A local education expert shares her top picks for the best learning games (that are both fun and mentally stimulating) for families to play together

Some kids thrive with traditional learning. They enjoy writing in journals, completing math workbooks, and reading independently. Yet others find these tasks tedious and laborious. Lucky for them, there are many great games to play that make learning exciting and engaging, while still building key academic skills. Try the ideas below for loads of laughter and learning.

Bananagrams
Bananagrams is an engaging game that both kids (ages 7 and up) and adults enjoy playing, and it helps strengthen reading and spelling skills. A series of letter tiles are contained in a banana-shaped bag and players compete against one another to use up their tiles by creating crosswords with their letters. When a player has a letter she wants to get rid of, she exclaims “dump”, returns the letter to the main pile, and takes three new ones. Once a player has used all of her letters in her crossword grid, she shouts “peel!” and all the other players must pick another letter tile. Get ready for hours of fun with this game!

Sump Swamp
Sump Swamp is a great game for building basic addition and subtraction skills. Kids will learn their math facts without even realizing it! ‎With this board game, players progress through a “swamp” by rolling dice and answering addition and subtraction problems. It’s helpful to land on the Crocodile Short Cut for a quicker route, and players try to avoid the Endless Loop, which can set them back on their journey through the “swamp.”‎ Kids will achieve automaticity with their math facts in no time!

Zingo Sight Words
When children read, they will inevitably come across words that are not decoadable, meaning they can’t use their phonics skills to sound them out. These types of words, called sight words, simply need to be memorized or recognized visually, and Zingo Sight Words is a great game for exposing kids in grade prek-2 to sight words they will need to learn, while still having lots of fun. ‎ Zingo is played like the popular game Bingo, where each player is given a card containing nine squares, each with a different sight word. The “announcer” pulls a sight word tile from the dispencer and reads it aloud. The first player to claim he has that sight word on his card gets the tile, and the first one to complete their card with nine tiles wins!

What Happens Next? Picture Sequencing Game
Learning to properly sequence events in a story is an important foundational reading skill. ‎What Happens Next? helps build this critical skill for kids ages 3 and up in puzzle format. To play, children must put together fourteen sets of three piece puzzles in proper order to correctly complete the sequence. To develop vocabulary, speech, and story telling skills, encourage your child to explain what happened in the story once she completes the sequence. For older kids, encourage them to write down the events of the story in sequential order using proper capitalization and punctuation to help develop important writing skills.

Rory’s Story Cubes
Many kids struggle with writing, and some downright dread practicing this skill. Help make writing fun and engaging for your child by playing with Rory’s Story Cubes. This game comes with nice dice cubes, with each cube containing six images. Players role all nine cubes and create a story containing all of the images rolled, starting with “Once upon a time…” Kids can play alone or in groups; if played in a group setting, it’s fun to vote on the best story once each player has completed their turn. Let the fun, creativity, laughter, and good times roll!

Learning does not need to be boring or tedious. Enjoy special time with your child while building key academic skills with these games. He won’t even know he’s learning!

The post Best Learning Games to Play with Your Child appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Your child wakes up on a summer day hoping to swim and play outside, only to find that it’s cloudy and raining. ‎He instantly complains of utter boredom and resorts to planting himself on the couch and playing with just about any tech gadget he can find. Yet rainy summer days are great days for reinforcing learning and preventing the all-too-common summer slide. Try some of the ideas below.

Create a Family Book Tree

Creating a family book tree is a great way to encourage reading over the summer (especially on rainy days) and serves as a fun family activity. To make one, cut out a large tree using green and brown construction paper and hang it on a wall. Then cut out small colored ci‎rcles to use as hanging tags for the tree. Every time someone in your family reads a book, that person should write their name on a tag and hang it on the tree so everyone can see the books they’ve read. Try setting up a family competition, where the person who reads the most number of books in a week (or month) and has the most number of tree tags gets to select a movie or special restaurant for the family to go to.

Grow Crystals

Rainy days are great days for fun science experiments! Trying growing crystals, an activity that will please most youngsters. It’s a fairly quick experiment too; in just a few hours, you can create fascinating crystals that your kids will enjoy touching and gazing at. To make them, stir together a half cup of Epsom salts with a half cup of hot water and one drop of food coloring in a mixing bowl. Then leave the bowl in the fridge for roughly three hours. Take them out and, alas, you have crystals! Analyze them with your child and note their shape, size, color, and any other interesting characteristics. Your child may even be motivated to learn more about crystals. If so, look up articles about crystals online or take her to the library so she can pick out books to read about them.

Play a Story Writing Game

To encourage writing over the summer, play a fun story writing game. To play, the first player draws a picture of an image on a ‎large sheet of paper or white board, which serves as the writing prompt. Then that player writes the first line of a story on a paper and passes that page to the next player. Player 2 writes the next line of the story, player 3 writes the third line, and so on. Keep moving from one player to the next until the story is complete. For instance, if the prompt is a picture of an a zoo, player 1 might write, “My family took a trip to the zoo.” Then he’d pass the paper to player 2, who might write, “We first saw the lions and tigers when we went inside,” and the third player might write, “The tiger roared so loud that my ears hurt!” Try adding some silly sentences for some added humor. The funnier, the better!

Make a Milk Rainbow!

Making a milk rainbow is a fascinating experiment to watch and a great way to take advantage of a rainy day. To make one, pour a half cup of whole milk into a small shallow dish, then add drops of different colored food coloring. Dip a q-tip into a bowl of dish soap, then back into the milk on a spot where there’s food coloring, and watch how the colors explode in front of you! For some added knowledge, tell your child that the liquid dish soap is interacting with the fat molecules in the milk, forming the beautiful milk rainbow.

Play Board Games

When kids are stuck indoors, it’s easy to resor‎t to electronic games. Try some “old school” board games and your child will see how much fun (and educational!) they can be. Play Scrabble to practice combining letters to form words – a great way to reinforce phonics and spelling skills. You can also play Boggle, where you shake letters on a game board, then form as many words as possible in three minutes. Bananagrams is another fun one, where players are given a series of tiles with single letters on them. They must connect letters vertically or horizontally on a flat surface to form words using the tiles. These games serve as great family time and help stimulate conversation and learning.

During the summer, rainy days are inevitable. Prevent your child’s boredom and gravitation towards mindless tech toys, and have some enjoyable family time with these indoor activities. Your child will have fun while continuing to learn, helping him to ultimately jump-start the new school year.

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