I’ll admit it right up front, language arts is my favorite part of homeschool. It’s the part I feel most comfortable and confident about, so it ends up being the one where we have the most freedom and fun.
When Hanna was younger we played Mad Libs all the time in the car. What an easy way to start introducing the parts of speech, in a fun and silly way. When she couldn’t remember what an adverb was, we pulled up SchoolHouse Rock. 🙂
As she got older our games got a little more complex. She started helping me with my Words With Friends games. 🙂 Then she got her own phone and now she plays me (and sometimes comes close to winning lol).
However, playing with language, for us, is way more than games… it’s a lifestyle. 🙂
There’s this “game” we play now. When my kiddo was little, every time she saw an airplane she would point and shout, “AIRPLANE”. She’s (mostly) gotten over shouting about airplanes, but it’s turned into shouting about language arts. 🙂 It started with Brave Writer Arrows. They each feature grammar, and a literary element. When we start an Arrow we take note of the grammar and literary element, and look for it throughout the book. When we see/hear it (depending if we’re reading or listening to the audiobook) we shout it out. So if the literary element is alliteration, every time we would hear alliteration in the book we’d shout “ALLITERATION”.
Well, we don’t play small, and it started to overflow into the rest of our life. We’d see a sign, or hear an ad, or a song on the radio and shout ALLITERATION whenever we heard it.
Then we had some writing issues around using which, which and witch correctly. I put together a big poster with the definition of homophone and used witch, which and which as the examples. It blew up! Pretty soon we were shouting HOMOPHONE in the middle of our regularly scheduled lives. 🙂
I think the most surprising one was just after we finished the Arrow for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (HOMOPHONE). We were sitting together one night, trying to decide on a movie to watch as a family. We finally landed on the 80’s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As the movie started, Ferris turned to the camera and started speaking directly to the audience. Hanna shouted out “OMG!!! He’s breaking the 4th wall!!” My husband looked at her like she was nuts, but I just smiled. The literary element for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was breaking the 4th wall.
There’s really nothing quite as delightful as knowing that without worksheets, or workbooks, or any tedious “lessons”, my kiddo was learning language. <3
So…that leads me to my very favorite language arts game. Quiddler. Quiddler is a card game, that we’ve apparently been playing incorrectly from the get go. We tried the “real” way and didn’t like it, so we’re sticking with our rules. The basics are, you draw cards that have letters on them, and try to form words with your letters. I love this game so much. We keep a phone on the table open to the dictionary, and call “shenanigans” when someone plays a word that doesn’t quite seem like a word. 🙂 This happens to my kiddo quite often, but they are always words. She’s gotten very good at looking up short words that aren’t well known. You can read our whole review of Quiddler here… but if you’re looking for a fun game to play with language, I definitely recommend it. 🙂
There are so many ways you can play with language and make learning language arts fun, not only for your kids, but for you as well. Try it for a bit. Put the workbooks away, and make language arts a fun part of your lifestyle. Do you have a fun language arts game your family loves to play (even if you made it up!)? Come tell us all about it in my ROSE Homeschoolers group. (Relaxed, Older kids, Secular, Eclectic homeschoolers). We’re always up to learning more games!
