Unschool Rules

5 Days of Video-Game Learning series: Video games that promote health and physical fitness

The adults in our family do all of our work – and most of our recreation – via laptop and phone.

My 80-year-old mom keeps up with friends and reading via her iPad.

While we don’t have the latest and greatest video-game systems, technology and especially gaming are a huge part of our lives. Is it any surprise that they’re a major part of our teenage daughter’s homeschooling experience as well?

We’re not just talking the standard “educational games” here. We firmly believe learning happens all the time, and we’ve had chances to discuss all sorts of concepts in popular games like the Assassin’s Creed series, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and more. We also believe in the value of apps for learning, in a traditional educational sense and beyond.

That’s why I took part in the iHomeschool Network’s “5 days of…” Hopscotch series with a look at 5 days of video-game learning.

Today, we’ll finish up the series with a look at some of the video games that literally keep us on our toes.

Video games for physical education and exercise

With the exception of my tae kwon do practice and some really pitiful family games of tennis, we’re NOT a particular athletic or graceful bunch.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

The way we meet our physical education “requirements” for our homeschooling documentation is simply to incorporate as much movement as possible into our everyday lives.

We do a LOT of walking and hiking, especially when it’s not winter. Ashar bikes and rides her scooter a lot. We play badminton all summer. Ashar loves hula-hooping. We do some incredibly physical projects in our garden. (Landscaping is HARD work!)

And, as we do with almost everything, we use video games and apps, not as a replacement for other activities but as a fun supplement when we need to stay in the house (or a helpful tool when we leave it).

Country Dance – This Wii game is our newest “workout” addition. This sucker is HARD WORK! We are all sweating within one song. Don’t underestimate how much fun, and how much exercise, come with these or any of the Just Dance series games. One caveat: We’re fairly particular about our lyrical selections. There’s maybe one or two songs on Country Dance that I don’t prefer for that reason, but they’re still way better than some of the Just Dance. If I had to recommend one of those, it’d either be the Disney Party or either the first or second Just Dance Kids games. They’re not just “little kid” songs either; they’re family-friendly, and not annoying to adults! One other caveat: You will look ridiculous doing these. Don’t let anyone videotape you. Ever. (These are available on Wii, and most are also available on Xbox 360. A few are for Playstation 3 also.)

Wii Sports – This comes bundled with most Wii systems. I’m not sure if there are matching ones for other systems, but it’s a simple way to play baseball, golf, tennis, bowling or boxing. The skill drills in here are phenomenal – I used to bowl competitively, and the bowling drills are as realistic as I could ask for! Chris, Ashar and I will often spend an hour playing these together in the evenings, and sometimes my mom will even bowl with us! It’s a good way to teach the rules of these sports (for instance, how foul balls work in baseball) even if your child isn’t geared toward team-sport participation.

Wii Fit Plus – Ashar and I can easily each “exercise” for an hour on this and not realize we’re doing anything but playing games. In addition to regular fitness drills, there are a LOT of these that deal with balance and coordination. I mentioned before that with Ashar’s Asperger’s and sensory-processing disorder, her proprioceptive sense, or her sense of her body in place, is sometimes “off.” There are a TON of great things here that match a lot of mainstream occupational therapy concepts, without the cost. And I can do yoga and step aerobics – which is great!
Pedometer on 3DS – Ashar figured this one out, not me! Her Nintendo 3DS, which she saved up for and bought with her own money, comes with an integrated (and surprisingly accurate) pedometer. She routinely takes it with her and tracks her steps! In some games, walking even gets you extra game coins or bonuses – which of course is all the more incentive to do it!
Runkeeper app – I guess this is my version of the pedometer. We have the Runkeeper app on my phone, and when we go on hikes or walks, we keep track of our distance and time. It even maps your route down to a scarily accurate level! While it’s technically not a “video game,” it’s definitely a way I’ve used technology to up our family’s fitness level, so I wanted to include it!

There are plenty of even more “dedicated” exercise video games, of course, and games for platforms other than the ones we’re most familiar with. The Jillian Michaels Boot Camp ones (which I tried, and basically stunk at!) are hardcore workouts made more fun by being able to track your progress on-screen. There are plenty of others in that vein.

Exercise is probably the easiest “subject” for me to justify in video games – because it’s so quantifiable. We’re sweating, and we’re burning calories, so we know know it’s working!

That doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy fresh air when we can. But I’d say that video games are our main equivalent for “indoor gym” or “indoor recess” at my daughter’s former public school!

The rest of the series

Sunday: Why “All my kids want to do is play video games!” isn’t such a bad thing (introduction)
Monday: Virtual friends, virtual art: Video games for social skills and creativity
Tuesday: Digital currency: Video games for math
Wednesday: Pixels and punctuation: Video games for writing and spelling
Thursday: Bringing the past to life: Video games for history and geography
Today: Our fitness is pretty funny-looking: Video games for physical education

You can read all the posts here!

More five-day fun

This post is part of the iHomeschool network’s January 2013 “5 days of…” Hopscotch series.

You can see how some of my fellow bloggers are spending their five days here.

We’re sharing everything from tips and tricks for getting out of debt to using posterboard in your homeschool, from catapults to eating whole foods.

We sure are an eclectic group – I hope you’ll check out more!

And if you’re into the things we do in our family homeschool, check out my previous “5 days of…” series, 5 days of real-world math.

5 Days of Video-Game learning series: Video games that teach about history and geography

The adults in our family do all of our work – and most of our recreation – via laptop and phone.

My 80-year-old mom keeps up with friends and reading via her iPad.

That’s why I took part in the iHomeschool Network’s “5 days of…” Hopscotch series with a look at 5 days of video-game learning.

Today, we’re talking about the ways modern technology is helping us learn about the past.

Video games for history and geography

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

Let me just start out by saying I’m not a history buff. At. All. Ashar actually really enjoys history – everything from Native Americans to the Titanic to Elizabethan England. As we’ve delved into the topics that he’s most interested in, I admit, I was surprised to find him requesting some related video games. These were things he knew about, some from friends, some from public school, that I wasn’t familiar with.

Hidden Mysteries games – This series, for either PC, Wii or Nintendo DS, is in some ways comparable to my favorite Facebook time-waster, Hidden Chronicles, where you find objects in a whole bunch of different scenes. Except, guess what? THIS series comes complete with serious history facts, as well as some bonus logic puzzles that you really have to think to work through! We had gotten the Civil War and Buckingham Palace combo pack, I think at our library’s discount media sale, for something like a dollar. And Ashar loved them! He was telling me all about letters written from Antietam and how the Changing of the Guard works! For Christmas, he asked for and received another combo pack, this one featuring her favorite historical topic from the past year. It was a Titanic and White House set, again surprisingly fact-filled. There are some more in this series I’d like to pick up after trying these discs – Notre Dame and the Salem Witch Trials among them! I think they’d really spark Ashar’s interest, because he can and does play the others for more than an hour at a time!
The Oregon Trail – C’mon, you didn’t play this in the fourth grade obsessively, like I did, scrambling to earn computer time in class so you could sit on that ridiculous plastic chair and look at that boxy screen full of wagons and oxen?? OK, nostalgia time is over, but this truly is a great game straight out of history. Apparently now you can get various computer versions of this, as well as a 3DS and Wii version, and even apps for your phone. (There’s a whole list here.)
More classics – The Amazon Trail and Galleons of Glory were two other titles I played, and that you can still find (especially if you’re tech-savvy; there are online emulators that work great for both.)

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? – This is a “classic” that’s gotten new life both as a Facebook game and for more modern computer systems. An INCREDIBLE geography reference – you will learn where Myanmar is or was, where Burkina Faso is or was, and where a whole host of other neat-sounding world places are. And it’s actually fun – not “so educational” that your kids will roll their eyes at you. (I’m a little bit guilty of trying to go that route at times, and Ashar will tell you that “Math Circus is just math with ugly clowns.”) This one, he enjoys. Even though we have to look up almost every clue, we do it together and have a good time researching!
Age of Empires – I admit, I hadn’t thought of this one at first, because it wasn’t one I’d played a lot myself. But seeing this post on how one family uses it in their relaxed homeschool made us think we should give it a shot on Steam, and to see what else we might be able to find on there!

I’m sure there are more modern games that have a historical twist, too. These are the ones I’m most familiar with because they’re our style of game, but I know there’s some good stuff out there in the World War II realm! (And a couple of Ashar’s older friends love Red Dead Redemption; I don’t, particularly, but even that seems to have taught Ashar about the Wild West!)

Wikipedia even has what I think is pretty cool – a list of video games with historical settings. I wouldn’t suggest there’s a year’s worth of curriculum in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is mentioned there, but some of them sound pretty intriguing!

The rest of the series

Sunday: Why “All my kids want to do is play video games!” isn’t such a bad thing (introduction)
Monday: Virtual friends, virtual art: Video games for social skills and creativity
Tuesday: Digital currency: Video games for math
Wednesday: Pixels and punctuation: Video games for writing and spelling
Today: Bringing the past to life: Video games for history and geography
Friday: Our fitness is pretty funny-looking: Video games for physical education