Tips for Outside the Box Learning Series: Using games to teach

My kids wish I could tell you that game schooling was what we use the most. But it isn’t. It is however a wonderful resource for keeping my kids excited to learn.

I learned about game schooling back in private school. Believe it or not we had two extracurricular gaming activities that I continued to take my middle child too, even after we were no longer enrolled. One was math pentathlon, and the other was 1st Lego League. But there are so many other games that are amazing additions to your schoolings.

So, my Tip is this: Learning can be fun, if they find an educational game, then let them play it.

Game Schooling can be a tool

What is game schooling? Game schooling refers to the use of games to learn academic lessons. Game schooling is intentional, and can use boardgames, card games or video games.

Just like every other homeschooling method, you can use it for one subject, or all of your schooling, I like to think of of it as one of many tools used.

Examples of using game schooling

I already mention Pentathlon Institute Mathematics Pentathlon – A Time Tested Educational Program (mathpentath.org). This was my first experience.

I have also used 1st Lego Legue. We have done this through the private school, and we have also set up a group that met at the library as a homeschool team. I’ve run a coop class using the kits I got from running the team. There are so many wonderful lego tools for teaching math, science, engineering and more!

Then, as if I needed more convincing, I found Life of Fred Math, if you aren’t aware, it is a math program invented because a math professor saw how much kids could learn if they were engaged and having fun. Even if you don’t use Life of Fred, the concept of teaching kids what they need to know in ways that engage them, is a lesson to use in all subjects.

Math and Engineering aren’t the only game-based subjects you can teach. You can also play games for LA. A fun one that I have on my site are Story Blocks.

But I need to know we are learning!

Back to this one again. If you are gaming, and not using worksheets, how will you know your child is learning. Well, unlike a teacher with 15-30 you don’t need a piece of paper to tell you what each child is learning. You can see it, you can talk to your child and gauge responses, you can even test them, just remember that teaching to a test runs into learning until tested and promptly forgetting.

The best way to teach knowledge is to show it in action. Beyond that record what lessons, they are learning on the printable I gave you earlier in this series. You can find all my free printables on the Free Printable Resource Page.