Studies have shown that when learners are having fun they tend to retain more information and be more interested in the topics being taught. We feel games are a great tool for education! Games can be enjoyable to play and therefore are a great tool for reinforcing educational values, principles, and concepts. Below are a variety of games geared at Elementary aged kids that can be beneficial in the classroom, after school, or at home for reinforcing educational objectives.
Cube Duel
|
Set up the play area and compete with your opponent to see who can strategically place their pieces such that they have the most squares visible on the three open faces of the play area! Be the player with the most of their color showing and win the Cube Duel! Or, play in solo mode and solve the increasingly difficult puzzles in the included booklet!
Educational Focuses: Spatial insight (3D), flexible thinking, planning, concentration, problem solving, visual perception, and hand-eye coordination.
|
Hedgehog Haberdash
|
Draw pretty leaves out of the bag to dress your little hedgehog up in their favorite color! Watch out for the wind, though, or you’ll lose your leaves and have to start again in Hedgehog Haberdash!
Educational Focuses: Chance, memory, concentration, attention to detail, and fine motor skills.
|
Balance Beans
|
Balance Beans is a cute problem solving and deductive reasoning game that incorporates elementary algebra and basic physics into a series of single-player logic problems designed for players ages 5+. Imagine the seesaw as a leaver with a fulcrum in the center and to balance it you must place and move the beans around. You can experiment with different sizes and placement of the beans thus learning about mass, force, and weight as you aim to balance the seesaw thus creating an algorithm. At the same time, you’re learning to balance equations (2+2 and 3+1 both equal 4).
Educational Focuses: Logic, problem solving, math, elementary algebra, and fundamental principles of physics.
|
Sleeping Queens
|
Play your cards right and earn yourself some Sleeping Queens! With a little luck, and a bunch of strategy, you’ll need to figure out the best way to get as many of the queens as possible and you’ll have to find a way to protect your queens from your opponents! Play the cards you’re dealt, or trade them in for other cards from the draw pile using addition equations to get the cards you need to wake your Sleeping Queens!
Educational Focuses: Strategy, memory, quick thinking, and addition.
|
Last Letter
|
Look for an image on a card in your hand that starts with the Last Letter of the word just called! Call your words, play your cards to the discard pile and win! But remember, it's the Last Letter that you’re looking for!
Educational Focuses: Word skills, language skills, quick thinking, processing speed.
|
Dragon's Breath
|
Pick the right tiles to gather the most shiny, shiny jewels as they fall out of the frozen block in Dragon’s Breath! Collect the most jewels and earn your bragging rights!
Educational Focuses: Fantasy, action & dexterity, color recognition, counting, decision making, good sportsmanship, simple rule following.
|
Laser Maze Junior
|
Place the mirrors in the perfect place to guide your laser beam through the Laser Maze! With forty challenges ranging from beginner to expert in difficulty, you’ll have to play smart to solve them all!
Educational Focuses: Visual perception & reasoning, spatial recognition, logic problems, and critical thinking.
|
IceCool
|
Flick your penguins around the ice palace and through the doors with your colored fish over them to collect fish cards. Then play as the hall monitor and catch the naughty penguins running through the halls to collect even more fish! The player with the most fish after every player has taken their turn as the hall monitor will be declared the champion of Ice Cool! Use both palaces for the excitement of an eight player free-for-all!
Educational Focuses: Multi-step problem solving, dexterity & action, good sportsmanship, spatial reasoning, logic skills, math (angles, speed, force, geometry, estimation, measurement, and counting), and visual perception.
|
Catan Jr.
|
Compete with your fellow scallywags to be the first Pirate Captain to control seven hideouts! You’ll need to gather resources from all of the different islands and avoid the dreaded Ghost Captain in order to build ships and hideouts! Or you can use your resources to get help from Coco the Parrot! However you decide to spend your resources, be the first to control seven hideouts to win Catan Junior!
Educational Focuses: Natural resources, resource management, using resources to build, basic geography (oceans & islands), planning, working memory, critical thinking, inhibitory control, turn taking, and counting.
|
Spot It
|
Will you be the first player to Spot It and find the matching symbols on two cards? Each pair of cards in Spot It has exactly one symbol in common. Be the first player to Spot It and claim the pair. The player with the most pairs at the end of the game will be the winner!
Educational Focuses: Visual perception, dexterity, mental processing speed, pattern recognition, and basic vocabulary.
|
iN A PICKLE
|
In a pickle is a game based on the concepts of larger than & smaller than. The catch is you have to be able to defend your word play if you are challenged. On the back of the box, it gives the examples of (baby- bathtub- house- Hollywood) and (juice- pickle- supermarket- parking lot). Now think about the word cavity. Cavity is smaller than a tooth but it can also be larger than a tooth as it can relate to an empty space. Depending on how many players are playing the first person to claim so many sets wins the game.
Educational Focuses: Vocabulary development, storytelling & creative thinking, quick thinking, and communication skills.
|
The Scrambled States of America
|
The States got together for a big party and need your help getting home! Can you send the most states home or will you get scrambled and forget whether Michigan or Minnesota is closest to Maryland? Play The Scrambled States of America Game and find out!
Educational Focuses: USA geography, hand-eye coordination, visual discrimination, attention to detail & observation, USA capitals, states, and state facts.
|
Orchard
|
Work with your fellow orchardists to harvest all of the fruit in your Orchard before the pesky crows can get to it.
Educational Focuses: Fruit, color, shape recognition, good sportsmanship, imagination, turn taking, hand- eye coordination, and teamwork.
Great for lessons dealing with plants, animals, & gardens.
|
Chomp
|
Answer the age old question, “Who Chomps who?” in Chomp! from Gamewright Games! Flip your card and be the player who identifies (but doesn’t flip) the lowest member of the food-chain and Chomp! all of the lower members of the food chain you can! Collect all the cards to win the game!
Educational Focuses: Food webs, marine animals, reflexes, quick thinking, and analysis.
|
Labyrinth
|
Can you make your way through the Labyrinth to claim all of your treasures before your opponents? Be careful with your plans, though, so that your opponents don’t change the paths just before you can claim your prize!
Educational Focuses: Cause & effect, logic, planning, and visual perception.
|
Crossing
|
Can you outwit your opponents and collect the most shiny, shiny gemstones? In order to win this game you’ll have to keep your opponent’s signals crossed without Crossing paths with any of them!
Educational Focuses: Risk & reward, counting, math (addition), good sportsmanship, strategic thinking.
|
Dragomino
|
Build patterns and collect and hatch dragon eggs in Dragomino! Try to match your new tiles to your old tiles in order to find the dragon egg that lives in that environment! Then it takes a little luck to hatch a baby dragon. The winner is the player who collected the most baby dragons at the end of the game!
Educational Focuses: Fine motor skills, social play, focus, attention, pattern building, decision making, strategy, and counting.
|
My First Carcassonne
|
Help the other children of Carcassonne round up all of the animals in My First Carcassonne! Using good decision making and planning skills, place the tiles so that the animals have nowhere else to run and get all of your meeples out before your opponents to win this game!
Educational Focuses: City building, decision making, planning ahead, strategy, simple math, and matching.
|
Monza
|
Can you think ahead to get ahead in this color-recognition racing game? Named for the Famous Italian Grand Prix hosting city, Monza, players in this game roll dice and plan their routes to race to the finish!
Educational Focuses: Tactile thinking, color recognition, sequencing, critical thinking, planning, taking turns, good sportsmanship.
|
Cat Crimes & Dog Crimes
|
There’s trouble at Ms. McGuillicuddy’s Cat and Kitten Sanctuary: someone ate the fish, someone tangled the yarn, and someone tore up Ms. McGullicuddy’s favorite shoes! Over at Jodie’s Dog and Puppy Haven someone ate the homework, someone dug up the houseplant, and someone wrecked the birthday cake! Can you identify the felonious feline in Cat Crimes or the culpable canine in Dog Crimes? You’ll have to be smart and use your head to figure out which perfidious pet doesn’t have an alibi!
Educational Focuses: Memory, logic, deduction, critical reasoning, visual perception, attention to detail, logic tables, and deductive reasoning.
|
Dr. Eureka
|
You are an aspiring Scientist that is excited to work with the brilliant Dr. Eureka. Dr. Eureka is a fun dexterity and fine motor skills game that has logic, planning, sequencing, and thinking in reverse order at its core. To win you must think fast, formulate your plan, and carefully move your materials from one test tube to the next. When you complete the formula, loudly proclaim Dr. Eureka! The first person to complete 5 formulas wins the game.
Educational Focuses: Fine motor skills, Visual Perception, Focus and attention, Processing speed, Dexterity, Pattern Building, Logic, Planning, Sequencing, Reverse Thinking Order, Science.
This game can be adapted for younger players by giving them their own pattern or card to work on. You can also allow them to use their hands to stop the balls from rolling out of the tubes, but not to rearrange the balls.
|
MATH dICE jR.
|
Practice your math skills with this quick and easy game! Roll the 12-sided Math Die and then roll the 6-sided Math Dice! Now use any mathematical operation you know to combine the 6-sided dice to get the product of the 12-sided Math Die!
Educational Focuses: Mental Math, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, powers, roots, taking turns, good sportsmanship
|
|
|
| ||||||||||
Echidna Shuffle
|
The echidna has "a spine like a porcupine, a beak like a bird, a pouch like a kangaroo, and lays eggs like a reptile"! Who wouldn't want to play a game with these cute creatures and their wildlife buddies. In Echidna Shuffle you will direct the echidnas around and around the board from your home base to your tree stumps. Think carefully about the number of spaces you get to move and watch out for your opponents! The first player to deliver all their bugs and collect all three of their stumps wins the game!
Educational Focuses: Planning, turn-taking, animal characteristics, color recognition, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, counting, and good sportsmanship. It can also be used as a research project about animal habitats, classification and taxonomy, and characteristics.
|
| Secret Code 13+4 3rd-5th Math Lesson |
Rory's Story Cubes
|
Each cube has 6 images with a total of 54 images that can be mixed in over 10 million ways. You roll all 9 cubes to generate 9 random images and then use these to invent a story that starts with "Once upon a time..." and uses all 9 elements as part of your narrative.
Educational Connections: Creativity & imagination, language & vocabulary, artistic expression, story telling, parts of a story, and possibly even public speaking.
Check out our lesson plans below!
| ||||||
|
Concept Kids
|
In Concept Kids you take turns giving hints and guessing which animal is on the secret card! With tons of ways to describe any animal, including where they live, what color they are, and even what they eat, you’ll have tons of fun in either role!
Educational Focuses: Memory, deduction, animal characteristics, animal habitats, teamwork, creativity, fine motor skills, communication, and discovery of the animal world.
|
Sumoku
|
"Sumoku is a unique crossword-style game with numbers. Whether you are looking for a fast-paced challenge with friends, a solo brain building pastime, or an addictive math game that brings the whole family together, Sumoku has it all. It can be played five different ways! Just add up tiles to multiples of the number shown on the die, connect them all together, and you have a Sumoku! Look no further for a cool math game."
(Description from Publisher: Blue Orange Games) Educational Connections: Arithmetic, multiplication, division, cooperative play, pattern recognition, color recognition, repeating numbers, and strategy.
Check out our lesson plan below!
| ||
| Lost Cities Card Game Math Lesson Plan |
Check out our selection of educational games for other grades: