Today I have a guest post for you on the topic of important considerations for your homeschooling decision.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as we have homeschooled at our house several different years, in a couple of different ways. There was so much that went into this decision.

Our expert today is here to share with us what we should think about when we are making this important decision.

Going to school is the norm for most children. However, it doesn’t always have to be. Homeschooling is the legal alternative to sending your kid to a traditional school.

In homeschooling, you can enable teachers to educate your children at home. While some parents opt for homeschooling due to their religious beliefs, it is also an excellent way to provide your child with a flexible learning environment.

However, homeschooling is not for everyone, so before you opt for this style of education for your child, you should consider a few factors. Just because it works for me doesn’t mean it might work for everyone.

Did you know that the homeschooled population in the U.S. has been growing at an estimated rate of 2 to 8% per year?

The benefits of homeschooling are why many parents, including myself, prefer it over the traditional method of education. I

If you also wish to enter the world of homeschooling, you should consider the following factors:

1.    Your Schedule:

The most important thing about homeschooling that you must understand is that it is a full-time job. You will have to commit to homeschooling if you decide to go for this method of education. You must also do regular research to plan your child’s curriculum.

As a homeschooling parent, I have had to create and maintain a structured schedule for my child. You will also have to plan lessons, teach, grade assignments, and handle administrative tasks. 

2.    Your Educational Background:

In homeschools, parents are the primary educators of their children. Although you don’t need a degree to homeschool your child, you must be knowledgeable. You can take online courses to supplement your knowledge if you need more aspects. I have also attended workshops to improve my knowledge and be the best educator for my child. There is also plenty of guiding material online for parents who are new to homeschooling. 

3.    Your Child’s Personality:

A child’s personality can help you determine their learning style. I figured out the best way to educate my children by observing them. As a homeschooling parent, you must focus on providing your child with an environment that promotes growth. To accomplish that, consider whether your child prefers a hands-on approach or lecturing. Another factor to consider is whether they thrive in social settings or prefer to learn alone. 

Taking care of your child’s mental health is also important for building their personality. You can also look into pediatric therapy services in Central KY if you’re from that area and if your child needs professional assistance. You can also find pediatric therapy centers in almost every city if you aren’t in that local area.

4.    Financial Considerations:

Homeschooling is much more affordable than traditional schooling. However, it requires an initial investment in supplies, books, and curriculum. If you wish to become a homeschooling parent, you might also have to quit your job. So, before you decide to homeschool your child, take a look at your finances. Only opt for homeschooling if you are financially ready for it. 

5.    Socialization Opportunities:

Children get plenty of socialization opportunities in a traditional school. However, we can’t say the same about homeschooled children. For a child to grow into a confident adult, they must socialize with their peers.

As a homeschooling parent, you will have to provide socialization opportunities to your child. There are plenty of clubs, homeschool groups, and community activities that your children can participate in. Homeschool groups can also provide support and guidance to us parents. 

6.    Homeschooling Laws & Regulations:

Each state in the U.S. has its own rules and regulations regarding homeschooling. You may have to register with the state, keep a record of attendance, and submit test scores. If you want to avoid problems later, learn about the regulations beforehand. Finding out about my state’s rules regarding homeschooling helped me a lot as a parent. By following the laws set in place by the state, I could focus on providing my child with quality education. 

Advantages of Homeschooling:

The following advantages of homeschooling are why more and more parents in the U.S. are opting for this method of education: 

·      Safe Environment:

One of the biggest plus of homeschooling for me was being able to protect my child from things like peer pressure and bullying. The negative aspects of a traditional school can be detrimental to a child’s mental health. As a result, 1.9 million American children are currently studying in a safe and controlled environment. 

·      Stronger Connection with Family:

Students of public schools in the U.S. spend 6 to 7 hours a day away from home. Even after coming home, they rarely get to spend quality time with their families due to schoolwork. The situation can be reversed with homeschooling.

Through homeschooling, you can build a strong bond with your children. By spending the majority of your time with your child every day, you can build a strong family connection. Your children will also find it easier to come to you with their problems if they have a strong bond with you. 

·      Flexible Schedule: 

In traditional schools, all students are required to follow the same schedule. However, in reality, every child has a different learning speed. If children are forced to change their learning speed, they end up hating to study. With homeschooling, you can design a flexible schedule for your child according to their needs. Flexible schedules also help improve a child’s learning ability. 

Disadvantages of Homeschooling: 

Homeschooling also has a few disadvantages that you must be aware of: 

·      Isolating: 

Homeschooling can be an isolating experience for both parents and children. You will be unable to meet and connect with other parents if you homeschool your child. Your child will also miss out on connecting with their peers. 

·      Limited Socialization: 

Although you can find socialization opportunities for your homeschooled child, they are only sometimes enough. Limited socialization opportunities can impact the personality development of an extrovert child. 

·      Hectic Routine for Parents: 

Homeschooling can be harder than a full-time job with a heavy workload. You will have to research the curriculum and create lesson plans. Make sure you are ready to take on the heavy workload before choosing homeschooling. 

Final Thoughts:

Homeschooling can be a great way to bond with your child and protect them from the dangers of a traditional school. There are also plenty of resources to help parents who are thinking of homeschooling their children. However, make sure to weigh the pros and cons of homeschooling before you make the final call about your child’s future.

The post 6 Important Considerations for Homeschooling appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I have another Guest post for you! We have Amanda Wilson, author of Heading into Homeschool: A Faith-Based Step-by-Step Plan for Beginning to Homeschool . You can also find Amanda at www.maestramom.com. She blogs about home schooling and parenting, and she has many helpful resources on her website too.

Amanda’s book is all about getting started with your home school. She is here to share her journey with us.

It was the last week of May, and I was staring at my classroom wondering how in the world I was going to be able to teach again for another year. 

I loved teaching.  Kids were my life, but two of my own were at home struggling and really needed me.  I rubbed my big, 8-month pregnant belly, knowing I had to get my act together fast – before this little one made an appearance. 

The truth was my heart wasn’t in the classroom anymore.  It was at home – with my daughter who had been struggling in school last year and my little son.  But my school principal had to know – this week! – if I was coming back to school next year.  And I had no idea.

Honestly, I desperately wanted to stay home and homeschool my kids. 

My daughter had just gone through a terrible school year in 2^nd grade, and she had already decided she hated math forever.  My son was slated to begin kindergarten, but he was a firecracker and I wondered if he’d be able to even make it in a classroom.  I didn’t love what I was seeing from the inside at public schools, and I knew I didn’t want my kids in that environment.

So, after a whirlwind, impulsive we-have-to-make-a-change conversation with my hubby, we decided to totally upend our lives and homeschool the kids.   What?!?  Now, I had 3 days to completely pack my classroom and get out – and don’t forget I was big, fat pregnant!  Then only a few weeks until baby girl was born.  Then a few more weeks and – poof!  Time to start homeschooling. 

The trouble was, I was completely lost and overwhelmed. 

How in the world do you just start homeschooling?  I felt completely unprepared but with my typical knock-it-out attitude, I jumped in with both feet, determined to conquer and slay!

This was My Homeschool Prep Plan of Attack:

1.       Talk to friends

The first thing I did was make a phone call to a friend in another state who I knew homeschooled. I begged her to tell me everything she knew about homeschooling.  She was a dear and helped me create a daily routine as well as explaining how she scheduled out the lessons.  More than anything, she was super encouraging and my biggest cheerleader during this huge change.  I was doubting myself and spinning in circles, so her support at that time was a tremendous blessing.

2.       Hit the internet

Second, I started googling.  I had a thousand questions, and the internet was a wealth of information!  I spent many hours looking up curriculum, diving into legal requirements for homeschooling, and figuring out the nitty-gritty how-to to make it happen.  The problem with the internet is that there are so many voices and often conflicting information.  I still struggled to make sense of all the homeschooling advice and siphon out what was the most important.

3.       Learn from the pros

I knew a few families who had homeschooled in the past and now had older kids.  I figured they already had this whole homeschooling thing figured out so I picked their brains, too, and tried to glean all the wisdom I could.  They were helpful to recommend books, curricula, and practical tips.  One of the ladies even enlisted her entire family to come help me pack up my school classroom and move everything home (elementary teachers have a LOT of stuff).

4.       Join a co-op

I thought my kids might need a community – and knew I definitely needed some mom support – so I started researching about homeschool co-ops in my area.  The challenge here, I learned, is that many homeschool co-ops are sort of under-ground.  What I mean is, that many co-op groups operate without any kind of online presence or even official organization, making them very hard to find except by word-of-mouth.  The first group we found and joined didn’t really work out, but after a few years we finally found a fabulous co-op that is a good fit for our family.  Being around like-minded mommas is a huge win!

5.        Read homeschooling books

The other thing I did was get a list from homeschooling moms about the books they had used to help them and inspire them as homeschooling mommas.  I bought a few and dove into summer reading!  While several of the books were truly inspirational and foundational in helping me establish my own homeschooling philosophy, none of them really got down to the actual how-to of homeschooling.  I felt sort of helpless in that area and rather on-my-own.  But I buckled down, leaned into my teacher know-how, and put together a plan for how we were going to homeschool.

Heading into Homeschool

Now, eight years later, we’re still homeschooling and loving the adventure!  My oldest is now in high school, the second one is in middle school, that little baby is now in elementary, plus God sent another tiny bundle to the family who is just beginning preschool this year. 

Along the way, I started blogging about my journey at www.maestramom.com and wrote the book I wish I could’ve read at the time.  Yes!  I actually wrote a book about homeschooling!  It’s called Heading into Homeschool: A Faith-Based Step-by-Step Plan for Beginning to Homeschool.  It dives into both the philosophical, inspirational side of homeschooling like finding your teaching style and your kid’s learning style AND goes into all the nitty-gritty how-to homeschool questions. 

This book answers every possible question that’s likely to come up!

 Heading into Homeschool totally covers all your bases and is the perfect book for anyone who’s even considering homeschooling.  Grab a copy on Amazon and share! 

Pro tip:  get the eBook Kindle version of Heading into Homeschool because it contains over 70 links to online resources so you don’t have to find them all yourself!

The post Where to Begin When You are New to Home Schooling appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Since all people and family situations are unique, all of our virtual school experiences are also somewhat different. This is how it goes down at our house. If I did not constantly check on, like borderline harass, my fourth and second graders, one would only get a fraction of his work done, one would not even watch his classes, and I would get phone calls from teachers. Oh wait. I tried my best to stay on top of them, and I still get emails and phone calls.

It can be quite hilarious. For funny stories from week one, click here.

10 Things We Learned in Virtual School this Week:

#1. Did you know you aren’t supposed to have swords or Nerf guns in virtual classes?

Obviously. I promise we told him that, but he did it anyway when we weren’t in the room. He could not understand why he could not hop around the living room with his weapons while the teacher was talking…. We had to move the entire “toy weapons bin” to the basement. I replaced said weapons with a box of super hero action figures, which he has played with all day long.

Friends, actually, be SUPER careful about this. An innocent kid in Colorado was basically arrested for doing this same thing John David did. That is one of those news stories that is so ridiculous it is maddening.

#2. My younger two could use a parent sitting by them all day long.

We need to help them make it to all the links they are sent to, keep them on track, and explain to them what they are supposed to be doing. The older two boys are mostly fine, though they occasionally need technical or algebra support.

I cannot actually be in three places at once, so we just have to let things fall where they may. Sometimes, a kid misses a deadline honestly. We fix that as it comes to our attention. All of the time, I have to walk around the house cringing over how bad it needs to be swept and dusted, but there’s no time. I mean sure, I can find time to sit down and look at my phone at night, but time to clean is just gone…

#3. If you think class is boring, you can just wrap up Creeper in a blanket, put your shorts on his head, and stick him in your seat, while you go chill on the sofa.

This way your teacher will think you are still listening! Brilliant!

#4. It turns out that even after going all the way through Calculus in high school and in college, I am useless as an algebra helper.

Scratch that. I do know how to reference a textbook or Google to help with classwork, but it will take me a solid few minutes to dig up what a function, range, and domain are exactly. I remember precious little.

#5. At least three of us now know how to take a webcam photo with the new non-Apple computers.

Eventually, we will also figure that out for the Chromebooks.

#6. What you actually need to survive second grade online is a ginormous stuffed Creeper.

You can buy them at Target stores. Some of you may not know Creeper. He is a type of being in Minecraft. Creepers can explode. This particular one poops explosives I am told.

Our Creeper can be a wrestling opponent, pillow, and your twin! He is so multi-functional!

#7. You have to scroll down to find and check the “Agree to terms” box in order for that big green sign-up button to work.

No, I surely did not spend 10 minutes trying every single different way to sign up before finally listening to the teacher answer a student’s questions before figuring this out. Her box was larger and did not seem to require scrolling. This all happened over the course of two days. Yeah. Two days we worked on this.

And there are some other things I still won’t sign in to because a person can only figure out so many usernames and passwords. Y’all, there is a limit!!

#8. Tennis has very specific postures that you use when you play, not just ways you hold your racket but also how you are supposed to stand.

File this under “things I learned while watching my son’s tennis lessons when my internet wasn’t working.”

#9. Storyboardthat.com is a really cool site for building illustrated stories!

I could spend a good amount of time on there! It looks fun. Daniel did the one above. It was the second board of his story on Pacific Northwest Native Americans.

#10. There is no ideal method for educating four children, all different ages.

….But dropping them off at school came pretty close to ideal for me!! Haaaa!!! Go away, Rona.

The post 10 New Things We Learned in Virtual School Week 2 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

About a month ago, I asked my Facebook friends if anyone was up for starting a Virtual School/Home School support group.

More parents than ever before are at home all day with their children during the school day. Some of us are sending our kids to school for part of the week, also known as the hybrid model. Others of us are trying out the Virtual School, which does look much different than it did in the spring. Still others are opting to be fully in charge and take it all on in a home school.

Either way, this year is new and different, and for some reason I have ALWAYS found managing my children’s education to be stressful. A good support group is crucial.

We’re all miles away from each other, so why not make this a virtual Facebook group like everything else?

Thankfully, my friend and licensed counselor, Odona from Columbus, Georgia, stepped up and volunteered to run this group with me. Such a relief! Odona is more action oriented than I am. I like to get big ideas like this and then chicken out, thinking no one will want to join me. Why am I so ridiculously unconfident??? Ah well, that is not today’s problem.

Odona set up the group, and now we are running with it. The group has been open for only a few days, and we already have over a hundred members. Come join us!

Here is how you can join our group and what we will have to offer.

Click on the “Join Group” bar below to join us. It will verify that you are a parent with a child doing school at home, and then Odona and I will get let you in. It may take us a few hours, but don’t worry, we both check our Facebook group notifications there frequently.

Schooling At Home Private group · 110 members Join Group This group is intended to be a support group for parents with children doing virtual school and for those homeschooling their children. Basically for…

What to Expect in our Group

We want this to be a place where we can be encouraged through a shared experience. You can expect occasional videos, but mostly we will do discussions about home school and virtual school. This is not a political group at all. We are not looking to debate the government’s response to the pandemic or world peace. But I mean, of course, we do all want world peace…Instead, this is a place for practical day-to-day life struggles related to virtual/hybrid/home school. Call it what you want, we are here to spur one another on.

You can vent about the struggles, share what has worked for you, pray for each other, and cheer each other on. We will also be posting helpful articles, videos, photos, and courses that I find online. Our group members are all invited to share helpful information they find, tips and tricks, and ask questions as well.

I hope you will join us!

The post The Schooling at Home Support Group is Officially Open appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Do you vow every summer to make sure your kids still read and write over the break?

I know I do. Then I am always thoroughly disappointed when no one wants to do anything of the sort. In fact, as a mom of all boys, I feel like all anyone ever wants to do is stare at screens all day. That is our battle as a generation.

Every year I enter in with delusions of grandeur, but that is okay. Yes, my intentions are good, and I do manage to get some work out of all of them, in spite of their protests.

I get it. This is summer. They don’t have to spend all day on writing, but five or ten minutes could help them stay sharp.

Here is a big lesson I have learned over the past fourteen years: The easier their work looks to them, the more likely they are to pour a little effort into it without melting into a whiny puddle in the floor.

My boys typically turn their noses up at all journal prompt books or even keeping a diary. However, when I simply hand them a simple looking worksheet, they can fly through that fairly quickly.

These journal pages are a little different than the usual writing prompts I have found online because they were tailor made for our house fiction writer. Once or twice during this past school year, of first grade, he cranked out twelve pages of a fiction story, so I would not call him a reluctant writer. Yet here we are in summer, and he is not writing anything at all. I made these journal pages to get his juices flowing again.

Next time I make a pack of these, I will do non-fiction pages for my nine-year-old. In our house we seem to have two who prefer writing non-fiction (which is me too, so I can fully relate to that), and then I have my two who enjoy fiction writing.

My best tip for encouraging summer writing:

Rewards, rewards, rewards! I do not mean big exciting rewards. Just use the one thing that they actually want to do to hold over their heads. ha! At our house, that is video games. You do your journal, brush your teeth, and do your chore, then you can play your games for a while, and I will leave you alone.

You know I have all boys and do not know a thing about raising girls, but I tried to make these pages usable for both boys and girls. Instead of going with a theme, I made them all completely different to keep it interesting. I thought the green one turned out odd, but my son said it looked like the most fun to him, so I kept it.

Good luck! I hope these will help you with that summer slump!

Click here to print all of them.

If you have a verbose writer, the lines will not hold all that they have to say. Encourage them to just flip the paper over and finish on the back. I wish we had that problem here. Instead, I have to say, “Can you write a little more details please?”

Click here to print the pack.

The post 5 Printable Summer Journal Pages to Get Your Kids Writing appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Here are a few of my truths from the past three months…

#1. Apparently, telling the kids to, “Go get some exercise sometime today,” did not satisfy my 8th grader’s P.E. requirement.

The P.E. teacher sent an email threatening to give my son an F in P.E. I was like…

So I emailed him back and asked if he started turning in work for P.E. if he could get an ‘I’ for Incomplete. The P.E. teacher emailed me back and said he could “average the grades” and see if it came out to an Incomplete, Fail, or Pass.

Grades? What grades?

So we started opening up the P.E. assignments. Turned out dude was seriously sending out tasks with a log to turn in, so we began to follow through. Now I guess we will wait and see how it all averages out, but I must admit I thought it was all a little silly. I don’t have a good reason for why it’s silly, but that’s my attitude, I guess.

#2. No matter how many warnings the printer has given you, it will in fact run out of ink one day.

It will definitely be on a day when you meant to print out many graphic organizers for several of your children.

#3. They call worksheets “graphic organizers” now.

These are basically blank charts, but calling them graphic organizers strikes fear in the hearts of children so much better than just saying “charts.”

#4. All the teachers will want to have class meetings on the last week of school. You will have to make your own graphic organizer to keep up with whose meeting is with which teacher when.

….because really after skipping ALL of the optional class meetings for the entire months of virtual school, you should perhaps get some closure and peace and quiet in the house by making them attend the final meetings.

#5. Best Parent/Teacher conferences ever!!

As a mom of four boys who may or may not always listen well in class, it was such welcome news to learn that the parent/teacher conferences are taking the place of report cards for our elementary school students this quarter. YES! Not only that, but the conferences were so easy. There were no surprises since I was the one guiding them through their school work each day.

#6. The boys and I now have all the usernames and passwords memorized.

#7. The teachers email me when my son decides to skip assignments that “look too hard” to him.

That’s been quite the nice hack. It only happened twice, but he was so busted.

#8. I learned how to make Power Point presentations.

Believe it or not, I have never been required to do one. I graduated in college in 2002, but I thought they were boring, so I used poster boards and films for my presentations instead. Apparently, kids start working with Power Point in 3rd grade now. If you don’t handle the “delete” button correctly, you actually do away with the entire text box, so Daniel and I also became very proficient at creating new text boxes.

My eighth grader cranked his Power Point out in thirty minutes, each slide chock full of paragraphs of information, and this was the first Power Point presentation he had ever made for school. I was amazed at his aptitude. Daniel and I spent the same thirty minutes deleting text boxes on accident and re-creating them and just filling in the blanks on his ready-made slides.

#9. It is hard to make them be honest on their P.E. log when the assignment is to engage in “striking a ball with an implement for 90 minutes this week.”

We own one tennis ball, which might actually be the dog’s, and they tend to not play tennis for more than ten to fifteen minutes at a time. No one wanted to do baseball. We don’t have ping pong anymore. We used to, but we couldn’t find it. I did not help them look for any of this. I told them to play the assigned games and write their logs on their own, but I seriously doubt that it truly added up to ninety minutes.

#10. It is difficult to practice your recorder when you can never find it. It is possible that our recorder-player lost the recorder on purpose…

#11. Everyone brings their problems to one person: ME

I did not handle this well at all in the beginning. After three months of managing everyone’s problems all day long, I find myself constantly seeking solitude. I want to be alone all the time. For some reason, I have a renewed energy towards working on my blog. Do you think hard times drive me to my blog? It seems like when things were going better, I did not need to blog, and now…. Aughhhhhhhh!

I think every mom (or in some cases dad) in America feels like they have become a professional meal maker and problem solver. That does become easier after much practice, but it means you NEED alone time. If you cannot find me this summer, I guarantee you I am hiding at my house or in a Chick-fil-a parking lot somewhere.

The post 11 Truths from Virtual School Week We Lost Count appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

When this whole crisis home school fiasco started, John David, our resident first grader, sat down beside me and laid out exactly how his school day usually goes. He fully expected our distance learning day to mirror the way things run at regular school. Oh, boy, was he set up for disappointment or what? However, this did give me good ideas. This year John David has a teacher who makes school very fun, so she is someone I should be copying.

J.D. explained that every single day they start school with a fun game and going around and sharing about their lives in general. This teacher created such a friendly environment. No wonder he loved school so much. We all live together, so the sharing thing did not work out as well. They get all silly and giggly and really manage to say nothing at all, but the game thing has stuck– like glue. You won’t catch our younger two boys picking up a pencil until they have had their mandatory morning game session.

Game time in the morning is a great idea, and this is why:

1. It promotes a fun, happy atmosphere right off the bat.
2. Kids are actively learning when they play games. They learn skills as well as sportsmanship.
3. What else do they have to look forward to with everything closed? This gives them something.
4. Love grows when you are having fun together.

The boys have several official rules about game time too that I, sometimes begrudgingly, have to stick to:

1. No board games
2. No video games
3. No Go Noodle– That’s supposed to be popular with kids, but my boys hate it.
4. Absolutely NO educational games. No adding sight words, study questions, or math problems to the game. (You know I’ve had to be reminded of that one several times.)

So without further ado, here are a few games we have enjoyed. These are good for all ages, I think, but the ages at play in this house usually range from first through sixth grade.

#1. The floor is lava!

I set up old papers and chairs across the floor. Each player rolls the dice to see how far they get to advance forward to get from start to finish. This was such a big hit that we played about five rounds.

#2. Human board game

We have a ceramic tile kitchen, so we use the tiles as you would the tiles on a traditional game board, like Sorry or Candy Land, only we are the game pieces. I cut out squares of paper and wrote game play instructions on each one like, “Move forward 2, Move backward 2, Move forward 5, Switch places with another player,” etc. Then I shuffled the cards, and on each turn the boys would take the top card and follow the directions. I shuffled the deck each time we finished all 10 so each person didn’t always end up with the same cards.

#3. Hangman

This is one we do most often because it is easy to do. I think of a name of a book, character, or movie, and just play the regular old version of Hangman with a wipe-off board.

#4. Hide and go Seek

….when my feet aren’t hurting too badly

#5. Making Cards

They don’t love it, but sometimes we make birthday/graduation/thank you cards instead of a game. I haven’t paid money for a card in ages. I feel like this should be a natural benefit of having young children.

#6. Hot/Cold

They love this one, and I do not because, well I don’t know why because, but it isn’t my fave. We hide an item. Then they have to come in and find it, using our hot/cold instructions. They will play it over and over again, and I have no idea why they like it so much.

#7. Mad Libs

I love mad libs, but only one of my boys loves them. We’ve only done this one once.

#8. Charades

Well, you all know how charades works. The boys like this one, but I have to be careful to come up with very easy ones for our six-year-old, or he gets upset and gives up. This one can be super fun if you include people that everyone in the game knows and you have to try to act like them. Hilarious!

#9. Pictionary

I haven’t actually done this one yet, but we are planning to try it.

#10. Simon Says — or “Mom says”

Everyone knows how to play this one.

#11. Bingo

We only do this every once in a while because they have this firm belief that the winner should get a prize, and I find that annoying, but I do enjoy Bingo. Maybe just say up front that the prize is a bag of cereal. Haaa!

Free Printable Bingo Cards Here

#12. Twenty Objects

The boys like this much more than I thought they would, probably because it was new and challenging. You put twenty random items on a tray or large plate. Cover it with a dish towel. Start a timer for one minute, and take off the towel. Tell everyone to memorize what is on the tray. When the timer goes off, put the towel back over the tray, and put the tray away. They have to list as quickly as they can everything they can remember that was on the tray. It’s surprisingly challenging!

#13. Four Corners

Another popular one. They love this. One person, “it”, closes their eyes and counts to 10 while everyone scrambles for a corner of the room. Then “it” calls out a corner number. Whoever is in that corner becomes “it.”

This is an easy game to turn into an educational game because whoever is in the corner you call out can answer a question, but in the mornings I am forbidden to do this…

#14. Balloon toss

This is literally just bouncing a balloon around the room.

#15. Monkey in the Middle

You play catch with a third person in the middle who tries to snatch the ball as you toss it. This can get messy in our house, so we really need to do it outside.

or Bonus #16…Trampoline WITH Mom.

If I jump on the trampoline with them, they will count that as a game, but of course, not everyone has the benefit of a trampoline in their backyard, so I didn’t include this one in the fifteen list.

I hope at least one of these ideas will help you bring more joy to your children and your day as a whole. We all need all the joy we can get, right? I am always on the hunt for new game ideas, so please share your own favorites in the comment section below!

The post 15 Fun and Simple Games to Start Your School Day appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.