If you have a child that loves video games you may be wondering if you can use those video games as part of your homeschooling. I know have wondered the very same thing as a homeschool mom, so you are not alone trying to figure out how you can use video games in your homeschool.
Video games are a popular pastime for kids and teens and many parents are discovering that you can use video games to help with your child’s education and make learning fun.
Why using video games in your homeschool is good for your child
Most kids would happily spend all day on a screen. Even more so right when getting out of the house is limited. If your child is going to spend hours on a screen you can make that time worthwhile by making it educational.
Video games often require reading and some require writing skills. This makes video games a great way to encourage reluctant readers to get a bit more reading in each day without realizing that they are doing it. Likewise, you can use video games to sneak in other educational opportunities.
Using video games to teach your child means you will spend time with them while they are playing. This makes for a great opportunity to bond with your child over something that interests them to help build a stronger bond between you and your child.
4 Ways to Use Videos Games in Your Homeschool
- Build a unit study around a video game to help tie in other subjects to really immerse your child into the learning experience.
Pairing books, history lessons, and even science experiments with your child’s favorite video games can bring them to life and make learning fun. A great place to start using video games in your homeschool is with a video game unit study.
- Use video games to capture your child’s interest in a subject they are learning about.
There are video games that give teens the opportunity to take a look at school subjects, such as history and geography, in a new light. The amount of research that goes into video games is amazing and makes them a wonderful educational opportunity as your student explores new places, interacts with historical figures, and solves puzzles that keep them thinking.
- Help your student learn to code.
Coding is the new popular homeschool topic because of its amazing STEM skillset and need for code designers in the workforce. Take your child’s love of games as an opportunity to encourage them to give learning to code and make their own video games, apps, and websites a try. Even if your child doesn’t choose a career in these fields the critical thinking and problem-solving skills your child will learn can help them for the rest of their lives.
- Minecraft has an entire educational platform available to you for helping your child explore and learn coding, math, and problem solving while having fun playing with other kids in an interactive yet educational setting.
Minecraft Education Edition is free for your computer but is not compatible with other additions. You can turn any Minecraft addition into an educational opportunity with your child having them build models of monuments, explore biomes to learn about climates and geography or dive into a modification pack that is educational making using Minecraft in your homeschool easy.
As with anything, in my opinion, you can use video games in your homeschool to further your child’s education. You might even have fun playing with your kids and create special memories together while doing so.
Video games have ratings that you’ll want to pay attention to, just as you would movies. Assassin’s Creed has been mentioned as a great video game for history and geography, however, based on the reviews, I would not add it to my teen’s video game stash.
How do you use video games in your homeschool?
