Monthly Fun Day

Today I decided to have our Monthly Fun Day. We did school every other day this week, so I figured it was a good day to choose.

I got the idea from my friend Jennifer who has Friday Fun Days weekly. Since we have co-op twice a month, I didn't want to dedicate one day a week for Fun Day, but figured that monthly would work for our schedule.

I also was encouraged to do this when I read It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend by Richard Lavoie. This book is about social relationships and children with learning disabilities. The author noted that board games are excellent ways for children to build social skills. Board games encourage things like taking turns, putting others' desires ahead of one's own, handling disappointment, and more, as well as academic skills like counting money and reading.

So, on our Monthly Fun Day, each child picks a board game and we play it for 45 minutes to an hour. That's 4 board games in case you lost count of my children. Today we played:

• Star Wars DVD Trivial Pursuit (choice of James, age 7)
• Go Fish with Barbie cards (choice of Emily, age 9)
• Lord of the Rings Monopoly (choice of David, age 12)
• Tractor Tipping (choice of Suzy, age 4)

I was holding out for the Cranium Kids game, but no one picked it.

My kids are sorely in need of practice in handling disappointment. lol