Homeschool Memoir #12 - Let's Play a Game

THEME
This week I want to invite you to share what different games you use for learning in your homeschool. Outside games, board games, or card games, and what purpose or subject you use them for. Want to see what everyone else is playing? Click HERE.

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Oh my. We really love games here. I think I'd better limit this to our favorites. Otherwise it may take a few hours & be way too long of a post to read.

One of our favorites is called Sum Swamp. This is a great game to teach addition, subtraction, odd & even numbers, and counting. My boys love it. You can even play it with those just starting out if you allow them to use their fingers or some sort of counter. It's also a quick play so you won't be spending hours at the table.

Rivers, Roads, & Rails is a game I picked up for my train loving middle son.

Think picture dominoes. I actually do enjoy this one as well. Each card has either a river scene on it, a road scene on it, or a rail scene on it or any combination of the three. The goal is to connect all your pieces to form a continuous line. We played this the other day and only stopped as we ran out of room on our small table. This is a great game for logical thinking and problem solving.

Blokus is another favorite & great for again teaching logical thinking and problem solving.

The premise of the game is to take your colored tiles & get them all on the board. The catch...they can only touch on the corners & they are all wacky shaped. I've yet to play a game where any of us get them all on there but we've come close at times. My middle son - the game lover - really likes this game & does very well at age seven in playing it.

One really fun game - especially for the preschool crowd - is called Hullabaloo made by those great Cranium folks.

Even my 12 year old will play this game. Ours is the older version & does not have the "beginner & advanced levels" on it like this one apparently does so keep that in mind while I tell you how it works. There are a bunch of foam shapes in the box along with the little round game "robot voice." This is basically a game of Simon Says. Each of the squares is a different color, a different shape, and has a picture on it. The little voice tells them what to do...."Stand on a red one. Put your elbow on a square. Jump over to an animal." It's a fun way to learn not only shapes and colors but animals, food, and more. And the boys are engaged and moving - I love that in a game.

Another really fun Simon Says type game we own is called Hyper Dash.

I spied this in Wal-Mart one day. We had some friends coming up to hang out for the day & I wanted a fun game for the kids to play in case we needed something to keep them busy. I saw this on the shelf & snagged it. It's the best money I ever spent. The round number/colored thingies are targets. In the middle is the tagger that tells you how to play. There are four versions - hyper dash, team dash, micro dash, & team micro dash. The "Voice" on the tagger tells you what to do (similar to Hullabaloo). For instance, it may call out a sequence of numbers. You have to run to each & push the tagger down on top of the target. It times you & the fastest person wins. It will either use the color or the number in its sequencing.

I tried Micro Dash & loved it. Anyone remember the electronic Simon Says? This is way better! ::grin:: My boys play this almost daily or at least until they run the batteries down. We have gone through quite a few batteries but it's worth it for me. The boys had it outside today & had set the targets up way far apart so they were doing quite a bit of running to tag them.

There are our top five favorite games. We do have more & maybe I'll post them later, but for now just go have fun!