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.

Help your child continue to build her academic skills and prevent the all too common “summer slide” with these fun ideas.

Summer is a time for outdoor games, poolside laughter, and fun in the sun. Yet, it is also a time when many kids lose valuable academic skills. In fact, research tells us that kids can lose up to three months of academic gains in reading and math over the summer. Help your child continue to build her academic skills and prevent the all too common “summer slide” with the ideas detailed below.

Read…a lot!

It’s easy to let regular reading time slip over the summer when days are long and activities often run late. Yet, it is important that kids continue reading on a consistent ‎basis throughout the course of the summer. This isn’t just limited to novels–your child can read newspapers, comic books, trivia books, short stories, or the like. You may even try setting up “family reading hour” (or portion of an hour) where all members of your family gather together for a pre-set time period and read. Try to lead by example and show your child how much joy reading can bring. In doing so, he will likely follow your lead and eventually come to enjoy the task.

Play (fun) learning games

Most kids enjoy playing games, so take advantage of down time this summer to play some education-based games that are still loads of fun. You can play Boggle, for instance, where you shake a tray filled with dice to form a grid of 16 letters. Players then have three minutes to create as many words as they can using the letters. You can also try playing Apples to Apples, where players build their language skills by matching red “object” cards to green “descriptive” cards and try to come up with the best pairs. To build your child’s vocabulary and reading skills, play Zingo!, where players match pictures and words, or you can play HiHo! Cherry-O with younger children to build foundational math skills, like number recognition, counting, and basic arithmetic.

Have fun in the kitchen!

To build your child’s math skills, ‎try cooking a meal or baking a dessert with him. If you decide to make brownies, for instance, ask your child to measure the correct amount of oil and water in a measuring cup. You may try “doubling” the recipe and ask him how much more of each ingredient you would now need, and how many more brownies you can now expect with the doubled ingredients. Have him read the recipe and directions to practice his reading skills, or perhaps have him write a menu for a meal you cook your family, or a review on each dish you created. The more fun and interactive you can make the process, the better!

Practice writing at the beach

For younger children, you can work on basic skills development, like letter and number writing, using sand at the beach, dirt at the park, or even flour in your kitchen. For instance, if you are practicing the letter p, have your child say the words “down, up, and around” out loud as she traces the letter in the sand, or “around, up, and down” as she writes the letter a. You might try spraying some shaving cream on a cookie tray and have her trace different letters and numbers using her finger for added tactile reinforcement. For basic math skills, have her count out a quantity of jelly beans or buttons, then ask her questions like, “If my friend gives me 2 j‎elly beans and another friend gives me 2 more jelly beans, how many jelly beans would I have all together?” or “If I had 5 jelly beans but I ate 2 of them, how many would I have left?” These types of exercises will help your child learn to solve basic addition and subtraction problems.

Electronic learning

Most kids love playing games on an iPad, so why not try integrating some learning-based apps? Try some of the following ones:

Starfall Learn to Read

Ages 4 and up

This is a great app for reinforcing basic reading skills. It includes 15 short books for kids to read that each emphasize a different sound pattern and contain animated videos, songs, and engaging characters. Each book also includes activities related to the story, including matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises.

Hungry Fish
Ages 4-8

This app is a helpful tool for building addition, subtraction, and mental math skills. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles, then “feed” them to a floating fish. When the fish is fed correct answers, it expands, and it shrinks when it does not receive correct answers. As players complete each level, they move on to more challenging ones, always receiving immediate feedback along the way.

Sentence Builder

Ages 6 and up

Your child can develop important grammar, sentence structure, and overall writing skills with this fun and engaging app. To play, students use slot machine-style wheels to select words, then create sentences describing various pictures. The app begins with basic sentences and later moves onto more complex ones. The images are bright and colorful, and students build critical sentence formation and writing skills.

Summer is a time when many kids lose key academic skills. Try these activities to help your child prevent “summer slide” and jump-start the new school year on a positive note.

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