We are just finishing up our first year of homeschooling and I am planning for next year. One of my sons will be in K, and I am looking for ideas to make it more hands-on for him. He absolutely loves board games. Does anyone have any recommendations for educational ones? Any favorites? Thanks!
We loved Sum Swamp: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Reso...UTF8&qid=1402773003&sr=8-1&keywords=sum+swamp That's the only one that comes to mind that has been a favorite with all three of my kids. It's adding and subtraction but when my kids were little, we'd make up our own ideas. Sometimes we would roll 1 die (easy number recognition), then later add another die in to add & subtract (example: 3 + 4+ 2). My nine-year-old played recently and made up the rule to roll the two dice, do the operation, then subtract 2 to the answer each time. We've also had the rule that if you add or subtract and the answer is EVEN you can go, if its ODD you loose a turn. Just some ideas that worked for us.
Not an educational game, but I remember when Elle was that age, she loved Pretty Pretty Princess....with one important condition. She only liked playing it with her father! It was weirdly traditional for them to have tea with that game as well. She'd set up little cups and I'd make them a pot of Constant Comments. To play Pretty Pretty Princess, you essentially spin a spinner to see what jewelry to put on. If you get a whole set, you win. Rings, necklace, bracelet, earrings, tiara. She laughed like a maniac any time my husband had to put on the jewelry. She'd clip about half a dozen earrings to his bead and make him wear everything, including the tiara. LOL. My hubby endured this public humiliation with an excellent sense of humor. At the end of the game, he'd always tell her "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." And she would absolutely howl with laughter. To put this in perspective, my hubby is a big muscular balding guy, with a full beard and beat up hands, who always smells like industrial grease. To say he's a rugged manly-man is putting it mildly. Elle claims that she would never marry a guy who doesn't pass the "Pretty Pretty Princess Test". If the little girl wants to play, you must comply. LOL. Tiara and all. Happy Father's Day to all those dads awesome enough to play Pretty Pretty Princess. Happy Father's Day to our home school dads! Happy Father's Day to the awesome spouses that support our home school moms! And Happy Father's Day to our own dads, living or passed. May you all know how appreciated, and adored you are for all you do.
On a serious note, Tangrams were a favorite of Elle's at that age. They were VERY challenging for her, but they kept her attention for a long time. So many cool processes going on with these puzzles. Space relation, sequence, visualization, inverting images, reasoning. Great stuff for building a brain for math!
Connect Four was popular. But I'd have to say the all time FAVORITE game at that age....was building a puppet theater and making our own puppetsl. We did one for every letter of the alphabet. Every time we learned a new letter, we'd make a new puppet...and then Elle would "write" a little play for them and preform it for me. The game was to try to make the puppest use words that began with it's letter. For example: The Alligator puppet might talk about apples with the Cat puppet who liked candy. If the puppets had proper names, they had to start with the appropriate letter. The cat's name was Cleo. The alligator was Al. (original, I know! lol) We made the puppet theater with a discarded large picture frame and some boxes. We just recycled junk. Most of the puppets were paper bag puppets, but some were sock puppets and a few were sewn puppets. Our D puppet was a Chinese Dragon who was mounted on three chopsticks. We got more miles out of the puppet theater than nearly any other toy...and used it for a ton of educational activities. (I still have the puppets in a box) We had a blast making all that stuff. Sometimes I'd make little videos of the characters talking about their letters. It was a hoot. I remember when Sam the Snake and Harry the Horse talked about going skiing together and making a "Sh" sound. We did a TON of imaginations games that tied into learning concepts.
Dominoes is a great game for math. I remember learning dominoes when I was 5, from my ancient aunt who babysat me on occasion. Another is Battle (or War, whatever you call it) for quickly recognizing which number is greater/less. You can make all sorts of variations of your own. Regular playing cards. I love Tangrams, myself. And regular jigsaw puzzles are good, too. We've liked Scrabble and Upwords and Boggle - but you have to learn how to read and spell for those, so save those for a year or two? Easy games like Parcheesi, checkers, Trouble (or Aggravation), Mancala. And you can go look in the RainbowResource catalog - they have bunches of educational games. http://www.rainbowresource.com/catalog.php
Oh, and I forgot -- Monopoly Jr. is a good introduction to Monopoly, with an amusement park theme and smaller amounts of money.
