Category: Games

Enjoying Long Distance Games with Family and Friends

There is so much going on these days that seems outside of our control. Depending on which parts of your life have been turned upside down, you may find yourself having more time or less time that you are trying to fill. Even though my current schedule doesn’t include getting in a car and driving to the other side of town as many as seven days a week, I have found that my “free” time seems to be decreasing rather than increasing.  But maybe that has more to do with how I am prioritizing it these days than anything else.

Communication is Critical

One of the things that has become more and more important to me is communication – communicating with family and friends across the country and across the world. Thankfully with the technology we have these days, staying in touch has become so much easier. The people we care about are just a phone call, text, WhatsApp message, or email away.

And by virtue of the fact that you are reading this blog post, I can probably assume that you have access to technology in one or more of those forms.  And that’s great, because I’m going to encourage you to use that technology in a positive manner beyond just basic communication.

As you consider how best to stay in touch with those you care about, I want to suggest that you think beyond just having a conversation with them to having fun with them! And I know of no better way to do that than through games. My family has always loved games. When we get together it is seldom a question of if we will play games, but rather a question of when, which ones, and for how long. 

Liven Things Up with Games

In the midst of the current crisis we have discovered new and innovative ways to bridge the miles that separate so many of us, while still getting in our game playing.  And by the use of the various types of technology we all have access to, we have been able to play games with anywhere from two of us to more than a dozen at a time. Some of the games have been a little more challenging to accomplish when we’re not all sitting across a table from each other, but some have actually been fairly easy to do this way.  I have hopes that we will continue to do some of these long distance games even after all of this goes away.

The most basic games can be played with just a phone call. I have been very appreciative of the fact that all of my family members have cell phones with unlimited minutes and unlimited long distance (even internationally when we make WiFi calls). I bet some of you don’t even remember when long distance calls were expensive and minutes on cell phones had to be monitored! Fortunately, we’re beyond that now, and calling someone across the country and talking, laughing, and playing games for an hour or more is very easy and very doable. 

Basic Games with a Phone Call

So far this month we have played three different games using just a simple phone call: Yahtzee, Quixx, and Speed Scrabble.  In all three cases, each of us, on each end of the call had the dice (for Yahtzee and Quixx) or the letters (for Speed Scrabble).  I don’t see any way you could get around each having letters for Speed Scrabble (unless of course you went to purely electronic, and that’s not been our goal here), but I suppose you could actually play Yahtzee and/or Quixx with only one person having dice – as long as you were okay with them doing all of the rolling and just letting you know what they rolled. (We might actually be trying that sometime soon with Quixx, since we have family members overseas that enjoy the game as much as we do, but who don’t have the requisite dice to play it!)

To play those or similar games, decide on a good time, get your materials out on each end, place the call, put your phones on speaker, and have at it.  Even without being able to see each other, it is fun to be talking and playing together, especially when it’s a game you love, with a person you love even more. 

Games with Video Calls – and Multiple Copies of the Game

The next category of games are ones we have been playing with some type of video calls. (I have personally used WhatsApp video chats and Zoom calls to accomplish this, but anything you have that will allow you to see each other should work – I would imagine FaceTime and Skype would work in similar ways, we just happen to be partial to the other two.) 

I would actually divide “games played with video” into two separate categories: those where each family has to have their own copy of the game and those where only one “central” copy is needed.

I think at this point we’ve actually played more games where each family has their own copy. So far, I have played Azul, Splendor, Sagrada, and Dominion that way. And several other family members played Settlers of Cattan. I’m not a big Settlers fan, so I can only tell you that they’ve enjoyed it enough to play it several times. (And, by the way, while thus far it’s worked out that we’ve limited those games to just two groups of people, there isn’t any reason you can’t play with a group call going to three or four different places, or more, depending on the game. We’re hoping to do that with Azul soon.)

Example: Azul

With most of those games (Splendor being the exception from the above list), it was actually fairly simple to set up our “boards” (or cards or whatever the game’s equivalent is) on each side of the call.  I’ll give you an example of how that worked: With Azul, we each had our own boards in front of us, and then we also pulled out a board for the person(s) at the other end. In that game people take turns choosing tiles from several locations in front of them. On this particular occasion I drew the twenty tiles out of my bag, placing them into their respective places in front of me. As I did that, I informed my sister of which tiles I had pulled out and where they were being placed. She mirrored what I was doing. As we took turns drawing and placing tiles, we would mirror the action on both sides of the call.  (Now that I think about it, the video aspect for this particular game was a nice extra feature, so we could see each other, but it wasn’t critical. We told each other what we were doing more often than showed each other.)

Game play like that tends to take a little longer than if everyone was in the same room, since everything is having to be communicated and then done at both ends. But for games like Azul, Sagrada, and Dominion, it wasn’t much additional time.

The types of games that we have found that lend themselves to playing like this are ones where it is easy to mimic what’s being done by the other person (in other words, your “draw” pile (of cards, dice, or tiles) have a fairly limited variety of types, so that finding and matching what the other person has done goes fairly quickly. Games like Monopoly would be easy to do this way too.

Example: Splendor

I was a little skeptical about how the mechanics of playing a game like Splendor would go in this long distance fashion, since it has so many more “moving pieces” than the other similar games we had played (only three decks of cards – but one of them has 42 different cards and the other two have dozens each!). But once we got going it went surprisingly well! This time my sister had the “main board” at her end. As she turned over a new card for her board, she would tell us what it was, we would find it at our end, and mirror her activities. After determining a way to organize each of the three decks we were able to find the matching card fairly quickly. While it definitely added more time than with the other games we had played in a similar fashion, it was still not bad.

So if you have favorite games that are owned by family members in various locations, take a look and see if they can be played this way, with a mirroring style of play. I think you’ll find it opens up brand new ways to enjoy time together!

Playing Card Games?

Before I move to the last category of games, I want to mention card games – you know the old fashioned 52 cards in a deck type. Unfortunately, I don’t think most card games lend themselves to long distance playing in this manner. But we did come up with one card game that should work just fine – Hand and Foot.  While you would normally shuffle lots of decks together to play from a central pile, it also works just fine to have everyone playing from their own draw piles. We’ve done it with two decks per person, and that worked great. (We might try playing with partners sometime, but only if there are the same number of people at each location that can play together on the same table. So far we haven’t had that set up, but maybe some day!)

Games with Video Calls – with One Copy of the Game

And finally, there are the group games that can be played with just one central copy of a game. We’ve already come up with a pretty long list of these games. The first one we played was CodeNames. As I think about it, even though we were using video chats to play the above games, CodeNames was actually the first game we played that did require some sort of visual. If you aren’t familiar with the game, it starts with twenty-five cards laid out in a five by five matrix. There are two teams, and each team is trying to get their team members to find their group’s cards by giving them clues. Everyone is going to have to be able to see the layout of the cards. Since we have family members with an iPad, it was easy to set up the tablet to look down at the arrangement and constantly “stream” it to all of us. As cards get selected, they then get covered, so you need to be able to track the changes that get made to the “board” as guesses are made. You could do that without a video chat, if you got really creative with pictures on your phones, but I’m confident that the video makes it easier, and is a readily available option to almost anyone these days.

Other Game Options

Other games we have played this way, or plan to play, include Scattegories, Hit or Miss, Six Word Memoir, Wits and Wagers, and some form of Pictionary. (Did I mention we have LOTS of games?!?) And we’re still working on how to play Cranium this way!

Once again, now that I think about it, most of those games could actually be played with just a phone call if you don’t want to mess with a video chat. Not Cranium, of course, and probably not Pictionary! But come on, you really needed an excuse to see each other, didn’t you?

I hope some of these ideas are helpful in giving you and your loved ones some new ways to connect! If I’ve left out any of your favorite long distance games, please let me know. And if you have specific questions about how we played any of these, let me know that, too. The goal is to encourage everyone here, not to discourage you!

Have fun. Keep safe and keep sane.

Cathy

P.S. – One month in we’ve played 17 different games like this with family and friends across the city, the country, and around the world, and have many more on our list to try in the future!

One of our Favorite Games – Quixx

Family Game Playing

As I mentioned in last week’s post, our family is big into games – board games, dice games, card games. At any one time we generally have 100 or so in the family collection. We’ve managed to contain all except our large supply of Monopoly games and a few variations on Risk in a large bookcase at the moment (pictured in last week’s post). At different times we’ve had a “game closet” or just taken over shelves and shelves of my library.  I like having them generally in one place – it makes it easier for someone to dig through them.  On Memorial Day there were six of us at home and my daughter-in-law just went in and grabbed a stack of games that said “six or more players.” We worked our way through several of the older games, before returning to the newest favorite game – Quixx.

New Favorite – Quixx

We encountered Quixx recently when a family friend introduced it to my youngest son. It is another simple (but addictive) game that the rest of us had never seen before. After a quick explanation (the rules can be read or explained in under five minutes), several of us were ready to play.

Playing the Game

And after only a few rounds, most of us were hooked! It is a relatively simple dice game that requires deciding if and when to mark off numbers on your personal board (4 rows of numbers, 2 going from 2 to 12 and 2 going from 12 down to 2). The most important rule is that you can only mark off numbers to the right of any that you’ve already marked off. (Making the “if” of marking numbers as critical a decision as the “where” of marking them.)

Basic and Deluxe Versions

There are several different variations of the game currently available, but I’ll just explain the two we have – the basic game and the deluxe game. There’s a pretty big price difference between the two, so if you’re getting it to check it out, you probably want to go with the basic game (under $8 at the time I’m writing this). But if your family enjoys it as much as ours does, you might find yourself buying the deluxe game pretty quickly (about $20 at this time). (And if you end up with two games that way – you can always share the first one, or keep it on hand for your travel pleasure!)

There are two major differences between the two versions – the deluxe version has larger dice and dry erase boards instead of the disposable paper ones. If you play the game very often, those reusable boards are what make the deluxe game worth the extra money. Oh, and the dry erase boards are actually double sided – so you also get a new variation on the game with the deluxe.

Reasons We Like Quixx

So, why so much excitement in our family about this game? Let me see if I can run through the reasons we like Quixx so much:

  1. It’s very quick to learn the rules and the game play itself is easy to figure out.
  2. Each turn someone roles the dice (you start with 1 each of 4 different colors and 2 white dice)
  3. And each turn everyone is deciding whether to mark off zero, one, or two numbers.
  4. As simple as the game is to play, it really is a thinking game, as you make each of those choices.
  5. The more you play, the more you work on your strategy, and the more fun it becomes.
  6. It’s fun with three people, or fun with more. (We haven’t played it with two, but would imagine it would be fun then, too.)

Quixx Mixx

The second side of the dry erase boards is the “Quixx Mixx” version of the game.  As the name implies, it’s a mixed version of Quixx. The four rows of numbers are still in the same order, but the colors are mixed up. My biggest complaint about the Quixx Mixx version is that the rules on “locking” and scoring aren’t clear, which frustrates some of my family members. We’ve played it with at least three different variations on the rules, as we’ve tried to figure out which are the “right” ones. The biggest recommendation I have for that is that you make sure everyone understands which way those rules are being interpreted.

Game Recommendations

The box recommends the game for ages 8 and up, with up to eight people. We’ve only played it with adults thus far, but I can definitely see older kids enjoying it, too.

So, if you are looking for a new family-friendly game to play, we can certainly recommend Quixx!

Happy playing!

Cathy

Games, Games, Games

I spoke several weeks ago about how fun and learning going hand in hand, and about the importance of games in an educational package.

Games as Good Entertainment

Today I wanted to go more into the value of games for entertainment as well.  I grew up playing games, for which I am quite thankful. And as a result, games are an important part of my family as well. (It would probably be a toss up in our family as to which get given more often as gifts – games or books!) You can see a small sampling of our current game collection in the picture at the top of the post.

Family Fun

When we planned our first family reunion (my husband and I, our twelve children, and their various significant others, as well as the grandchildren) – there were two important things to decide after we had settled on the dates and locations – how we were going to do meals and what games we would be bringing. I would say for many of us the games were at least as important as the meals. In fact, generally, if folks weren’t preparing, eating, or cleaning up after a meal – they were probably playing a game. We brought a LARGE Rubbermaid container full of the “must have” games and got through quite a few of them during the three-day reunion.

Every family gathering before and after that reunion has probably included games. Whether it’s the holidays and lots of extra family members are on-site, or just an hour before bedtime and there are several of us in the house with a little time to spare – the main question isn’t will we play a game (or two or three…) but rather, which game(s) we have time to play.

Family Favorites

At different times, we have different family favorites that tend to be played again and again. And in future posts I hope to give more details on some of our current favorites. But for this post I thought I would start by sharing a list of some of the most popular games at our house at this time. (A note of warning, some of our old favorites are becoming harder to get – after one of our favorite game makers, Out of the Box, went out of business a couple of years ago.)

A Wide Variety

We enjoy a wide variety of games in our family – but we generally like ones that require a fair amount of thinking skills/logic. They also need to have a bit of luck worked in, or the same person would tend to win all the time, and what’s the fun in that! Generally we prefer games that are quick to learn, but that is not the case with all of these. We also have a variety based on how many people can play at a time and what personal preferences include.

Quixx (Gamewright)

Our most recent purchase, after being introduced to it by a family friend. Easy to learn – but takes time to develop a good strategy.

Fuse (Renegade Game Studio)

A fast-paced, cooperative game. Very addictive for those who like such things!

Innovation (Asmadi Games)

Much longer to learn than some of the others, but for many of us that time is well spent.

Code 777 (Stronghold Games)

Another game that’s easy to learn, but not easy to master.

7 Wonders (Asmodee)

Of all our favorite games, this was one of the longest to learn! But once learned it quickly became the favorite of many of us. We enjoy it with or without the expansion packs:

Codenames (Czech Games)

Two teams – give the clues so your teammates find your words and only your words.

Six Word Memoirs (University Games)

 A game played with partners – how well can you give your teammate a six word clue?

Hit or Miss (Gamewright)

Another one of our favorites, that sadly has become another difficult to find game.

Ticket to Ride (Days of Wonder)

An entire series of great games, always fun:

Imagine (Gamewright)

Uses a different part of the brain. Imagination is definitely the name of this game!

Backseat Drawing (Out of the Box)

Hilarious fun! Not our standard logic and thinking game – another game that uses other skills.

Journey Through Europe (Ravensburger)

I wouldn’t pay $100 for this game (or any other game, for that matter), but if you ever run across it a good price, it is a long time family favorite:

10 Days (Out of the Box)

Another series of great games. These are by Out of the Box, meaning they are now difficult to find, but well worth it if you do!

Eye Know (Wiggles 3D)

At least in our family, this is the preferred way to play a “trivia” game. 

Wits & Wagers (North Star Games)

But this is the ultimate trivia game – trivia meets betting with chips. If you’re okay with that aspect of it, this is a wonderful, team game that can be played with up to twenty people.

Yes, Learning Can Be Fun!

Do You Believe Learning Can Be Fun?

Are you one of those teachers/parents who question whether school can actually be fun? If so, sadly, I would put you in the majority. For some reason, the idea that learning can be fun seems to escape most teachers I talk to (teachers at home or in classrooms).  It’s as if we’ve come to associate learning and drudgery, education and pain.

Do You Incorporate Games?

So after homeschooling for the better part of thirty-five years and helping other homeschool families for at least half of that time, I guess I shouldn’t be amazed by how many people don’t incorporate games into their homeschooling packages.

When Do You Use Games?

Instead, it seems that “fun learning” is something we hold over our students’ heads – “after you finish your assignment, you can play that game, or put together that puzzle.”

What is “Real” School?

But, maybe it’s time to reevaluate what we consider as “real school.” My proposition: If learning is taking place – education is in effect.  And education counts as “real school,” even if it’s outside the scope of a packaged curriculum.  If learning is fun, we have less resistance, our students want to continue it longer, and they will retain more of it.

So where, exactly is the problem with any of that?  Maybe because it takes us away from our comfort zones of lesson plans, “canned curriculum,” and tests. But maybe that’s exactly what we need to be doing.

Games – General

Too often we think of games as merely entertainment or the reward for completing the required schoolwork. But as I said, my contention is that games can and should be a regular part of our educational packages. We need to look more seriously at the “non-schoolish” things that can comprise the various elements of how we educate our children. Those elements should include hands-on learning when feasible and games can make up a unique part of that type of learning.

Games – Valuable Ways to Expand Education

Games often stand alone in their ability to combine fun and repetition with learning. The best games also bring family members of various ages and abilities together in ways that canned curriculum will never do. Once you have started thinking of games as valuable ways to expand the education of your children, you should start to see games and game ideas in a variety of places.

Games You May Already Own

You may want to start by relooking at the games your family already owns.  Have you ever stopped to consider the educational value of games like Monopoly, Yahtzee, and Scrabble? Most of us have owned those games for years, but how often do we break them out as part of school? Sadly, not often enough.

New Rules for Old Games

Consider the games you already own according to the rules they came with, but also try to look at them in a new light. How many of them would serve other purposes if we tweaked the rules some or came up with brand new rules? When children are learning their math facts, dice are a great tool, and when they are learning to spell, Scrabble letters are very useful.

Thinking Outside the Box

And I have found that once we get our children thinking “outside the box” they often exceed us in coming up with new and creative ideas. And of course, beyond revising the games you already own, it can be worth taking a look at new games as well. Well-made quality games are pricier today than when I first started buying games for my family, but the next time you find an educational game you think might meet the needs of your family, but you are balking at the price, consider how much we often spend on just one textbook or teachers’ manual!

All of a sudden that game, which could occupy numerous members of your family for many, many hours and help them obtain or practice a new skill, may be a great value indeed. We need to view prices as just part of the value factor and not the determining one. A very cheap game that no one likes, or that teaches little, can be a very bad use of our money, while the pricier one may prove to be the best value in your educational toolbox.

Repetition Without Pain

Games are particularly useful for young children and students of any age with learning disabilities, but that does not mean you should shy away from them for your other, older students. A key ingredient in any learning is repetition, and a prime factor in repetition without pain is fun! Too many times we discount the importance of fun in education, and we do so at our own loss, and that of our students.

Enjoying a Card Game

Card Games, Dice Games, Board Games

Now, I’m not talking computer games or electronic games here. I will not go so far as to say that there is no educational value in any of those, but I will say that in the case of most kids, they need less electronic stimulation, not more. I’m talking about the value of card games and dice games and good old-fashioned board games.

Good Books and Lots of Games

I was fortunate to grow up with two very important things in my home – lots of good books and lots of game playing, particularly cards. Consequently, my own children have grown up surrounded by both as well! At one point my children counted the games in our game collection, and we had over one hundred. (At last approximation we had over five thousand books in our home as well.) Not that every game gets played equally, but many, many of them have been enjoyed for countless hours by a large variety of people – in and out of our family.

Travel Games/Cards

When we buy each other gifts, they are as often as not books, games, or both. When the older children come home for holidays or breaks out come the favorite games. (Or along come new games, that are often destined to become favorites.) And any time is a good time to pull out a deck of cards! When we travel, it isn’t a question of if we’ll pack any games, but how many we’ll pack.  Even if space is tight, there’s always room for a deck or two of cards. And whether our current group consists of two or ten or more, we can find a game that will work.  (And on the occasion that our group is larger than that, something which happens more and more these days, we just lengthen the table and play multiple games at the same time!)

Specifics: Playing Cards

We would be lost without multiple decks of playing cards around our home.  Cards are an inexpensive, portable, versatile activity.  The youngest to the oldest can be occupied with them. Younger children can match colors and numbers, even with a partial deck of cards.

Card Games for Younger Children

It’s a shame that cards seem to have lost their universal appeal in many places. Cards are not just good fun and shared memories (which would already be enough to make them valuable), they are also great for improving memory, strategy and thinking skills. While most card games involve some level of “luck,” the better ones also require planning and thinking. With younger students there are always the old classics – Memory, Go Fish, Old Maid, Crazy Eights, and War. (Stop and think about the educational value in each of those if you have previously discounted them.)

Memory Games

Memory games are wonderful, and put various ages on an equal footing; my youngest children almost always beat me in these games. (And the beauty of memory games is that they can be made to help introduce or review almost any different topic!)

Card Games for Older Family Members

In our family, we enjoy various card games with anywhere from one to twelve players.  Most of the games we play build thinking skills and the ability to strategize. As the kids got older, some of our family favorites have included Spades, Hearts, Blackout, Canasta, and Shanghai Rummy.

And nowadays you can find the rules for any or all of those on-line, so if you haven’t played them before, or don’t remember how, that is no excuse!

Specifics: Timeline Games

 Chronology

Many years ago I stumbled upon a special card game called Chronology. The original Chronology contained six hundred cards, each with a date and event from their list of important dates in world history. If you can ever find the game, it is a great introduction to or review of world history.)

With Chronology each person starts with a card face up in front of them, and the idea is to build your own personal timeline. If it is your turn, the person next to you on the right takes the top card of the draw pile and reads you the event on it. You don’t have to know the date on the card, you only have to know where it falls relative to the other card you have. (Before in time? Or afterwards?) If you guess correctly you add the card to your personal timeline. Your goal is to eventually arrange a predetermined number of cards in chronological order in front of you.

Time-Line Games

It’s a great way to review (or learn) the flow of important events in history, without sitting down and trying to memorize them.  We liked the idea so well that we made a number of our own Time-Line games, including the History of Astronomy, Space Exploration, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and many more.

And of course, you can also make your own. You can take a timeline of any period of history you are studying with your family and make your own timeline game. You could even make one of family history, including births, deaths (if desired), marriages, and other key family dates.

Specifics: Chess

Chess is a wonderful tool to develop thinking skills.  It is inexpensive, fairly easy to learn, but difficult to master.  It will occupy one or more students for great lengths of time.

Specifics: Puzzles

Puzzles are great builders of both visual skills and thinking skills.  Ravensburger Puzzles have been our all-time favorites, with 24 to 5,000 pieces. Beautiful pictures and quality pieces make them a real joy to put together by all ages.  Larger puzzles can be put together as a cooperative effort by many family members.

 Conclusion

 Games can be store-bought or home-made.  When you are considering games to purchase, look for games that are

  • Educational
  • Versatile
  • Long Lasting (enjoyable to play for years to come)
  • Economical (cheaper is not always the best investment)

Quality German Games

Some of the best games in the world come out of Germany.  I was reading an article in the December 9, 2002 issue of U.S. News and World Report that discussed this phenomenon.  German games topped seven out of ten of Games Magazine’s 2002 categories.  German games are often more expensive – because they are so well built – but they are generally worth the investment.  Our current game collection (over one hundred games) includes a number of games that we bought when we were in Germany –  again, many of them from Ravensburger. German games tend to include more strategy than their American counterparts, and are generally fast-paced.

Educational Games

Educational games can be considered part of our “curriculum package”.   Retention is aided when the students are having fun while learning.  Games can introduce a concept, or help reinforce an existing lesson.  They do not have to be saved until “after school”, they can be part of school.  Buy good games to supplement your other materials – or make your own!  Or better yet, have your students make them!  What a great way to reinforce learning.

Games and Reinforcement

Games can and should be used as a supplement no matter which method(s) we primarily use.  Because games are fun, and easy to repeat, and three-dimensional, they reinforce learning in a way that’s hard to replicate with other methods.

I hope I have helped convince you to look at educational games in a new light. Don’t be afraid to create your own games to help your children repeat or review important concepts. And be sure to take a fresh look at the games that already exist in the market. In conclusion, strive to make learning a little more fun for your family!

 

Have fun learning!

Cathy

Celebrating 35 years of Homeschooling, 40 years of Parenting, 60 years of Life

I think parents in general and homeschoolers specifically have a tendency to become too focused on the here and now. We tend to worry about when our children will learn to read, whether they’ve finished enough textbooks, and how we’ll get them through high school. But although I covered homeschooling highschoolers in an earlier post, I don’t think even that is where we should be focusing our attention. What will their lives look like when they are adults? What will our relationships be with them then? While they will always be our children, our relationships with them can and should change as they become adults.

As a result, I’m not one that cries at graduations or weddings. I see those as further celebrations of the job that we have done (as imperfect as it may be). Maybe it’s easier for me to think that way, since as of last summer, all of my children are adults. But let me encourage you by telling you, it’s all worth it! All the struggles, all the concerns, all the difficulties along the way to seeing them growing up – someday our jobs raising them really are completed.

I’ve been celebrating the completion of almost 35 years of homeschooling since my youngest graduated last May. I had threatened to dance across the stage at that graduation, but since I was also the key note speaker, I only danced internally.

In July the youngest turned 18, marking the passage of all my children to adulthood. (Even if Alabama thinks that age is 19, we’ll go with 18. I don’t want to wait another year to consider that job done, especially when the “child” in question has already graduated and left home!)

Those were celebrations, to be sure. But I think the final celebration of my work as a “Mom of 12” came when my children honored me with a video for my 60th birthday this past week. I laughed and cried (tears of joy) all the way through the 30-minute video where my children and “bonus children” (my son-in-law and daughters-in-law) shared various memories from the last many, many years.

And while no one will ever doubt that I’ve made as many mistakes as any other parent, I can know that I did my best as I raised my children, and that through it they all not only survived but also thrived.

As I watched the video (multiple times, in fact), I have to say that these are the types of things that bring joy to the heart of a homeschool mom, when she hears the thanks for:

  • Always believing in them when they struggled with learning something
  • Always being there for them (even when we were geographically apart)
  • Being willing to say, “Yes, and…” in support of their ideas whenever I could.

Teaching them:

  • To think outside the box
  • To never give up
  • To be willing to try new things/to be adventurous
  • To be thoughtful
  • To be questioning
  • To do their best (but not stress about the scores/results/etc.)

Several of my children enjoying a game.

Instilling in them

  • A love of Learning
  • A love of Games
  • A love of Travel
  • A love of History

Statue of York in Louisville
Following the Lewis and Clark Trail gave us history and travel!

So, when the homeschooling or parenting path is difficult, and you just want to throw in the towel, remember, they do grow up. (I’ve always heard “They grow up too fast” – but I don’t think I would go that far!) And someday, you too will be developing new relationships with your adult children and just looking back at these days as memories.

In the meantime, enjoy the present, don’t stress about the past, and look forward to that day in the future when you too will be retired from this current job that sometimes seems like it will go on forever.

Happy learning and living!

Cathy

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