Best Educational Board Games – For All Ages!
Who doesn’t love a fun game night during the earlier, cozier nights of fall? Regardless of the time of year, games are a wonderful addition to your schooling and learning and can easily be implemented into your everyday.
Just like some families have game nights, some homeschool families have game days, where they play games for their schooling. Gameschooling is a very popular way of learning right now – think playing games for the majority of your learning time.
There are SO many amazing ways to add games in and so many great games, some classics and some newer, to incorporate into your homeschool.
How to add in educational board games
You’ve probably heard the parenting tips that are out there to help your kiddos eat their veggies. Zucchini in brownies, baby spinach in smoothies, etc. Well adding in games where your kids are learning “school” stuff can be handled in a similar way!
If your children are experiencing homeschool burnout and the idea of adding in another thing to your school day will just be too much, for them or you, swap some studies with games.
Spelling practice can easily be swapped with a game of Scrabble, or multiplication fact drills can be swapped with a game of Math Dice. Or, maybe make every Friday a game day!
The idea is to make learning fun – homeschool perk!!
Benefits of educational board games
Games can provide such great support with educational material, but they also provide a lot of other benefits to your children.
There are so many benefits to playing some great board games in your homeschool! Even just adding in one game a week can have some tremendous benefits.
Here are a few reasons games are an amazing learning resource:
- Fun – Fun makes learning “stick” better. Simple but so true. If your kid is having fun, they will most likely remember what caused the fun aka remember what they learned!
- Taking turns – Learning how to take turns is great social skill in patience. Something the whole world needs more of these days haha.
- Focus – Again, something we could also use more of these days. Games make you focus, and really be in the moment. Great learning experience for kids (and for the adults who play the games too).
- Counting, sorting etc – Simple skills that can be reinforced with board games. If there is play money involved in the game, make it a rule that all change has to be counted back. A skill so many adults lack but really important to know!
- Logic – Again a critical skill for life and one that can always use more practice. Figuring out how to do something, rather than just get an answer, is really great for kids to practice while playing a game. Side note: we are big into logic in our homeschool and have been loving these logic workbooks!
- Reading practice – Reading aloud is a really important skill to practice and most games provide this! Instructions, play cards and following along on a game board typically all involve reading. Kids of all ages can benefit from this practice.
List of the top 16 of educational board games
Scrabble –
The classic spelling game for years, for a reason! It’s really fun and super educational, even beyond the obvious spelling & vocabulary practice. Learning the rules and how to build off other words, and figuring out the best places to play & how to get the most “bang for your buck” with high counting letters, are also really wonderful aspects to Scrabble.
Banagrams –
We have been a big Scrabble family for years, but we are now on team Bananagram too! A couple of years ago my kids played this at my brother’s house and got hooked! It’s really fun, and super easy to play and super transportable. It’s a spelling game with tiles, but no board. You play wherever you can find a flat surface! You build off each other’s words with the goal of being the first player to use up all of your tile. The game comes in a cute banana shaped, zip pouch making it a great game on the go!
MadLibs –
Ok, I know this is not a board game, but I had to include it for the fact that it’s an awesome grammar/word game! MadLibs is another classic game that is also travel friendly. Great for in the car, waiting at an appointment or for a sibling at a class or sports practice. Sharpen those grammar & word skills and have some fun at all of the goofy stories you come up with. Take turns reading the finished stories for great read aloud practice!
Silly Sentences –
This game was given to us as a hand me down from another family years ago, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t really see how it was fun at first. But one afternoon we gave it a shot and it was so addicting! It’s like MadLibs, using parts of speech, but in a puzzle form. Each puzzle piece has a word and some have a picture as well, and all are color coded by what part of speech the word is. The idea is to build sentences using the pieces. Kids can create whole stories based off these sentences, with so many silly possibilities it’s very entertaining! Really great educational value as well as a lot of fun! The game is geared towards early elementary but can definitely be used beyond that to reinforce parts of speech and have some fun doing so.
Boggle –
This is another classic spelling game, and for good reason! Fast paced, and competitive make this game really fun for kids who love a challenge. There are a few versions of the game now, a big grid game and a junior edition set, but they all have the same goal: spell as many words as you can in a short time frame! The grid/game board changes with each turn and your goal is to spell as many words as you can with the letters revealed, trying to top the other players & their word count. Addicting!
Scrambled States –
We LOVE this game! We have played Scrambled States for years and it’s still so fun and gets so fast paced causing so many laughs! Based on the bestselling children’s book The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller, it’s a US geography game, focusing on the states and capitals. Nicknames, state shapes and locations/positions are also part of the game. Each play a card is drawn with a specific attribute for a state being called out, or an instruction like measure (with a ruler card on a map provided) who has the state closest to the state being played. You have to be fast with your answer to win the round, and collect the most cards to be declared the winner. Guaranteed you will learn a lot and have a lot of fun doing so with this game!
Match a Pair of Birds –
Slower paced game than some others on this list, but sometimes we just need a calm afternoon, am I right? Memory match is nothing new, but this version is so beautiful and very educational with all of the different varieties of birds. This game focuses on the pairs of birds, so your child will look for say, the male cardinal and then the female cardinal. Really cool to see a memory game with the match needing a bit more attention, recognizing the pair as a match.
Insect Bingo –
If you have insect loving kiddos (mine aren’t haha but we have this and have played it a lot!) this game is right up their bug loving alley! Like the Match a Pair of Birds game above, this bingo game is beautifully illustrated. Learning all of the proper names for each type of insect (listed on each card) makes this a great game to add to your homeschool.
Monopoly –
Classic game alert again! Also, I know a lot of parents dread Monopoly because it can go on, and on, and on! BUT it’s one of those games that is really educational, without being in your face about it being educational, if that makes sense ha! Real life stuff like learning about budgeting, managing money, buying and selling properties as well as obvious things like practicing how to count money and take turns, and negotiating. Also, something we have done is play for a certain amount of time, and leave the game set up to come back to later that day or another day, or days. If you have the space, try this if you haven’t, it’s a fun way to actually finish a Monopoly game!
Life –
Another one that can take a while to play but it’s a great learning game, all about “real” life things! This is a favorite in our house, and was a favorite of mine growing up, because it’s fun pretending! Life is also full of making choices, and this game of Life is a great exercise in making choices. Starting with go straight to work, or go to college the game presents many opportunities to talk about choices in many areas of the game.
Ticket to Ride –
There are a few versions of Ticket to Ride out there now, we have the Europe version, but they’re all so fun! The game board is really well done, beautiful and educational, and takes you all through the cities of Europe at the turn of the last century. This game is heavy on strategy which is great for sharpening critical thinking. However it’s very easy to learn and pick up quickly. Building tunnels and routes from city to city gives players the advantage needed to win the game. It’s about an hour to play, maybe less with experienced players, and geared to kids 8 and up, but I think younger kids can definitely play if interested in doing so.
Catan –
Talk about a fan favorite among board game enthusiasts! Catan (and Catan Jr. geared towards kids under 10) has quite a following! Like Ticket to Ride, this game is all about strategy, but also luck! In Catan though you are working to gain resources and build settlements, cities as well as roads while “settling” on the Island of Catan. Each game plays differently, meaning each game feels new and fresh making it easy to add to your game night rotation and not get bored. It’s very easy to learn, even if it takes a few “read throughs” of the instructions to grasp the idea. There are numerous videos online explaining the play rules if you are more of a visual learning family. Games typically take about an hour to play so again it’s immersive yet has an end so I think it’s perfect for families to play together!
Trivial Pursuit –
Trivia is so, so fun for our family. We all love playing anything trivia related so when we got into Trivial Pursuit it instantly became a family favorite. We have the family edition, which is a fantastic setup with the classic play but different card decks for adults and kids. There are also a couple of ways to play, if you don’t want it to be an hours long game. Super fun one to add in for educational fun for all!
Trekking the National Parks –
Another strategy style game like Ticket to Ride and Catan but this one is all about National Parks, which we LOVE in our family! This game also recommends ages 10 and up, but again, younger children could fully enjoy this game as part of a team or on their own. Learning the game, and I would recommend even trying one game while learning, will definitely feel a bit cumbersome, but stick with it. It becomes very easy to understand and a ton of fun once you master it! Trekking through the parks involves a combo of strategy and luck with gathering pieces like special stones and collecting cards for each park. The cards have beautiful photos on them and there is a lot of great information about each park. We love learning all this US geography related so learning all about the National Parks has been so much fun.
Tetris –
Remember the Nintendo game? Yes, Tetris is now also a board game! And it’s just as addicting! And it’s really pretty too haha! Each player (up to 4) gets a vertical game board and colorful pieces with the idea of building horizontal rows just like the video game. The board game version though has cards and an opportunity to go head to head challenging the other players. Having to watch the cards to see what piece is coming up, and planning your moves while keeping an eye on your opponents’ game boards creates a really great strategy learning opportunity.
I wrote a whole separate post on the best math board games that has a bunch of great game recommendations for adding some fun to your math learning.
Educational board games for preschoolers
I know this list is aimed more for elementary aged kids and older but I wanted to just list a few of our favorite educational games from when our kids were preschool aged. Each of these below helps with learning key social skills like learning rules, patience waiting for a turn and the art of winning or losing (gracefully hopefully haha!).
Memory Match –
There are so many versions out there of classic memory match and such a great learning game for little ones. My kids are big animal lovers so we had many animal versions of this game in our house when they were preschoolers.
Hi Ho Cherry O –
This is one we loved. Great for color recognition & counting!
Chutes & Ladders –
Number recognition, counting and direction practice make this classic a great pick for younger kids.
CandyLand –
Another classic, but a great starter game for a reason. Colors, patterns and counting are key educational aspects of this game. And it’s a game based on candy, need I say more?!
SuperWhy ABC Letter Game –
This may be a lesser known game but absolutely a great learning game for younger kids. We played this game SO much over the years! Based off the PBS show Super WHY, this game helps kids with letter recognition, phonics, early rhyming practice as well as some early word reading. The characters are cute and the board is colorful making it one of our early board game favorites.
Have some fun learning while playing!
I hope these games give you some inspiration to add some fun into your homeschool days! There are so many great educational board games out there making it easy to add some fun while learning alongside your kids!
