Games That Never Fail in Our Homeschool | Gameschool Favorites We Use Again and Again

Hey everybody, welcome to the Law Dock Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be games that never fail. Like these are the games that I can bring to the table anytime and they're always going to be a hit. First we are going to start with like quick play kind of the games that we would use for a reset in our homeschool. So the ones that like the lesson went badly and I need to press the reset button before we move forward or we just need a brain break or we have an extra 10 minutes and we want to play some games real quick. These are the ones that we reach for because they're never going to fail and we're going to love them. Most of them, no, actually all of them can be played with two players, which is really important to us because typically if we are resetting our homeschool, only one of us is playing with Emily. So it's very rare that like in the middle of the day when we need to hit that reset button that Kevin, I and Emily are all free to play a game. It's typically like, Hey, Kevin, can you play something with Emily real quick? Or I'm playing something with her real quick. So all of these games work really well with two players. The newest edition that we are like obsessed with and it is currently the most reached for game is trash dice. It is really, really simple. You are literally just rolling dice to like fill in this lid from one to six. It is a lot of fun. That's I don't know something about rolling dice like you can never go wrong with that. So that is a huge one. An old faithful is blank. Like seriously, this is like the quickest card game Emily and I can play it and probably under two minutes. We don't even like deal the cards technically. We set the deck out and we just like set it side by side and then that's yours. That's mine. And we can play it in less than two minutes. It's the one that like, if we just need a reset, if we just need something quick, it's the one we're reaching for because you're just matching either the color, the shape or the number to another card. So you're like speed throwing down like, for example, you could put this one on there because there's four on both and then you can put this one on here because it's gray. So you're like speed getting rid of your cards. It is a lot of fun and does a great game to reset because you don't need to like know anything. It is simply just colors, patterns and formations like numbers like you don't have to read and you're not like being defeated because it's trivia or whatever. Like it's a really good reset along those same lines and a favorite is spot it. We probably have 10 to 20 different versions of spot it. We have sports, we have Harry Potter, we have Star Wars, we have like all of them because this has been one of my favorite games since she was probably five years old. Each card has pictures on them and each card only has one other map, like one item that matches the next card. So they're, it's like one of those things that's making you think, making you pay attention to just what you're doing and not thinking about like other things, whatever was getting you upset and making you need the reset. But again, you're not having to like know anything so you're not being defeated by the game itself. Okay. We also have Top Trumps, which this is basically just a war like game with facts. So it is like a sneaky learning game because you don't have to know anything going in, but you might learn something while you're playing it. And we have a ton of these because they come in so many different topics. Like anything that your kid is interested in, dinosaurs, history, Harry Potter, Star Wars, jets, sports, there's a Top Trump for it. Canoodle Gravity is basically a like real life Tetris. So you stand this up, you can get it out and not make a mess and you take these pieces out and you basically are battling each other going back and forth, trying to force the other player to not be able to fit it in the thing. Sometimes I will pull this out and just have Emily like fill it herself to first disengage from whatever it was that upset her or got her off kilter. I'll be like, Hey, why don't you pull Canoodle Gravity out, pour the pieces out, do the puzzle one time by yourself and then I'll play you in it. And that way she has like a minute to decompress before I'm sitting down and like battling her head to head. That is a perfect way for that to work. Cobra Paw. This is a really, really simple game, but it's another one that's fast. So you have these tiles that have images on them and you have two dice and you roll the dice and whatever two images come up on the dice, you are like speed battling to use your skills, your ninja skills and grab the tile that matches it. There's only one tile typically for each roll match that you will come up with. It is really fun and it is almost impossible not to be laughing by the time we finish playing this because you're constantly like grabbing for the other one or like accidentally slapping each other or whatever. It's hilarious. And it plays really quick, which is honestly is all of these are wins. They all play in like 10 to 15 minutes. So they're that reset, that sweet spot. The Genius Square. This is another one that sometimes I will have Emily do the board by herself one time and then we'll go against each other. So basically it is just kind of a puzzle. You roll the dice, you put the block, the regular blocks where it tells you and then you're trying to Tetris fit the rest in, but you're trying to do it faster than your opponent does it. Quick hooks. You basically have all of these different cards and you're trying to slide your pucks around to match whatever this card is. There's like beginner and advanced and then you ring the bell when you're done. So it's another one that I can also have Emily like do one by herself and then we can go head to head. Some of our other ones that take a little bit more. So typically these aren't the ones that I reach for if we need a reset. These are more the ones that I reach for when we just like need a brain break. Is Mancala. You need a little bit more strategy for this or the way we play you need a little more strategy. You don't have to. You can just pick up stones and drop them and not have any actual strategy and it would be fine. But Emily likes to, like she's pretty serious about Mancala. This is right up there with like chess or checkers for her. So this is like brain break game, not necessarily a reset game for us, but it's still one that we reach for and it would obviously never fail on our table. Same thing with Blackest Duo. This is a reset game because it takes just a little more strategy than I feel like a reset game is. This would be great for brain breaks or like, hey, we have some time. Let's play a game. In fact, if it's my turn to pick and we're playing a game that just the two of us, this is always my pick. Like always. Emily almost never picks it because she knows that I'm going to pick it and it gives her the opportunity to pick something else. And then one of our favorites, we have multiple versions of this too, is Asmundi. It's a math game. You essentially are kind of speed racing to pick different things. This one happens to be the wild one, so it's fractions. We also have somewhere, oh, it's higher than I can reach right now. We also have the regular one. They also have one that's little ones. So kind of wherever your kids are at mathematics, I would probably go down one. So like obviously, for example, if there was an algebra one, I wouldn't play algebra for like a reset, you know, like it would definitely be when we have clear minds for something that was more challenging. This is more like review math, in which case it's great for resets and brain breaks because of that. Okay, now let's get into the like family games that we play. And when we do a game night, typically we sit down to play three games, unless it's a game that we know is going to last longer than an hour, in which case we may not play three. But normally it's, we always play three games and each one of us is bringing a game to the table so that by the end of the night, everybody got to play something that they loved. But if we're busy, if we only have time to play one game, I know without a doubt that I can pick any of these games that I'm going to show you and everybody is going to be satisfied maybe not thrilled because maybe they wanted to play something a little bit different. But we all equally love these games enough to be happy if it's the one that's brought to the table. First we have flip seven. Next we have Sky Joe, Uno, and Phase 10, Strike, and actually inside here we keep them all in one. We also have, there's a Harry Potter version of Strike, so we have Harry Potter Strike. We have the original Strike. And then there was also, I don't remember the name of it, but it's an elemental version. They don't call it Strike. I think it's like Element Impact or something. But all three of them are basically a version of Strike and you just need an arena. So we only kept one arena. So I can bring this one to the table and then say, okay, this is what we're going to play. And then they'll pick which version they want to play. And they're always happy with that. Rakko, Yahtzee, Emily and I are happy with this. Kevin is thrilled with it. It's his absolute favorite. One Too Many Rabbits, Spots, King of Tokyo. This is one that Kevin and I are happy with, Emily is thrilled with. Dragonwood, this would be all three of us being thrilled. This is probably, if I had to pick like a top three game most played, equally loved by all of us, Dragonwood would definitely be in the top three. King Domino, Quirkle, this is Kevin and Emily happy and me thrilled. Clue, and we have so many versions of this. We have Disney Villains, we have Dungeons and Dragons, we have Harry Potter, we have the original, we have another like, I don't know, we have probably five or six different versions, but I could grab any of them and everybody would be equally happy. Even happier if I also turn on the TV and we watch Clue while we play. And then all of us love the beauty of all of the Lawrence King games. So any of their memory games, this one happens to be Match a Bird, so in this one you're matching the male to the female, some of the others you'll match like the kitten to the cat or the puppy to the dog, you know, cause they'll look different as they get older. Or any of their, sorry, or any of their bingo, again, this happens to be bird bingo, but we have bird, monkey, bug, ocean, trees, there's so many different ones and I could bring any of them to the table and we all just love like how beautiful it is. They're very calming to play. They're like those, it's like a cozy game to me. Normally it's one that we'll play in the fall or the winter and we, you know, blankets and we're drinking something warm. They're just, they're just so beautiful. So these, either of them in any of them. Now I would love to know what are some of the games for your family that never fail, whether you're using them for homeschool brain breaks or resets or just good old-fashioned family game nights. I would absolutely love it if you tell me down in the comments so I can look into them and see if we don't already own them about adding them to our game shelves.