My kids work hard on reading.  Really hard.  The reading program we use, Barton Reading, is not an easy program.  It can be extremely dull at times, and yet it’s been so wonderful to see my kids reading take off.  Even they will mention how much easier reading is since starting this curriculum. 

Susan Barton does not dismiss the value of games, in fact she includes a few in her Tutor Support pages on the website.  However, I like to have something all three of us can play together sometimes as a reward for hard work.  Enter a game we’ve named "Barton Boggle"!  (I found this idea at the Crafty Classroom, I just modified it to work for us)

I bought a bunch of one inch wooden blocks at a craft store along with paint that would match our Barton tiles.  (Barton color codes things:  consonants-blue; vowels & vowel teams-yellow; units-red; prefixes-orange, etc.) I painted away, then used a sharpie to write on the blocks.  If they have a tile for it during their Barton time, they now have a block with the same thing….a side of a block I should say. 

You roll the "dice" (blocks) and have three minutes to try to build as many words as possible from the blocks.  Each word counts as 1 point, if you can use a suffix or a prefix, I’ll give you 2 points.  Since this is a challenging game for them, right now I’m giving lots of help and only having one person go at a time.  We set a point limit and roll away!

Oh my goodness, my kids LOVE this game!  It was super easy to make, and they have picked it every "Fun Friday" we’ve had.  They get a little more practice manipulating all the parts of the words, but it doesn’t feel like work.  Big Man (10) said, "I know you’re trying to sneak in more school here, but this is actually fun!"  Now THAT’S what a homeschool mamma likes to hear!