Let’s talk about gameschooling house rules.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to gameschooling is finding games that work for your family. Every family is unique and what works for one family will not work for another.
Has this ever happened to you?
Friends keep recommending the same game. Over and over and over. They talk about how great it is, how it is a must-have game for your collection, how it is amazingly, unbelievably fun and educational.
So you buy it.
And you play it.
But it was just… meh.
This has happened to me, and I know I’m not alone.
Gameschooling: How to Have More Fun with House Rules
When faced with this issue, I have two suggestions:
- First, know how to pick the best games for your family. Just because your brother-in-law said it’s awesome doesn’t mean it’s going to be awesome for you.
- Second, bend the rules to make the game work for you.
When it comes to gameschooling, bending the rules can make play more fun!
I’ve learned that I can make almost any game work for our family by creating Gameschooling House Rules.
What are house rules? House rules are a set of rules applied to a game by a subset of people. They are game rules you make up, or tweak, or modify.
Gameschooling House Rules can help your family to have more fun with the contents of your game closet. The truth is, there is no wrong way to play any of those games in your game closet- you can make them work for you!
Here are some simple gameschooling house rules to get you started
When it comes to Gameschooling House Rules, the sky is the limit. You can do anything! But, to keep it simple and give you an idea, here are some super-easy ways our family bends the rules:
- “Youngest player goes first” – Nope. Just nope. This rule has resulted in so many tears across the globe. We don’t use it. You could roll a dice or do rock paper scissors or alternate, whatever!
- Toss timers– I have a child who freezes when a game is timed. Lose the timer and the game becomes fun!
- “No winning games”– I’ve talked about this one before, but if you have a child who despises competition, declare it a no-winning game. Just play for fun. Put the pencils away, quit the tally marks, just play.
- Teams – So many games can be played in teams and this is a wonderful way to include younger players when you are a family with many ages and stages!
- “Player must roll a 1 to start” – Again, this can cause endless drama when you are playing with kids of a certain age level. In our house, you just roll and go.
- Cooperative games –> One Player Games – Many cooperative games can be used as one-player games. This also works for other non-cooperative games such as Yahtzee, Boggle, and Bananagrams.
- One Player Games –> Two Player Games – Similarly, you can make a one-player game into a two-player version by adding a stopwatch. Take turns and see who can complete challenges fastest!
There are just a few ideas to get you started and they are so basic. I’d love to hear from you. Share your favorite gameschooling house rules in the comments!
My kids make Balance Beans a two-player and even three-player game with timed tournaments!
Do you love Gameschooling?
I rely heavily on educational games in our homeschool. Read more here:
Do you love board games, too?
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- Gameschool Resources
Tell me: What house rules do you have in your gameschool? Share here!
Caitlin Fitzpatrick Curley
Cait co-hosts The Homeschool Sisters Podcast and is co-founder of Raising Poppies, a community for parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children. Cait is also founder of the Family Book Club at My Little Poppies, a fantastic community of book-loving parents and the Gameschool Community at My Little Poppies, a vibrant community of gameschoolers.
Cait is a contributing writer for Simple Homeschool and GeekMom. Her work has also appeared on The Huffington Post, The Mighty, and Scary Mommy. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram
and G+.
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In 2-player strategy games, the first player usually has a solid advantage. For this reason, I like to let the youngest player go first, at least initially. In later rounds, we play that whoever lost the last time can go first, or can choose which position to play.
Yes! We do the same so that the little fella can get the hang of it.
We play in teams a lot and for games like Spot it, if we are playing with lots of Littles, we alternate group play with each child getting a turn to look at the cards and find the match 😉
Teams is a great way to make games work for little ones!
Love these ideas for “house rules”. With a 6, 9, and 11 year – with varying temperaments, our family is quite in need of some established (and agreed upon) guidelines. We are LOVING daily game time in 2017 – thank you for the inspiration!