A Fun Afternoon for Homeschoolers at Chuck E. Cheese’s

A couple of weeks ago, when the FedEx man arrived at our door, my children were thrilled for the thin envelope that arrived. You see, it was in the moment of opening the envelope that our Chuck E. Cheese’s adventure (and fun!) began. (It was in that envelope that we received what we needed for several hours of fun at one of my kids’ favorite places to go.)

Of course, you probably won’t have a FedEx man coming to your door with a card to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s. That’s okay. Usually in my house, the anticipation actually starts with me looking at Chuck E. Cheese’s flyers. Invariably, some child will walk up right as I’m doing it, and then questions fly wildly around, “Are we going to Chuck E. Cheese’s? Are we going today? Can we leave right now?”

Planning Our Trip

One of the reasons that I was really excited about our trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s was because the local schools had all just started up. As a homeschooling family (like so many of you), I love the opportunity that it offers us to go to busy places on off times. Chuck E. Cheese’s is one of those places for us. We love the chance to head there on an afternoon after all of our school work is done.

Now, I know that some of you out there may be thinking, “Come on. Chuck E. Cheese’s is really more of a birthday party place. Why would we go on just some afternoon?”

Yeah, sure, we have also done Chuck E. Cheese’s as a birthday party location, having both attended parties and had our own there. However, we have also had a ton of fun just going for reasons like the First or Last Day of School, a lost tooth, hard work at school, time to get together with friends, or just because we were itching to play some Skeeball and eat pizza.

For this particular trip, coupled with the fact that they would be less busy because school had started, we were going to celebrate our own Back to School, as well as meeting up with friends (which is always one of my favorite reasons to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s).

Fun at Chuck E. Cheese’s

Do you know how I know that my kids were excited about our planned afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese’s? They actually did some of their school work the night before just to be sure that nothing delayed our scheduled time to meet up with friends for an afternoon of fun! That is not a common occurrence at our house, so I knew they must be pretty thrilled.

Pizza and Salad at Chuck E. Cheese’s – Yum!

For our time at Chuck E. Cheese’s, we were provided with a large pizza (yum!), four drinks, and 30 tokens. Because I didn’t want to fill up on just pizza, I sprung for a salad bar for myself (their salad bar is so tasty!). I also found a coupon for a great deal on even more tokens for my three kids, as I knew that we wanted to spend a few hours there and that I would want to sneak away some tokens for my own use as well. (I never worry about having too many tokens, as we have frequently just taken some home what we had left and brought them back for our next visit.)

As soon as we got there, we met up with our friends (who also homeschool). Our kids, ranging in age from three to thirteen, took off as soon as we got our hands stamped (to make sure nobody would be able to leave with kids other than their own). Of course, they then ran back when they realized they didn’t have their tokens yet. But, upon grabbing those, they were off.

That’s one of my favorite things about Chuck E. Cheese’s, especially as a location for homeschool get togethers. They just have such a wonderful variety of games and activities for every age. With homeschooling groups, you often find kids getting together that range from little ones through high school age. A location like Chuck E. Cheese’s is fun for all those ages. It’s not just the kids that have fun though.

For the parents, it can be a chance to visit with other adults or to have some fun with games as well. During our recent visit, I got to do a little bit of both of those, plus just hang out with my kids. (One of my favorite parts was watching my 11 year old son’s reactions as I taught him how to play the Deal or No Deal game. Even better was when he ran up to me later, excitedly telling me that he won 34 tickets playing it on his own.)

The kids, after dancing with Chuck E. Cheese, wait for him to throw tickets in the air

Now It’s Your Turn to Have Fun

I’m not going to talk on and on about the fun we had and not offer up at least one of you to go have fun too. Thanks to Chuck E. Cheese’s and BlogHer, we are able to offer a $100 Chuck E. Cheese’s gift card to one of our readers!

Would you love to win the $100 Chuck E. Cheese’s gift card? Please share with us (in the comments section) why your family loves Chuck E. Cheese’s!

Make sure to follow Chuck E. Cheese’s on Facebook to catch all the latest news.

Sweepstakes Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “”#SweepstakesEntry”"; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 9/4/2012-10/4/2012.

Be sure to visit the Chuck E. Cheese’s brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!