It has been too cold here for much outside play and my kids are bouncing off the walls! They also needed some school excitement, so we declared it game time!

It’s never too cold to play a game.

Now there are two ways you can go about this:

• Plan A – open up the game cabinet and play any of the number of board games that are hidden there

• Plan B – let your kids design their own based on a school subject. Plan B requires more time and patience but provides fabulous higher-level thinking skills and is a good way to review information being learned.

We chose to design a game based on our science studies. Now, I just happened to have a make your own game kit complete with a blank board, money, dice, pawns, and blank cards. If you don’t have one, use a file folder and random arts and crafts supplies laying around the house. In the past we have used things like stickers, money, or candy for markers. Index cards can be cut in half to make game cards. Or you can “cannibalize” old games that are missing pieces or are no longer played. (Pick several up this spring at yard sales just for this purpose!)

We gathered around the table with our supplies and pen/paper for note taking. The hardest part was keeping the kids from wanting to start right away on writing and decorating the board. I declared it brain storm time, then reminded them that all ideas shared would be respected. We decided to make our theme “Oceans” which we have been studying this year. They discussed if they would travel around and around the board like Monopoly or have a starting and ending point like Candy Land. One idea was “Hermitopoly.” We would all be hermit crabs traveling around looking for a new shell. One space might say “lose fight over a shell lose your turn.” More ideas flowed and we laughed a lot.

They finally decided on Journey to the Abyss.  Each side of the board would represent a zone of the ocean: Sunlight, Twilight, Midnight and the Abyss. The goal would be to travel to the abyss and the diver with the most money would win. They split the cards into two piles, one set for Trivia Questions and the other set for Random Acts of Fate.  They are now writing questions and coming up with fate cards, for example: “You are surrounded by hammerhead sharkâ”lose a turn!”

Then I think they are going to cut up magazines and modge podge them to the board for decorations.  Someone even chimed in we should send this to Hasbro! Well, probably not but we laughed and reviewed our science for the morning. I might have to pass the science book to my husband tonight for some quick reading, I think the kids want to stump him when they talk him into playing with them

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Enjoying the homeschool adventure,

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