple to execute- all you need is game, a little time and intentionality. The result is fun time and filled love tanks. It is a win-win if I ever saw one!
Brain breaks- My babies are Nuero-diverse and that means we have to break up our learning time and lessons for their brains and bodies to get proper proprioceptive and vestibular input. Those are fancy words for they need movement. Games provide that in a fun and engaging way. Sometimes we can even review while playing games.
Individual activities- I can often split my attention between the two and stay on top of their needs but sometimes they require more of my focus and when that happens, one can play a game while the other works with me more intently. This happens so regularly, I keep learning games all around our house for this purpose.
Disclaimer: “Blah Blah Blah” is complimentary receivedproduct.
Hi Loves!
I have another review for you today. We are a homeschooling family which means our home, values and belief dictate how we educate our kids. Not the other way around. With that, nothing comes into our home unless it offers goodness, beauty, truth and/or wonder.
This game hits all the marks. From its funny name, to multi-level and multi-person player options, to the connection and to the fun with learning. My kids ask to play this all the time.
I do have a con- the cards sometimes stick together. That’s it. To be fair, this also happens with card games that are not more than 10 years old. You can purchase this game and find more of their products here.
WAIT- There’s more you are going to want to stick around for!
Per their website, “Blah Blah Blah is a card game to integrate bite-sized learning into kids’ lives. They’ll learn: How to recognize the letters and sounds in sight words; The clear pronunciations of core sight words; How to decode words to phonics.”
On top of that, this game can be played with all reading levels! My entire family has played this several times and it is always enjoyed. My children don’t even realize this is “learning” because we all have so much fun.
Feel free to explore the product and/or purchase here.
As we are in the holiday season, this would make a great gift for littles as it can be enjoyed by many for years to come.
As the title says, we are talking all things math for our homeschool curriculum in this post, and the things we will use for what I am calling “enrichment”. “What is enrichment?” you many wondering. Let me explain.
For all my traditional public school readers, you remember “special areas”? The times when you went to art, PE, music and the media center? That was enrichment. In our homeschool enrichment will consist of:
Art: Admittedly, I am horrible with art for my kids. Like, the worst. I really do want to get better, especially because my kids love it. Art is truly therapy. I also think it is a bit hypocritical for me to teach my kids about Artists and not allowing them to process it for themselves. So, I’m making sure we get it in. Water colors, chalk pastels, tempura, guided drawings and illustrations to name a few things.
Typing: Learning Without Tears has a great typing program we got to preview this spring for free thanks to COVID-19. My kids really enjoyed it and it is well constructed. So my computer science husband was all for them having typing added to the round-up.
Computer games/apps: Don’t judge me. We aren’t the family that is anti-screens. I just prefer it to be as quality as the situation allows for and sometimes doing math in a fun game on the computer is the way to go.
Game school: I think I’ve said this before but in case you haven’t heard it, I am not the fun mom. It hurts to say that out loud. Or maybe, I am not as fun of a mom as I want to be? Either way, my kids deserve fun and I am doing what I need to do to make sure they have it. The funny part? They want to have fun with me! What??? They are always asking for me to play with them. So, I am making sure we break out the games we own and actually play, together!
Nature Study: Y’all. If I was bad at the above, I completely and totally failed at Nature Study. I mean, total bomb here. The cold, rain and, well, the nature deterred me from making it priority. So, I am adding to enrichment because baby steps, friends, baby steps.
Now to Math… You ready?
I hope so because I am gonna move through this like a freight train.
So, No Name A was beautiful and that’s it. The lessons were tedious and so much to get through. Even shortening lessons and sometimes not using the “required” manipulative didn’t quite cut it. After book one, I sold book two and level 1 and got on the hunt for something we could really grow with. I had a laundry list of requirements, stated in my YouTube video showing everything here. I knew it was a hard-sell and there was a lot stacked against me. (Dramatic, much?) Finally, thanks to the mamas who make the time to do flip-through videos and share them with the world, that is how I found Horizons. Blessed are these mamas! Because of the flip-throughs and the reviews, we started James at level K because NoName A left too many wide gaps and did not build a solid foundation. I have Horizons level one ready when he is.
We will be looping Horizons with Math You See (MUS). MUS is a mastery curriculum, opposed to Horizons being a spiral curriculum. It worked very well for us last year and we are both looking forward to it this year. (Pssssst if you haven’t read my review, you can find it here.)
“Why two?” You may be asking. Well, frankly, my kids have a unique way of learning and if I just had offered one, they would be bored and over it quickly.
For Jude, he also gets 2 math curriculums for the same reason, I am not fighting boredom. I’m also not fighting the “why do I only have one?” I’m just not. So, we already had Mathematical Reasoning on hand. I bought it used for James a few years ago and I like it for this stage so we are using it. I paired it with this preschool math from Spectrum that has a few more hands-on activities. Jude’s eyes lit up like fireworks in the sky when he saw it so I guess I did something right.
Whew! I am doing my best to wrap this up. I explain is much greater detail in my video here. Until next time friends!
