How We Learn- Games

Stephanie, over at Ordinary Life Magic is organizing a series of posts listing tools that they use for unschooling. Knowing that every family does things differently, Stephanie has asked that others share their unschooling tools as well. Stephanie also gives awesome reasons for playing games as a learning tool, so I don't need to go into that (thanks Stephanie!).

The first topic is Games.

Emma and Da playing Mancala

I am going to be honest, we are not very good at playing games on any sort of a regular basis. At the moment, our games are stacked on a self in a room that no one goes in, so the old saying, "Out of sight, out of mind" applies there.

I am working on it though.

In our house, games are played mostly between Emma and Da. It seems to be their thing. Da has a lot more patience in regards to making up rules (I tend to be a stickler, another thing I am working on). Da also has a lot more patience with the games we don't really like (but are Emma's favorites).

But mostly, game time between Da and Emma is bonding time. For Da, he sometimes has a hard time knowing what to do with Emma, how to connect with her. Games make it so much easier for him.

I do play games with Emma, and we will play games as a family, on occasion, but I don't like to infringe on Da's time with Emma. After all, if I play games all day with Emma, she isn't really in the mood to play more games when Da gets home.

Besides, we are usually too busy crafting to play games :)

So, here is our list (way less organized then Stephanie's, but that seems to be how we roll).

Simpsons Clue- Emma usually works with Da (cause he is way smarter than me and can explain things better than I can)
Blockus- Emma plays this with minimal help from us.

Pony-opolly- Jared and I find this game very slow and boring, but Emma loves it. 

Guess What I Am- A different take on guess who. 

My Little Pony- She liked this game mostly for the game pieces. 

(Go Diego Go is a puzzle)

Color Cubes- Patterns

Pick-up Words- A different version of pick up sticks, but the person has to read the word as they pick it up.

Scrabble Slam- We don't play the game fast paced, but with help and hints.

Pick-Up Words

Shufflers- We got this game from Gramma, and it is pretty old. Person cards are blue, verb cards are green, place cards are orange. Shuffle 'em up and make sentences. We added our own punctuation marks after playing a few times.

Mancala- Both Jared and I play this game with Emma (not at the same time-it's a 2 player game) Emma requires very little help. I suggested she try playing this game on her own, which she loves to do.


Mastermind Jr. Emma is really good at this game. So good that we are thinking of switching to the regular version very soon.

Rush Hour Jr.- We first started playing this at the gelato place. We quickly realized it was much less expensive to just by the game, rather than go to the gelato place to play it :) We have almost gone through the entire deck of puzzles. We love this game.

Guess Who- Gramma just gave us this game this week. Emma and I enjoyed playing it, but I am not sure if it will be one of our favorites.

Looking at our list, we really don't play a ton of games. Just goes to show, everyone has a different method for their madness!

Thanks for stopping by. If you are looking for more game ideas, head over to Ordinary Life Magic!