The idea that children learn best through play is one that many parents are willing to accept when it comes to babies and toddlers. We are not as comfortable with that idea when it comes to our school age children. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, we often don’t feel as though play is an effective form of educating our older children. A piece of us, may still cling to worksheets, drilling, and rote memorization. If, however, we can overcome the piece of that has been conditioned by our 12-13 year in public school, our ideas about education and learning really open up! That’s when the real joy in learning begins and that’s where gameschooling becomes an option!
What is Gameschooling?
Gameschooling involves intentionally finding games that teach a specific educational skill in a fun, engaging way. If you’ve never considered gameschooling, you may not be aware of the overabundance of games available to your kids or the wide range of educational topics these games teach.
What are the Benefits of Gameschooling?
Connection
Families are become closer when they do fun things together. Memories are created, everyone is engaged with each other, and everyone feels apart. Homeschooling is all about building connections within family units and playing games together definitely builds connection.
Retention
Kids learn and retain more information when they are mentally invested in what they are learning. Gameschooling provides a relaxed, stree-free environment in which kids can learn.
Higher Order Thinking Skills
Gameschooling often require kids to apply knowledge to unique situations created during games. This means that they are not simply memorizing a collections of facts that are disconnected or soon forgotten once a unit or test is over. They are instead thinking critically and problem-solving, skills that enables them to make real-world connections and to retain what they learn.
Sportsmanship
Gameschooling reinforces social and emotional skills such as self-control, humility, and grace. Games establish healthy competition that teaches kids about playing fair, how to lose, how to rebound from loss, and how to win gracefully.
Gameschooling...The Truth
The truth we can embrace as homeschoolers is that learning is fun. Learning is engaging and interesting and even our older children can learn through play.
Here are a list of games, organized by topic, to help you get started with gameschooling.
Spelling
Critical Thinking
Story Building
Math
History
Science
Geography
Financial Literacy
Black History
Tira Hunter
A passionate , homeschooling mom for 8 years, who graduated her artist daughter as a gameschooling unschooler. She has been inspired by her daughter’s success as an unschooler, she shares how to embrace self-directed learning, gameschooling and how to deschool with other interested parents.
Tira, I agree that games are an effective way to learn. For example, building structures on Minecraft (the video game) is another wonderful way to visualize and build math skills. As homeschoolers, I believe it’s important that we make learning fun and engaging. So I appreciate this wonderful list of games. Thank you!