Games

Perfect Indoor Games

February 22, 2021 By Annette1 8 Comments

The challenge from the Homeschool Review Crew this week is perfect indoor games. The best indoor games are ones that promote laughter and conversation don’t you find?

It doesn’t matter if you are using your body on a balance board, making an indoor race track, mental challenges, callisthenics, playing board games, or doing indoor phys ed. Whatever works for you and your family… makes for the perfect indoor games don’t you think?

Make Games to Suit Your Family

My son and I spent ages when he was a young child making up stories and playing games to go with those stories. Sometimes they were based on the history coffee table books or the fun books we read, and yet other times just our imaginations fueled the activities of our characters. These spilled out into other aspects of our homeschooling as jumping games for learning math, singing games to learn sight words, and more.

I love how this mom used a track layout to practice education skills and to have fun doing new ones. The accuracy for the toothpick challenge… how much fun is that eh? What a great indoor game this is eh?

Your muse might be board games

So many games to play! Games to learn words or math, spelling or history. Games like scrabble, nab-it, settlers of Catan, The game of life, payday and more. Teaching specific skills, or highlighting needs people would face from History.

This game from Home School in the Woods resulted in my son spending a few hours playing with his dad. My son adores strategy games and this one worked well for him. So nice when a company includes a good game into their studies don’t you think?

I’ve listed some of my favourite games below, affiliate links to make it easy for you to check them out. It helps support my blog without any added cost for you.

Physical ways

Did you know that my son is two belts away from getting his black belt in Karate? Even though with covid going on with so very few classes being held, it’s given him a physical energy outlet.

Sometimes we have to be a bit more creative about how to use up our energy in the house.

Have you ever done nature study in the house? How about taking a good look at your household pet? Giving your children a chance to encourage their pet to move so they can study their pet’s movement, and perhaps copy it. Can’t you just see your children being bunnies, cats or puppies? Can’t you see all the energy they will use up learning as they play with their pet?

You could also go on a scavenger hunt for spiders, insects, or even mice. (depending on your house of course!). 🙂 What can you find in your house?

Other ways to add in some phys ed into your perfect indoors games.

table tennis
ping pong
darts
Skeball
bowling
target practice
perfecting your putt

Looking for Phys Ed inspiration?

Affiliate links to books and games on amazon that might inspire you.

What are your perfect indoor games? Have I missed ideas? Share your inspiration with me! 🙂

Fun Games for your Family

December 3, 2020 By Annette1 3 Comments

The other day I was suffering from lack of sleep and feeling rather grumpy and decided that keeping busy was far preferable to sitting around feeling growly. Getting busy is generally the best attitude adjustment I can make. Do you ever have that?

Anyways, I decided to clean off our games shelf. I’ve been feeling a bit dissatisfied with it lately and games were starting to scatter throughout the house. I wanted to share with you some of our favourite games, perhaps they might become some of your favourites as well. Today let’s learn about fun games for your family. I’ll give amazon affiliate links if you want to look into them further.

There are all sorts of games available for us aren’t there. Card games, ball games, board games, dice games and so much more. Playing games helps us build good memories, learn new skills, learn to think logically and just have fun.

Strategy Games

I have a teenage son, and overall he likes playing games with his mom, but he prefers them to be strategy games. Games that are pure chance don’t interest him a whole lot. By FAR his most favourite games require strategy to win. Games like Everdell, Risk, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, chess, viticulture and Blokus. He just adores figuring out the best way to play a game and is really good at figuring out the best way to combine moves. His skill surprises me sometimes. I’m even getting used to losing with grace! It’s not as easy as it sounds……

Quick Play Games

Some nights we just want a game we can play quickly. A game that doesn’t take a lot of brainpower and still makes a lad smile. These are generally card games. Uno, Saboteur, SkipBo, War, Tenzi, Wizard, and such like. Fast-paced, no full strategy, who wins depends on how the cards are played. Mind, when we play war it’s with a regular deck of cards, I was surprised to see they actually turned it into a card game.

Games that make us laugh

When we play a game in the afternoon rather than in the evening we’ll often play a game that takes a different skill set. Games like wonky, topple, jenga, frustration/trouble, and the like. These games provoke a lot of laughter! 🙂

It’s fun watching someone try so hard to balance and object, exercising so much care, and then it topples completely. It’s a good-natured fun time. Or get almost around the board and then be sent home. GAH! It’s a lot of fun isn’t it?

The Six Best Card Games

December 16, 2019 By Annette1 6 Comments

Do you remember I talked about our favourite board games? I love board games, particularly ones that I can play with my lad. There are times though, when a board game is just too bulky. At those times, you just want to have a something a little smaller to play. Ergo card games! 🙂 Let’s talk about the six best card games shall we?

Why Play Card Games?

Well, to be frank WHY NOT?

They are so much fun. You can make them educational and fun, or just play for fun. They teach logic, numbers, math, communication, deviousness (in a fun way!), and so much more. It’s a great way to reinforce family bonds!

Numbers Card Games

One of our always fall back to games is Uno. We play this game using our own “house rules”. In fact, we play house rules so often that I have totally forgotten the official rules. 🙂 It’s a game that our international students can easily play with us as well. Almost all of them know how to play before they get here and it’s a go to game when you get a bunch of them together.

Skip bo is a game that I grew up playing. I have many fond memories of playing with the family. It was a game we played so much that even as my dad aged, and mental acuity started to fail, he could still play. Again, as with all card games, there are the official rules and then there are the “house rules”. Isn’t tweeking a game part of the fun of owning it?

Then of course there all the games you can play with an ordinary deck of cards. Hand solitaire, sets and runs, war, chase, rummy, crazy eights, and so forth. Kidspot has twelve games to teach your children.

Strategy Card Games

My son loves strategy games so currently his favourite game to play with family is Saboteur. Pick a card, are you a hard-working miner or a devious saboteur? Who will get to the gold first?

In Set, the strategy isn’t as obvious, but it’s there. I enjoy playing this game as solitaire as well. Just testing out how quickly I can make the different types of sets. All the same or all different, it’s a challenge indeed. We got turned on to this game at a homeschooling conference.

My son’s friend got him into this game and it’s fun. Takes some strategy and some numbers and it’s quick playing fun. Wizard is an excellent game. This is most often the game we bring with us camping. Good to play with 2 or more.

The Best Board Games

December 5, 2019 By Annette1 12 Comments

The other day I was on one of my homeschooling groups on Facebook. A person asked “what board games are any good?” A number of people listed off their games but many of them started their comment with “the best board game is….. ” In my house I have a cupboard set aside just for board games, I thought I’d share some of our favourites with you. Here are our best board games.

Strategy Games

Strategy Games are my son’s favourite games to play. Games like Risk and Settlers of Catan, and more draw him in like a moth to a flame. Games like Wonky and Chess make this lad grin.

That joy in seeing if you can devise a way to beat the people you are playing against, OR if you can find a way to foil them. For instance, in playing a game of aggravation the lad decided he didn’t care if he won IF he could stop other people from winning before he got his pieces around. He was so aggravating…. 🙂 but on a positive note he didn’t win! Made for a lot of fun.

Chess: he plays this regularly with his gramma. They seem to take turns with who wins. The set we have is a travelling chess set, it is so convenient to take it with us.

Wonky: We introduce this game to every international student who comes in. It is so fun and very easy to learn. Just need steadiness of hand.

Risk: takes a bit of time to play, but the conversation to be had while playing… I absolutely love it. I HATED this game as a teen playing against my brothers, but playing with my son… It’s a hoot!

Settlers of Catan: just a fun game. I usually lose! My son, well, he strategizes much better than I do. 🙂

Educational Games

We have tried a number of educational games and many have fallen to the wayside. These two have stood the test of time.

I think my son loves nab-it because it is partially a strategy game. Can you spell the right word to steal it from your fellows? We play this very simply with our international students. It helps them realize what they do know! We do play co-operatively near the end of the game, as it gets harder to find words with difficult letters.

Spill and Shake is just a simple spell words games. Nothing too complicated, just play a quick game and see what you can do. This game came out of my family home where I used to play with my siblings.

I DO need to mention the board game Sudoku that we had. YES, had. My son had a lot of fun with it. Large board, able to play a simple game or a more challenging. I couldn’t find the one we had, and passed along to an autistic lad who was captivated by it, so I’ve linked to a random one.

Family Fun Board Games

I know that some of these games are often used by others as educational games. We just play them to have fun. Our concern isn’t over building numeracy, geography, or other such skills. We play only to have fun with each other.

I grew up playing the classic monopoly game. I had so much fun with my siblings, and sometimes I would simply play against myself! But we play catopoly in our household because I have a cat-loving lad so a kind person gave us their used catopoly game to bring a smile. 🙂

If you are of Dutch descent and don’t play Rummy0 there is SOMETHING wrong with you. 🙂 At least in this corner of the world. A number game that teaches sets and runs. I grew up with it being called Rummikub. My lad has it as RummyO. Just a fun game, well worth playing with up to four people. Hint…. Don’t play with my younger sister, she takes FOREVER to make a single move. 🙂

Mastermind: the hours my lad and I have spent playing mastermind. Such a simple game of logic. Hide four pegs of any colour without your compatriot seeing. Let them guess. Give clues as to their accuracy. Then switch.

We have played three different versions of mousetrap. My lad is just outgrowing this one, but the ubuild it version has been by FAR the best. No missing pieces, easy to put together, no parts that stop aligning well, and such like. Just a solidly made game. I unfortunately couldn’t find it on amazon, so I linked up the original version. If you find the ubuild version… get that one!

We have two variations of the Guess Who game. We have Guess Who and Who’s there. Both are played a bit differently and we play depending on our mood.

Then we have Topple. We honestly play by our own rules. The real rules are easy enough, but the lad’s rules are more fun! 🙂 It just means we don’t play with outsiders as they just don’t get it!

I hope you are inspired by the variety in our board games. Have fun with your children, grab up a board game and play. You’ll be delighted by the ensuing conversations and the bonds you build. If you need MORE reasons to add board games to your life check out was a guest wrote.

Review: Home School in the Woods

March 19, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Home School in the Woods now offers many of their hands-on history projects Á La Carte. We received War to end all Wars file Folder Game. The game question that runs through our house now is “Mom, you want to play the game we made?” “Dad? Are you busy? Want to play a game? Do you want to be the Germans or the French?”

Who is Home School in the Woods?

The Paks are a homeschooling family who saw a need and decided to fill it. 🙂 You can read more about their journey here. Starting with timelines and then broadening out to whole units of study and games as well. They are an interesting company and puts out excellent materials.

How did we use it?

The War to End all Wars came as a PDF. I found that printing off was easy to do. Though admittedly… I messed up but my lad took charge and got it all sorted out easily enough. Handy to have a smart 12 year old around (even if he does shake his head at his mother). 🙂

We liked having the option between colour and black/white, a suggestion from my son was to have some of the images with colour, or at least a variation that can still be seen in black and white. He had a specific idea but I can’t recall exactly what that was. Our printer is black and white so it was great to have that option, and colouring in the flags was a nice time to chat with my lad. THOUGH we found out after I coloured half of them in that I had done them wrong (see the above). The lad told me not to bother colouring them in again as he liked them in black and white. 🙂 (and didn’t want me to think I had wasted my time … he’s a kind lad)

The lad took two days to put the game together. Cutting out the pieces, tapping them together, and gluing down the pages to the file folder. The game was enjoyed by all members of our household, the lad likes playing. He wins against me, but his dad is prone to win against him. So it all evens out quite nicely.

I printed it out on regular paper as opposed to cardstock for two reasons. Our printer can be finicky with cardstock AND before we played the game I wasn’t sure if it would be enjoyed by my lad. This thinking led to me going with the cheaper paper. KNOWING full well that if we enjoyed the game a lot and wanted to play it more often, it would be easy enough to print off the parts we needed to have in cardstock. By then I would be willing to play around with our finicky printer. 🙂

My son enjoys this game so much that he made weights to go on the bottom of the game pieces and has plans that as soon as the playing pieces look too banged up he’ll print them up on cardstock and we’ll play even more. 🙂

Our thoughts:

In case it hasn’t been readily apparent in this review, let me state it very clearly. My son LOVES this game and is so glad we have it. He really like strategy games and pitting his wits against another person. He thinks through what he wants to do and this game allows him to do that. I foresee us playing this game often, particularly next year when he wants to study the world wars. But for now.. Fridays will be a good time to keep playing eh?

The only thing I would change if I could figure out how to do it, would be to make it a three or four player game, then all of us could play at once. But I don’t know how to make that happen, and just thinking about it makes it feel way to complicated so having it as a two-player game is probably the best option.

One of the things my lad did was to make small clay discs to weight each of the playing pieces down. He says the game is very fun and he loves the strategy involved.

We had a hard time choosing which of the a la carte items we wanted. This one on the 95 theses intrigued as did the timeline of World War II. I may end up picking that course up for my son’s studies next year on the wars. I have also been looking at their other war related items.

Home School in the woods - war to end all wars

Home School in the Woods.
A la carte items.
War to End all Wars File Folder Game.
File folder game,
World war 1 game.
Digital product.

100 members of the Homeschool Review Crew were looking at the various ala carte items. Click here or below.

Social Media Links:
Facebook:
Twitter: Tag: @HSintheWoods
Pinterest:
Google+:
YouTube:

Canada: Discover Canada

October 24, 2017 By Annette1 2 Comments

Today I have something a wee bit different for learning about Canada. It’s a game! A brain game none-the-less! I picked this game up a while ago to use with my lad, just a fun grab a card, look at it and see what you remember and can learn about Canada.

Let me introduce you to Discover Canada by Brainbox. You can learn more about Brainbox and even play some games while visiting them right HERE.

You might be wondering, what is this game? What makes it interesting? It’s a game meant for one or two people (making it great for mom and son). Take a timer that runs for 10 seconds and a card. Try to memorize as many details as you can in that 10 seconds and then answer the questions on the reverse side of the card. The most answers right wins! In the meantime you are learning facts about Canada.

They have a variety of categories from animals, sports, provinces, fur trade, inventors, first nations and more. Pictures, maps, questions.. fun with learning, can’t really beat that can you know?

If ten seconds is too short for you or your family, extend it! It’s a game, have fun with it.

Discover Canada
Brainbox
Game, brain game

Where can you find it?

Amazon.ca: Discover Canada
Amazon.com: Discover Canada by Brainbox

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time . We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites

Review: Planet 316

April 25, 2017 By Annette1 4 Comments

Love the Lord? Like to do puzzles? Planet 316 has a Daily Bible Jigsaw puzzle that will challenge you and remind you of the truths of the Lord.

I admittedly have tried out a few different puzzle apps on my tablet, and this one… what can I say, it’s quick and fun. There are many aspects to daily bible jigsaw that I like.

What do you get?
A free app for making jigsaw puzzles that when completed have a bible verse show up with an option to share it with your facebook feed. 11 bonus puzzles which are harder than most puzzles, all but one of these bonus puzzles is free. Each puzzle comes with options to make it easier to complete like rotate, edges, sweep, magnet and guide.

You get one free jigsaw puzzle daily with options, if you have the puzzle coins, to do more.

There are a number of achievement levels which enable you to win more puzzle coins. Some of these achievements are: playing five Monday games, completing puzzles by a certain time, playing 100 games and so on.

I played the game on my android tablet.

The helps
Rotate -turns all the pieces into the correct orientation.
Guide: for two coins it will give you a peek at the completed puzzle
Sweep – puts all the pieces in the margins leaving the playing field open
Magnet: automatically joins two pieces together.
Edges – removes all piece from the playing field until you put all the edge pieces together.

What I liked:

Having a daily puzzle to do. Every day a new puzzle and a small YAY when you finish it. It’s enough to keep me coming back for more.
Scriptural encouragement. Each picture, upon completion pops up with a bible verse to inspire for the day.
Options to share favourite puzzles easily to facebook. I’ve had comments of “nice picture” given to me, sparking additional conversation. Good that eh?
Challenges against friends. Seriously… its fun to know that you can beat people that you know and shocking when occasionally they beat you! 🙂
Options to make the puzzle making easier: rotate, sweep, edges etc.
Puzzles can be completed usually in less than five minutes making them ideal to hand to a boy child and say “think you can make the ______”? He loves the “make it easier” options AND if he can beat my time all the better! 🙂
The pictures are pretty, with excellent colour. Some I could guess what the image was almost right away and others I wasn’t sure what they were until half way completed.
Excellent customer service. If you have any questions or issues, they answer immediately and work with you to resolve the problem.

What I would love to see:

More of the harder puzzles. They do have 11 bonus puzzles which I think are awesome! Trying to do the one that was mostly white was a joy to work on! And the one with many colours…ah.. I LOVE IT! It’s good to have a challenge. Whilst the daily puzzles have a challenge of can you make a mystery puzzle and do it more quickly than friends.. I KNOW I can complete them generally under 2 1/2 minutes. It’s nice to have a puzzle that makes you think a bit harder, I want more of them. 🙂
As fun as the challenges against friends are… it’s hard to know if you are beating them OR if you are beating them using the helps. I like beating the puzzle on my own, not using helps, and sometimes the allure of competition has me using the helps and… I rather not do that, I want to win on my own merits. I wish the competition had some way to differentiate between those using helps and those not using helps. … increase the challenge level a bit eh? 🙂

End result of my review:

I LIKE IT. Seriously. It’s a fun free app that inspires me to think beyond the YAY I finished a puzzle, and turns my heart toward God. A good thing that. So go on, get it. Be inspired, be challenged and HAVE FUN!

Vendor: Planet 316
Product: Daily Bible Jigsaw
Received: Game plus 500 Puzzle Coins bundle so I could try out all the features. A $39.99 value.
Price: Free, with a price for additional puzzle coins.

Here are the current options for playing Daily Jigsaw:

Google Play (Android devices)
Apple App Store (iOS devices)
Facebook (Mac or PC computer web browser…Chrome and Firefox work best)
Facebook Gameroom (PC computer, Facebook’s new PC game platform similar to Steam)

To see what all 90 reviewers thought, click here or on the image below.

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Planet316/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/planet_316 @planet_316

Hashtags: #hsreviews #dailybiblejigsaw

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

Games

Perfect Indoor Games

Make Games to Suit Your Family

Your muse might be board games

Physical ways

Looking for Phys Ed inspiration?

Fun Games for your Family

Strategy Games

Quick Play Games

Games that make us laugh

Other Games Related Posts