I’ve started thinking that all we really need around our house to home-school are books and board games. Have you ever noticed how much you can learn from a good game? Scrabble, of course, being chief amongst games for its educational properties and sheer coolness.
It’s been at least a year since Daniel played his first game of Scrabble. He has come a long way! The hardest thing was teaching him to build the words both vertically and horizontally, and then teaching him to use the letters on the board as part of his word-building efforts. He’s got it now. He hardly ever has to ask me for help making a word. In the beginning, almost all of his plays were three letter words, but now he’s gone as high as six!
The obvious educational values of Scrabble are spelling practice and vocabulary improvement. But when you make your child the scorekeeper, he gets a ton of math work in too! Multiplication, for both single letter and entire word scores, two and three column addition… Daniel’s math skills get a good stretch every time. And of course he’s learning strategic thinking skills, and the ever present character development. After all, if you act like a bad sport, Mommy won’t play anymore! And he’s learning patience because, unlike other games like Sorry or even Chess, he hasn’t a snowball’s chance of winning any time soon. I keep telling him to focus on playing the best that he can play, and someday… Someday he will beat me - and after I’m done pouting we’ll celebrate big time!
Daniel has really atrocious handwriting. (I think he got that from me) So we’re even going to use Scrabble for writing improvement. I’ll be using my StartWrite software to make him worksheets of all the legal two-letter Scrabble words. Learn this list, and all of the Q words which don’t require the letter U, and your score will instantly improve! (find the lists here) The list begins:
AA, AB, AD, AE, AG, AH, AI, AL, AM, AN, AR, AS, AT, AW, AX, AY
You can see how he’ll be repeating letters over and over. Practice with a purpose, don’tcha know. Oh, if you don’t yet have Scrabble (heathen!) and you are planning to play with your kids, I recommend Travel Scrabble for your first purchase. The tiles snap in firmly, which is great when an inquisitive toddler grabs the board. You can also stop mid-game and put everything away without losing your tiles or your board set-up.
Another fun game we’ve recently acquired is Rack-O.
I really like this little number game because it’s not too hard for Daniel, but not too boring for me! (Candy Land gives me an unpleasant twitch) Each player gets ten cards on their tray, placed in the order in which they are received. Then each turn you draw and discard, replacing cards in your tray in an attempt to get the cards in order from lowest to highest. Once you try it, it’s easy to understand. But there is plenty of strategy involved to keep you coming back for more. Once the game is mastered, there are more challenging variations to try. Rack-O is currently out of print, (we got it for a buck at a Goodwill! Woo hoo!) but there are several up for sale on Ebay. I even saw a Super Rack-O!
And speaking of Ebay, a few weeks back Laura described one of her favorite games - Probe. Not being one to resist a word game, I’ve won one on Ebay and am eagerly awaiting its arrival!
So how about you? What’s your favorite educational board game?
I like Boggle better than Scrabble, because it moves so much faster. Plus, I always dominate at that game. Encore is a blast with a crowd, the game where you have to sing song lines to win. Balderdash can be hilarious. I do have a soft spot for Scrabble though. I have a strong, silent type husband, and while we dated I had no TV, and he’d come over and we’d stare lovingly at each other, but this was awkward, so I bought Scrabble and we’d play for hours. I still have the same game, it’s all beat up, over 26 years old, and it’s my treasure, just like my ‘ole man.
Comment by Michele — February 8, 2006 @ 12:29 pm
I really like playing Upwords and Boggle. For the kids we like playing Cranium games (Cadoo is one we have been playing recently). Our 6 year old got electronic Battleship for Christmas and has really enjoyed playing with his brother. Because it is electronic they can load in the positions of their ships. Cheating is not really an option (as they are sometimes apt do to). I think Yahtzee is great at teaching match. It helps them with their multiplication and addition.
Comment by Mandi — February 8, 2006 @ 12:36 pm
I haven’t played Racko in years! I had forgotten about it. Now I have to find it and introduce my daughter to it. I think she would love it.
Comment by Maria — February 8, 2006 @ 12:43 pm
We are living in the land of early childhood games like Guess Who?
Connect Four
Candyland (for the record hate it)
Hi Ho Cherry O
Phonics Factory Game (this is actually very good IMO by leap frog)
So anything would be great besides these!
Oh well I yuck it up and play with them anyway and try to enjoy it.
Comment by Lindsey — February 8, 2006 @ 1:54 pm
We loved Racko…we used to play on Sunday afternoons with my Dad. I will have to look for it at garage sales.
Comment by Kathryn — February 8, 2006 @ 3:50 pm
Sorry is, of course, great for learning the art of spiteful payback.
And I don’t know how educational it is, but we are having fun with Uno these days.
Sadly, my little guy is too young to play Risk: Lord of the Rings edition! (The original version of that game taught me where Kamchatka is!)
Comment by SCPanther — February 8, 2006 @ 4:17 pm
I too am a huge Scrabble fan. We also like Monopoly…even Landon, my just-turned-five-year old has learned that Boardwalk and Park Place are quite valuable!!
And we have recently been playing a lot of Connect Four since my son got that for his birthday…(he beat me the other day!)
My husband is the master of Trivial Pursuit….
And then I like games that are not quite as educational like Mad Gab, Taboo…oh and Cranium. And Gestures…and Twister…and any and all card games.
I guess you could call me a gamer! I love them all….(well, Candyland gets old for me too…but Hungry, Hungy Hippo…that is a fun game!):D
Comment by Bethany — February 8, 2006 @ 5:09 pm
Oh and I forgot Malarky! So much fun!!!
Comment by Bethany — February 8, 2006 @ 5:09 pm
They say that games of strategy, like checkers and chess are educational. However, I am terrible at them, therefore avoid them and am a terrible mother because I won’t play them. I didn’t mind them so much when my son was like, 6 and I could still win. Those days are long since over.
Like many others, we like Boggle (and Probe), Yahtzee, and Dutch Blitz, though that may have no educational value. It is addictive though=)
Comment by lady laura — February 8, 2006 @ 6:33 pm
Hi there, this is Nikki from Sadie’s web sight. Michele has really turned me on to your sight. A game we like at our house is Tribond. Its a game that you have to figure out what the three things on a card have in common. My husband and I really like this game but Michele swears that he has memorized all the cards. Your sight is awsome! I look forward to reading it more often.
Comment by Nikki — February 8, 2006 @ 9:39 pm
Hi Nikki! You’re such a good-little-younger-woman, obeying the older woman who commanded you to check this blog out. I’m welcoming you, cus Blest has a hard time getting back to her writers. (What’s up with that? What does SHE have to do, anyway?) You’re going to love it here! (And I do think Eric memorized the cards.)
Comment by Michele — February 9, 2006 @ 10:27 am
I agree with board games like Scrabble you can learn a lot. Never played candy land - we don’t have that in Germany. I think reading to your child when they are really young - actually still a baby (my SH was great with our son - he read him every night Dr. Seuss
). Anyway, our son loves to read and knows so many words where I have to look them up in the dictionary…
Comment by eph2810 — February 9, 2006 @ 10:33 am
Nikki, Hi and Welcome!
Michele…Ttthhhppp!!!
Comment by blestwithsons — February 9, 2006 @ 12:59 pm
not going to lie, Scrabble is my absolute favorite!
Comment by Reid — February 9, 2006 @ 5:42 pm
We recently stayed with friends for a three-month period and they turned us on to some of the neatest and most unusual games. Anybody ever heard of Carcasonne? Ingenious? Blockus? Pickomino? Lost Cities? Diamant? Talking Tango? They are all so much fun. My friend gets them off of some website which I will get the address for and post later.
Comment by merilee — February 9, 2006 @ 8:04 pm
I love to play board games, as well. My wife and I play a few fairly regularly; Bible Scattagories, Boggle, Candyland, the Wiggles game, and a few others.
Occasionally we play scrabble, but she is an English major, and I…….am not!
If you like really simple educational computer games then I can’t recommend Gazillionaire highly enough. You get to run your own company and by stocks and trade goods and take passengers from planet to planet, (and even get tempted to do some underhanded dirty dealings…heh)
My wife and I play this one for hours.
They have a free shareware version on this webpage.
Great for teaching kids the importance of making wise business choices. (But we’ve been playing it for far longer than we’ve been parents!)
Comment by Danny Kaye — February 10, 2006 @ 9:13 am
For clarification:
I just re-read my comment. I would like to just mention that when Lisa and I play Candyland and the Wiggles game…we let David (4) and Joy (2) play with us.
Comment by Danny Kaye — February 10, 2006 @ 9:51 am
Merilee; We have been playing carcassonne, ingenius, settlers of Catan, etc for several years now! We have dozens of them. I would have to say that hands down the Catan series of games hase the best potential for education. Check them out at ebay! They are the best.
Blest, I wish I could have accessed your site a couple days ago. I am going to post an updated list of those games I was telling you about earlier. Come visit my site this afternoon or tomorrow!
SDG
Comment by Stephen Morse — February 10, 2006 @ 10:01 am
[…] Blest With Sons has turned off the TV; now they’re playing Scrabble–and other games—for school. Visit and find out how valuable games can be to your homeschooling efforts. […]
Pingback by Semicolon — February 10, 2006 @ 8:41 pm
Probe!! My husband and I used to love that — we played it at his folks’ house years ago. I haven’t seen it in ages — never thought about checking ebay. (What don’t they sell on ebay??!!)
I love Taboo but can’t get my guys to play with me. I love Boggle on the computer — it has five variations but the one I like best is “Battle Boggle” — you play against an opponent (human or computer. All the “cubes” are on a tray and each player plays one letter at a time and make as many words as you can before the other plays a letter and does the same thing. I used to like Scrabble but haven’t played in a while. We just discovered “Letterflip” at Barnes and Noble and like that pretty well.
Comment by Barbara H. — February 12, 2006 @ 9:41 pm
We like Taboo too… We also like Set and Chronology an awful lot (sorry that last link isn’t any better, but I am having trouble finding a better one:-( ) And of course Catagories (Scattagories, but make up your own catagories).
Comment by Fe — February 13, 2006 @ 10:07 am
Came back to add Go Scrabble and Grab Scrabble (played with just the Scrabble letters and no board) which were particular favourites with some of my older classes when I was in the classroom, and also pen and paper charades—what’s not to love about a game that is good for vocabulary, art and PE?!
Comment by Fe — February 14, 2006 @ 10:22 pm
[…] You just can’t beat Scrabble for educational value! My oldest has learned much about spelling, strategy, addition and multiplication, and how to be a good and hopeful loser! (Ha!) Seriously, we’re learning about how to keep striving to beat your own personal best instead of focusing on your opponent’s score. […]
Pingback by Blest with sons » School starts tomorrow — August 20, 2006 @ 2:01 pm