Homegrown Learners

I've been on the hunt for some fun word games that our whole family could play together. Personally, I love to play Scrabble (I play it on the iPad very often!) and thought it would be fun to teach the kids to play, as well. As we were shopping at Wal-Mart last week I found the game Scrabble Apple. We started to play this afternoon, and it is the PERFECT game for my eight and five year old.

Basically, you lay all the tiles face down in the "orchard" (good vocab. word!). Each player takes a turn choosing a tile and placing it face up in the playing area. When someone can spell a word they holler it out and bring it over to their side. You can add letters to existing words, or even change letters around to make new words. We didn't get that complicated yet. Three letter words were a good place to start. I was also amazed and what different learners my son and daughter are. My daughter just looks at the tiles and tries to think of words. Right away my son was arranging and rearranging the tiles to make words.

Now, the game itself is excellent, but it ended in tears today because my youngest said "But I wanted to win!". Obviously we need to do more things like this so he can learn that it's ok to lose and most of the fun lies in actually playing the game. I was, however, impressed that he was easily making words.

I am also attending the virtual homeschool conference this week and have downloaded all the audios for the different sessions. There is one in particular - Homeschooling During Times of Crisis - that really interests me. The older I get the more "crisis" situations seems to arise and the more complicated life gets. Homeschooling is a blessing during these times because it gives me something to focus on, but today I was very distracted by a particular situation and had a hard time getting the kids to focus as a result. SO, we layed down after lunch and enjoyed several great books and then played Scrabble Apple. I guess that's good enough for today.