Benefits of Games in the Classroom

I love it when people *get it!* School is not always easy (or fun...) for all kids. Each person has a different learning style, too.
The other day, I received my e-mail from the National Education Association (NEA) and loved what I saw! The title was "Experts Tout Educational Benefits of Board Games" and there were two articles (Washington Post and mlive from Michigan) talking about these benefits.

Discovery Toys has some great games that can be used by teachers (and even speech pathologists ;) ). Here is some info about some of my favorites:

Number Hunt:
Recommended for ages 4+, children are motivated to learn math skills, like number recognition, counting and addition.
PS...it's on sale right now until February 6!

Labyrinth:
I have to admit that this is one of my favorites! I've even played it by myself, even though I'm much older than 7... It's a great game for teaching turn taking skills and for following directions, but it really takes some critical thinking and planning ahead to play, which is so important for children in school. On their turn, the player moves board pieces to clear a path to the object they need to collect. Lots of fun!

Zingo:
I've actually already expressed my love for this game here ;)

Other great games include Wiz Kids, Friendship Island, Play to Be Safe, Word Flip, and A to Z Jr.

We're always playing different kinds of games in my classroom during our small groups time. It's great for teaching turn taking, vocabulary, sentence use, and we've even played some Bingo games for specific speech sounds!

Happy playing!