We’re heading into our final week of first semester, which means… it’s time for our mid-year review game party! Although last year I posted photos of our homeschool group’s Review Game Extravanganza on the Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood Facebook page, I didn’t get around to writing about it. Now that I’m searching for bits and pieces of supplies from all parts of our home, I thought I’d write this up to remind me what I’m looking for the next time around! (haha)
So… let’s see {scratching head and thinking really hard}… as I prepared for this last year, I roamed around our home (and even borrowed a few things from our church), attempting to find random things to transform into carnival games for our community review carnival. This included a plastic bowling set our children no longer played with…
…and a mini-golf set that I had planned to use in class but never did…
… along with two boards from some bunkbeds which are now separated into individual twin beds. The boards prevented us from having to run after balls going every which way in the fellowship hall (except for the occasional student who might have thought he was at a driving range).
Then… thanks to our church, we put together the English Grammar Chicken Fling, which consisted of six KFC buckets, some dog-toy chicken legs, and a kitty litter scooper. Some students actually perfected the art of the litter-scooper chick flick.
After finding a carnival beanbag toss (or cornhole toss) in our church’s storage shed, I paired it up with a bunch of miniature rubber duckies I found in the toy box, and voila! Science Chuck-a-Duck!
For geography, we set up a relay, which didn’t work out as planned.
Thanks to some middle-school student help, we were able to run this station even though we were running short on parents. However, it’s the one game I wanted to change because the students were split into small groups which were rotating through the different stations. This made a relay difficult. (Who has a relay with just two students? Not so much fun.) We originally thought we would place two groups at this station at the same time, but the coordination of that effort also failed. Instead, we modified the relay to be a timed competition between all the groups, but then we forgot to set the timer. So… we just worked with it however the particular group wanted to do it, and I used it as an opportunity for improvement. (In hindsight, it wasn’t failure. I just found one way not to do the geography station for this year.) An alternative to this activity is a spoon relay game (which still requires multiple students) or a nerf-gun shootout (where students take turns shooting and get to answer a question for each can they knock down).
That brings us to what I think might have been the two most popular games…
Angry Birds Timeline Towers (using cardboard blocks and plush Angry Birds, although any stuffed animals will do)…
…and the History Sentence TP Toss. There’s just something about throwing stuff to demolish “buildings” and… well,who doesn’t love tossing whole rolls of toilet paper into the toilet?
While most of the stations did not require any prep work on my part, the TP Toss did. After cutting a hole for the toilet seat, I covered a cardboard box with faux-wooden contact paper. I also taped the rolls of TP with clear packaging tape to prevent them from unrolling all over the fellowship hall. I’m so glad I had the foresight to think of such things!
Oh, and let me just mention here that the toilet seat was a brand-new, never-been-used, still-in-the-package toilet seat, and the litter scooper had never touched kitty litter. Nevertheless, it added a nice gross factor to the whole thing.
Logistics
Our homeschool group divided up into 6 teams (with an adult assigned to each group to help coordinate the effort) and assigned each group to a starting station. We also had an adult (or middle/high school student) at each station asking the review questions. After each student answered a memory work question at that station, s/he took his/her shots. Every 10 minutes or so I banged a pot with a metal spoon (because I forgot the bell I was planning to use), and the students rotated to the next station. In about an hour, we had reviewed all of the memory work in copious quantities. (And it didn’t even matter that we only had 5 declensions to recite for Latin – they enjoyed bowling over and over again!) To make it even more special, they also received a sticker to place in these Holy Land Sticker Book Passports. This year, had I planned far enough ahead, we could have opted for the “My Passport” Sticker Books or the Outer Space Passport Sticker Books. Instead, we’re making a homemade version. {If you need a template to design your own passport sticker books, visit this post.}
That about wraps it up. It was so much fun last year, and I’m looking forward to another round!
Supplies List
The following list includes affiliate links to Amazon, but it’s amazing what you can find by roaming around your home with the intent of transforming random stuff into a review game. Matter of fact, if you come across an idea, I would love to hear about it. Be sure to leave a comment or shoot me an email! I love hearing from you!
Timeline Towers
- Plush Angry Birds (a more affordable alternative to this would be Emoji Timeline Towers)
- Cardboard Building Blocks
GeoTorch Relay
- Current Maps
- Tissue Paper with two small dowel rods (tape tissue paper flames to dowel rods)
Science Chuck-a-Duck
English Chicken Fling
- 5-6 KFC Buckets
- Kitty Litter Scooper
- Chicken Legs or Mini-Chickens
Math Mini-Golf
- Mini-Golf Set
- Board to keep golf balls within our area
History TP Toss
- Box with toilet seat
- 3 Rolls taped TP
Latin Bowling
- Bowling Set
- Board to keep bowling balls in our area
Alternative Games
- Nerf Gun Shoot Out (use plastic or sytrofoam cups and nerf guns) or
- Egg Spoon Relay Game (use wooden spoons and plastic easter eggs + 2 buckets) or
- Toss Across
- Connect Four Shots
- Horseshoes
- Magnetic Dartboard
Do you have a review game party in your homeschool group? If so, please tell us all about it in the comments! We’d love to hear what others are doing!