If you’ve been reading the blog for a few months, or checked out my Teachers Pay Teachers store, you may have noticed that I have created a few games! Since starting my blog about six months ago, I have written about these gameschooling-related topics:

• Have kids make their own board game (free templates, plus a helpful planning PDF to guide the process!)
• Capybara Colony, the original board game my daughter made when she was 7!
• My blast from the past, playing the vintage The Allowance Game, with my preschooler and 2nd grader!
• One of the most meaningful projects I’ve ever done for my kids: Reyes Rascal Race, which is a personalized Family Trivia game that you can design for your own family, too!

By far my most popular resource on my TPT Storefront, has been the above product! This PDF is a nice planning guide for kids, to guide them through the process of making their own board game. If you think your kids would like to do this project, click on the photo above to see a preview of the whole PDF!

What is Gameschooling?

If you’ve never heard the term gameschooling before, it’s basically what it sounds like : using games in your homeschool, for learning purposes! You can explore many articles online about gameschooling; this one gives a great synopsis, and provides great lists of potential games for families.

Due to the current ages of our kids (10, 8, 5 and 2) and schedules, I wouldn’t say we are a super intense gameschooling family right now–but I hope to up the ante, in the future. A few of my favorite games to play with my kids are:

• Quiddler
• Piles- our newest favorite
• Bananagrams
• Priorities
• Chess
• Sleeping Queens
• Guess Who (and Adivina Quien, in Spanish!)
• Taco, Goat, Cheese, Pizza
• Go Fish (Pesca, in Spanish!)
• (I just asked my daughter for ideas and she said, “Reyes Rascal Race!” which is the game I customized, for our family :))

Right now, due to personality traits and ages, it’s the most enjoyable to play games with our older two kids, a son and daughter, who are 10 and 8 respectively. As our younger two grow up, they’ll expand their capacity and game repertoire, and we will be able to play even more games as a family!

Best Family Games

I am definitely biased, and I think that creating your own Family Trivia Game is the best family game! 🙂 However, there are a few classics that I really love–

Code Names: I originally played this with friends a decade ago, and now there are many versions! We recently thrifted the Harry Potter edition, and my son loves it.

Trouble: this is a favorite of my middle two kiddos, especially my preschooler. I think the simply counting, turn taking, and popping the popper is so tactile and fun!

Priorities: I got this just a few months ago, after playing it with friends for a get-together! It’s similar to Apples to Apples, and it’s a fun way to get to know your family members even better!

Go Fish: I love this classic card game, because you can play with all sorts of different cards! When my kids are preschool aged, I like to play with a set of alphabet cards–they work on uppercase/lowercase identification, and make matching pairs. I love it!

I could add to this list all day; there are dozens of games I love! I also recently discovered an incredible account on Instagram all about gaming! The account is “Table Top Family” (@tabletopfamily) and I love watching their content. They have more than one million followers, for good reason–they share tons of amazing ideas, game titles, strategies, and family engagement ideas.

Happy gaming!

Cait