Best Educational Board Games for the Classroom

Why use educational board games in the classroom?

Board games have a clear purpose - to entertain, let's not kid ourselves. Very few games are designed for educational purposes, and if they are, they are usually not very engaging. However, many of these games tend to require various competencies that have either been learned in school or require the use of knowledge and skills that are practiced in various areas of the curriculum.

This is key, the skills, and competencies required to use these games reinforce access to information and develop skills that will later impact participants' cognitive development. Thanks to this, students will pay for essays online less and less.

Let's look at a very simple example. Everyone knows "Guess Who?". It wasn't designed for language learning, but nevertheless, imagine that after working with your class, you get the kids to play the game, speak English or another language, and have fun. Do you think you would have trouble learning how to ask a question in another language, or would you find yourself learning vocabulary for the show? The answer is no.

You will practice many things in context, in a motivating way, and have a good time.

Now think about Monopoly. It's where you have to fold, buy and sell, turn money around properly, pay taxes... There's a window where you have to decide whether to pay a fixed amount or a percentage of your money. Profitability, the more money, the more profit. Negotiation. "I'll sell you that land for that land...".

As you can see, board games combine many different types of skills, and they are also played with people, which promotes socialization, and verbalization, and increases motivation. There are now hundreds of themes that are probably best suited to your field or the project you're doing.

How to use educational board games in the classroom

Well, the first thing to say is that we can't play Monopoly in the classroom. There's no time. It's impossible. That goes for dozens of board games where the games last for hours. Nor did we have time to play an entire game of DixIt. However, no one is saying we can't change the rules.

That's not a problem; we need either short games or adapted long board games to use board games in the classroom. Think of these games as a stand-alone activity, free play when someone is done, or they can be an alternative leisure activity at recess, in rainy yards, at lunchtime, or on a field trip.

Having lots of games opens up opportunities for leisure time at school and at the same time solves many of the problems of coexistence that arise when boredom sets in.

When you have a board game, the children must know the rules. There is nothing more annoying than when you are invited to play a new game and the host has to read out the rules in front of you. Now, if you type in the name of any game on Youtube, you'll get hundreds of videos showing you how to play it. This would be a cool homework assignment. Just in case you know people aren't going to watch it. Send a rules sheet so it makes sense. You can use the day when you substitute to learn how to play together. There are no excuses.

When you get to that point, you want everyone to play, so you either have multiple copies or you have multiple games so everyone can have fun. It's important to know that you can lose parts, so keep what you need in a safe box and have spare parts with photocopies or materials that you can use to replace parts that might be lost.

Catalog of educational board games

Card Games

Card games usually have several advantages: they tend to be cheap, small, and short. We're not talking about typical Mus cards or French cards. While it's true that they can do a lot. These days you can find card games with multiple themes and real gems for less than $20.

On the negative side, you can lose the card you need to play with, and that's a problem that has a bad solution. If that happens, you'll have to make a change and either make a copy or use a different type of card that is repeated many times and make some changes to it, such as a sticker or marker.

Jungle Speed

Very fun and fast, it works on attention, mental agility, and shapes. Very related to the field of math.

Timeline

A Timeline is a great option if you like the theme. Players have cards with events that they must place on a timeline. There are timelines for history, movies, and music. Very good for working on the story and specific themes of the game you are buying.

Sushi Go

A very interesting and fast game in which you have to score points by trying to guess what others are going to do. Dependency. Very good for math and Asian projects.

Educational board games for learning English

Board games for language learning are a great way to use language in an authentic way and context. We've selected the ones that work best for us and are also a great way to provide fun activities for school language assistants.

Speaker Box

A very interesting and fast game in which you have to score points by trying to guess what others are going to do. Dependency.

Taboo

Another classic not to be missed. This game works on verbal language in a way few other activities can. A game that could be the focal point of dozens of English classes. A must.

Don't Say It

Don't say it is the children's version of taboo. It's cheaper and has a slightly different design, but it's essentially the same mechanism. Very good for the English language.

Educational board games for math class

Math-related board games are probably the most numerous. If you think about it, even classic card games usually have a mathematical basis, and almost all of them have some sort of algorithm or formula that you need to apply to succeed. We probably have the most time to spend on math games, so let's get to it.

Jenga

This game is commonly found in many schools because, besides being cheap, you lose nothing if you lose a piece. It is a very fun game for the classroom, very fast, and develops both fine motor skills and attention and concentration. Very good.

Shut the box

Close the Box is a great game for learning numbering as well as great fun. It can be played by up to four players and consists of flipping the numbers associated with the rolling sum of the dice.

Road Block

Road Block is a great game that you can keep in the back of your classroom, use as a prize, or whatever you want because it's so cool. It's a puzzle game in which you have to arrange the pieces (like in Tetris) in a certain way so that the "red car" doesn't get away from the police and everything comes together clearly. The game has a book that offers situations from easier to more difficult, so you can have hours of fun solving the various problems it offers.

Conclusion

Classroom games are a fantastic way to work in the classroom. They can carry these skills into their daily lives, as well as involve their family and friends in hands-on learning of the material. There have never been so many good games. Take Action!