How Video Games Helped our Homeschool
Yes, you heard that correctly. Video games helped my daughter with homeschooling. Prepare for the boo’s. Hear me out. My daughter was in public school through 2nd grade. She is the OG Covid kid. Started kindergarten and in March, the world fell apart. I was working full time for a jobbed that required me to track every minute of my day. She was left to her own devices…quite literally during the day because I was unable to do anything. To be fair, that first year of Covid, everybody was just in survival mode and there was very minimal distance learning happening.
Then came 1st grade, and my situation was still the same and they had a hybrid between distance learning and in person. She was placed in Title I to help her read and sometimes she was meeting at school and other times, they attempted (strong on the attempt) to meet virtually when the kids were home.
Moving into 2nd grade, she was able to test out of Title I and join gen pop again. To me, this felt like a NCLB thing and they just wanted to move kids along because, now looking back, she agrees with me that she was not ready.
During this time, I was taking in as much homeschool material as my brain could muster and I was reading a lot about the idea of just letting the reading come naturally. Or that it will come when they need it. I decided to leave it, but keep a close eye on it, and let her find ways that sparked her desire to read. That is where video games came in.
She was playing Minecraft regularly and using the chat. She essentially taught herself how to read and write through using the chat because she wanted to talk to her friends. First she started out using the autocorrect option, where if you type in a few letters, it will give you the word choices to choose from. Then 6 months down the line, it just clicked. She could read chapter books with no issue. Never asking me to help her with sentences. She has also become quite the typer from using her tablet keyboard.
The key also is to never allow voice chat. Voice chat is also where it is easier for kids to hear things they shouldn’t. Voice chat is also a crutch for them when they should be reading and typing.
Now, of course this will not work for some kids. My daughter is a virgo (cue the astrology haters) and so her sense of justice is very high. She also doesn’t like people that much so her tolerance for shenanigans is extremely low. She has no patience for anybody that is going to act anything other than friendly, appropriate, and kind. She would report anybody in a second if they acted otherwise. So I have trust that is going to use the chat in Minecraft and Roblox appropriately. She also plays games that do not bring in the wrong people.
If you have a child that loves Warrior Cat books, there is a Roblox game where they can roleplay and they would learn reading and writing so fast through that.
If you have a child that loves mermaids, there is a Roblox game where they can be mermaids and learn to read and write looking for pearls to get pretty tails.
There is a game where you are a cow and you have to find and read books to be able to get other types of cows.
There is a family friendly game for almost anything on Roblox. Yes there are games that are not. That is where you as a parent need to do your research on which games your kids need to stay away from. I make sure to keep up to date on the things that weirdos are doing and what games they seem to gravitate towards.
All of this to say that video games are not always this boogeyman that a lot of people make them out to be. Are there kids that should not have access to video games? Yes, but that is not my job to determine who that would be. Are there kids that would benefit like my daughter? For sure.
