My heart has been changing about math over the last year or so. I’ve been a curriculum gal from the beginning (Saxon, yeah!) and we have stuck pretty much to a lesson a day since we started homeschooling 7 years ago. But you live and learn, right?!?
Some of my kids are not math lovers, and sometimes math is a source of tears and frustration. I do feel it’s important for my children to have a thorough understanding and ability to accurately perform arithmetic tasks, because everyone needs that basic proficiency in our world. But upper level math maybe isn’t something that everyone needs.
As I’ve started to change my thinking about math and where we’re going with it in our family, I came across this YouTube video by John Bennett (scroll down to watch). I started to see that maybe, as my math opposed kids get older, we can find a way for them to learn the important skills math teaches without the trauma.
This video talks about inductive/deductive reasoning as the goal of high school math instruction for the majority of kids, and playing certain kinds of games can teach these reasoning skills in the same way that math instruction does.
That blew my mind! And opened up our future to some more joyful possibilities.
For now we still do math, because we’re still working on that foundational math proficiency, but we also play lots of games, and not just “math” games, all kinds of games! Game playing and strategy and all the skills involved with playing a game are good brain exercises. Not to mention the lessons in negotiation, forgiveness, flexibility, and humility.
I’m going to keep a list here of the games we have tried and loved. I’ll link to my reviews of them and you can see if they’d be a good fit for your family. Playing games together is such a fun way to build great family relationships and have fun, and a good variety of games helps. Enjoy my list and share your favorites with me!
- Dog Crimes
- Qwixx Card Game
- Trash Pandas
- Math Games with Playing Cards
- Smart Games
- Bohnanza
- Dodge Dice
- Wackee Golf
- Zip-It!
- Bananagrams
- Forbidden Island
- Wackee Six
- Hoot Owl Hoot
- Zimbbos!
- Sleeping Queens
