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.
In a flash Firefighters!
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Race your opponents to untangle your fire hose! Get all three of your fire hoses untangled to put the fire out and win In a Flash Firefighters!
Educational Focuses: Pattern recognition, processing speed, attention to detail, concentration, and good sportsmanship.
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Balance Beans
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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.
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Sleeping Queens
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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.
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Chicken War
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Try to fill your army with the right chickens without your opponents guessing who your general is and you’ll win the Chicken War! Each soldier in your army must have two, and only two, traits in common! As you’re drafting chickens into your army, be careful to observe that they only have two traits in common with your leader, without letting your enemies know what traits you’re looking for!
Educational Focuses: Logic, problem solving, perception, deductive reasoning, and strategic thinking.
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Last Letter
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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.
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Visual Brainstorm
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Visual Brainstorms is card based and contains word problems, logic puzzles, math challenges, brain teasers, and more! Each card will present its own unique challenge and can help fill time on a road trip, waiting in a car line, or just beat boredom.
Educational Focuses: Visual perception, reasoning, problem solving, brainteasers, word problems, math, decoding messages, logic problems, spatial reasoning, sequential thinking, abstract and higher order thinking.
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Dragon's Breath
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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.
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Catch a falling star
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Can you be the first player to play all of their rays of light in Catch a Falling Star? On each player’s turn, they will attempt to add a ray of light to the Star to help relight the extinguished star! Some of the rays are magnetized and easy to place, while others are not magnetized and will require more focus to place. Place all of your rays before your opponents and you’ll be the winner of Catch a Falling Star!
Educational Focuses: Action, dexterity, and small motor skills.
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Bookworm
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Play letters in your hand by naming something in the category that you flipped that starts with the letter of your card! Will you be the ultimate Bookworm or will you suffer brain freeze at the pivotal moment?
Educational Focuses: Processing speed, vocabulary building, quick thinking, decision making, and reasoning.
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Laser Maze Junior
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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.
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IceCool
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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.
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Catan Jr.
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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.
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Tell Tale
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Play one of four different modes in this improvisational picture-based game! You could use the beautifully illustrated cards to “tell me a story”, start and support a debate, or even to ask and answer questions! No matter which way you choose to play, you’ll be sure to have fun playing Tell Tale!
Educational Focuses: Story telling, language, listening, creativity, and self expression.
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Spot It
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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.
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Dimension
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On each round of Dimension, players will flip three cards that describe how their balls can be stacked. Then, it's up to each of them to stack their balls. The player who completes their design quickest will win the most points, as long as they followed all of the rules!
Educational Focuses: Multidimensional, critical, and systems thinking, problem solving, effective reasoning, analyzing relationships, exploring algorithms, spatial reasoning, dexterity, and identify, analyze, translate, and generate problems.
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iN A PICKLE
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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.
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fISHING dAY
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Will you be the first little angler to complete five challenge cards before the yellow duck escapes the pond? You’ll need your trusty fishing rod and your quick thinking skills to beat your opponents and be the winner of Fishing Day!
Educational Focuses: Fine motor skills, focus & attention, social play, dexterity, color & shape recognition, deduction, and counting.
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The Scrambled States of America
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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.
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Orchard
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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.
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Chomp
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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.
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TOO MANY MONKEYS
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Poor Primo just wants to get some sleep! Can you help get the monkeys all lined up and get Primo back to bed in Too Many Monkeys? And send that Elephant home!
Educational Focuses: Number sense, deduction, turn-taking, and good sportsmanship.
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Labyrinth
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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.
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Rat-a-tat cat
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Players in Rat-a-tat-Cat are attempting to have the lowest number of points in their hand at the end of the round-- but, they don’t know how many points they start with! Using good memory, deduction, interpersonal skills and mental math skills, players swap out cards in their hand for lower-scoring cards and decide when to end the round!
Educational Focuses: Mental Math, number sense, life lessons, interpersonal skills, deduction, probability, timing, and memory
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Quiddler Jr.
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Use the sounds on the cards in your hand to make words and earn points in Quiddler Jr. Can you make the longest word and earn the bonus points? This game is easy to learn, easy to play and a great way to practice spelling, vocabulary building and even basic addition!
Educational Focuses: Spelling, word game, hand management, set collection, sight words, vocabulary building, math, referencing skills, reading literacy, decoding skills, creative writing, turn taking, good sportsmanship.
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Our Friends at Play Monster have worked up a great resource for teachers. Check out Quiddler Junior Skill Connections for Teachers.
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Super Genius Addition!
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How quick is your mental math? Can you spot the right sum for each pair of cards before your opponents? Find out when you play Super genius Addition!
Educational Focuses:. Addition, matching, memory, visual perception, focus & attention, speech & language, processing speed, and problem solving.
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Crossing
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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.
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Shadows in the Forest
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You know the nights with no moon are the best nights to collect the shadowlings, so you put fresh batteries in your trusty lantern and head out into the forest! The Shadowlings are fast, darting between shadows as soon as you blink your eyes. Can you catch all of the Shadows in the Forest before they get away?
Educational Focuses: Teambuilding, critical thinking.
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Anomia Kids
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In Anomia Kids players take turns flipping cards until their card’s symbol matches an opponent’s card’s symbol. Then the first player to say a word that starts with the same letter as the word that corresponds to their opponent’s card wins the card! The player with the most cards in their winnings pile at the end wins the game!
Educational Focuses: Visual perception, pattern recognition, speech- language skills, homonyms, homophones, phonics, and understanding letter sounds, syllables and words.
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Dragomino
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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.
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My First Carcassonne
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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.
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Monza
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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.
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Cat Crimes & Dog Crimes
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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.
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Topicubes
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Roll the dice and think fast in Topi Cubes! Players take turns rolling the topic and letter dice each round and then the free-for-all starts! Players call out a word that matches the topic on one topic dice and starts with the letter of any dice that doesn’t match the color of the topic dice!
Educational Focuses: Speech, creativity, social play, quick thinking, language building, word game, and good sportsmanship.
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Dr. Eureka
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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.
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MATH dICE jR.
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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
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The Color Monster
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Sometimes it's really hard for The Color Monster to explain exactly how he’s feeling. In The Color Monster, players work together using colors and personal stories to help their friend figure out how he’s been feeling all day. Once they identify a feeling, they choose a jar to put it in. If it matches, perfect! But if not, they can try again until they find the right match! Just be careful not to have too many jumbled jars, they make everything confusing!
Educational Focuses: Colors, emotions, communication, teamwork, memory, turn-taking, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and empathy.
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Our friends at Devir have made some wonderful educational resources to pair with The Color Monster game.
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Monster Match
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How fast can you find a monster with One Eye? One with Five Legs? Or even with Three Arms? In Monster Match you and your friends take turns rolling dice that tell you which attributes will fit your Monster Match. But remember that the winner is determined at the end of the game by who has the most donuts, so sometimes taking one extra second can make a difference!
Educational Focuses: Addition, visual perception, processing speed, counting, taking turns, dexterity, and good sportsmanship.
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Echidna Shuffle
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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.
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Secret Code 13+4
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Secret Code 13+4 is a game where players roll dice and see if they can put the numbers rolled in an equation where the sum, difference, product or quotient is equal to a target number. That target number is a laser they must pass to get their prize, The "Amun Re" Mask!
Educational Connections: Math (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), mental math, problem solving, quick thinking, and decision making skills.
Check out our lesson plan below!
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Rory's Story Cubes
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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!
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Froggit
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"Guide your frogs across the pond...but watch out for the fish!" Smart Games Froggit is a beautiful family game recommended for 2-6 players age 6+. Guide your frogs across the pond while blocking other players from doing the same. Be warned the fish can scare your frogs back to the start! "Flexible thinking, clever planning and the chance to thwart your opponent's makes Froggit a fun and exciting game for the whole family!"
Excerpts taken from Smart Toys & Games Educational Focuses: Concentration, deduction, logic, planning, hand-eye coordination, dexterity, memory, focus, flexible thinking, simple strategy, and problem solving.
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Concept Kids
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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.
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Sumoku
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"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!
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Gnomes at Night
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Gnomes At Night is a great cooperative game that focuses on teamwork and communication to find and gather treasures!
At some point a sneaky thief was spotted in the castle's twisty mazes trying to make it out with the treasures in hand. But the thief's sack was holey, and treasures were strewn all over the mazes. It's up to your team to play as the Gnomish Maze Experts and collect as many treasures as you can to return them to the Queen. Educational Focuses: Teamwork, communication, strategy, directions, fine and gross motor skills, planning, quick thinking, and time management.
For younger players, we recommend you play without the timer and let them get used to directions and communicating to obtain the goal (treasure).
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Lost Cities
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Your whole life you dreamed of adventure, exploration, and treasure…. You grab your compass, a map, pocket knife, some rope, and put on your best hiking boots. You were able to obtain funding from a wealthy benefactor so you're off to see the world, discover artifacts and treasures, and possibly make it rich. The rules may seem simple, but the decisions will be tough.
Lost Cities the Card Game is a journey in mental math! Educational Connections: Mental math, addition, subtraction, multiplication, investments, decision making skills, and strategic planning. Themes include archaeology, expedition, and exploration.
Check out our lesson plan below!
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Check out our selection of educational games for other grades: