How to Gameschool Language Arts

Gameschooling Language Arts is pretty simple. You can start with board games you already might have on hand: think Scrabble, Mad Libs, Apples to Apples, Boulderdash, Trivia, to name a few, or ones not mentioned here that have Language Arts elements such as reading, writing, storytelling, listening, summarizing, and pretending.

Watch my video below about how to Gameschool Language Arts.

Pro Tip: the goal of you and your kids playing any games together, is first and foremost, connection.

Gameschooling affords you and your family a break from the typical daily grind of curriculum. Yes, Gameschooling won’t always be fun, especially if your family isn’t used to playing games together. There will be tears. There will be cheating from time-to-time. There will be kids quitting and storming out of the room. But, don’t let that scare you or stop you. That’s just learning curve stuff. The rewards will far exceed any tantrums. Hang in there.

Here’s how to begin Gameschooling with Language Art in mind:

1. Get a notebook and pen.
2. Do an inventory of physical games, such as board games that you already have on hand.
3. Think carefully about each game.
4. Make a list in your notebook of the games you have.
5. Jot down per game: what Language Arts type skills are learned in each game? Think spelling, writing, oral skills, storytelling, etc.
6. Set aside one game at a time you can play as a family.
7. At the end of the day, you can make a habit of journaling about what Language Arts (and other subjects like math, science, geography etc.) concepts where covered in that day’s game playing experience for your state reporting. This is important as you want to make the game playing count.

If you don’t have any games, you can super easily grab some free downloadable games from Teacherspayteachers.com.

Here’s how to get the exact Language Arts games you want, and as many as you want, for FREE from Teachers Pay Teachers:

1. Set up a free account on Teachers Pay Teachers if you don’t already have one.
2. On the left-hand side of the site, check off Free and your age groups. I would suggest leaving off age groups, but, if you have orders you might want to limit it to more mature games.
3. In the search bar at the top, type in your Language Arts concept you want games for or the game type, say, for example, Mad Libs or Apples to Apples games.
4. In the drop-down menu on the top right, click Rating. This will ensure that you get the top rated games so that you’re not wasting your time and spending far too many hours searching for the best games your kids might like.
5. Watch what populates. You will most likely get hundreds to thousands of game options depending on your search.
6. Download and print out the games you think your kids will love.
7. Play them with your kids.
8. After playing each of the games, laminate your family’s favorites so that you’d can preserve them for years to come.

Marine Biology Unit Study Notebook Setup

Here you can see how Math (found in the geometric shapes drawings), Language Arts, and Marine Science came alive together in my student’s work.

Sincerely,

Gloria Brooks aka NatureGlo