Best Educational Games

SEQUENCE Letters by Jax - SEQUENCE Fun from A to Z

This game is a great way to work on letter recognition and beginning sounds. You start with three cards each, face up so you can see what your opponents have, and choose one card to play and then place your coin on a picture that starts with that letter. Each letter has two spots and two different word options so there is a lot of thinking and strategy involved but it's also fine if kids just want to choose a picture that they like or randomly place your coins on the board to see what happens. The object is to get a "bingo" of four of the same color coins in a row. The coins make an awesome clinking sound and are fun to play with--by awesome I mean awesome to the kids but a test of patience to the facilitator. (:

Some of the words chosen are not phonemically consistent but it is a good opportunity to teach the different sounds that each letter makes. For example, the A words are "airplane" and "apple," C is for "cereal" and "cat," I is for "ice cream" and "igloo," G is for "giraffe" and "grapes."

Modification suggestion: instead of having three cards to choose from, I just have kids draw one card and decide which picture to place it on. I feel like that is enough decision making for beginners and allows them to focus more on the letter and word that starts with it. You can also tell them to find the "cat" or "cereal" if they are beginners. The game board can be overwhelming at first and difficult to find the picture unless half of the pictures are covered with coins so I feel like that is a good way to play the game at first. Once they have played many times they will remember which words go with each letter so the game will go faster.





SEQUENCE for Kids -- The 'No Reading Required' Strategy Game by Jax

This is different from the Sequence Letters edition because it has animals and animal cards, BUT I made a set of alphabet cards that corespond with the animals on the board to make it more educational. I also had to cover some of the animals with other pictures because there are some with the same letter like, PANDA and PENGUIN, WOLF and WHALE or KILLER WHALE and KANGAROO, but you could try to leave them and just add extra letter cards. I also decided to do SH for SHARK instead of just S. If you want to focus more on learning the animal names then this is educational in that aspect but if you don't want to make a set of alphabet cards then I would suggest the Sequence Letters game instead.





USAOPOLY Telestrations Original 8 Player, Family Board Game, A Fun Family Game for Kids and Adults, Family Game Night Just Got Better, The Telephone Game Sketched Out, Multicolor

This is a great way to work on spelling and reading! Like the name says, you are playing a pictionary/telephone game. Each player gets their own booklet, a whiteboard marker, and cloth for erasing. For each round you are going to alternate between reading a word and drawing what you think it is and looking at a picture and writing what you think it is. You pass it around until each player has had a turn on every booklet. The fun part is checking everyone's drawings and words at the end! We have gotten some really hilarious drawings and misinterpretations but all in good fun!

It is quite advanced for ESL but you can easily modify it and it is still a super entertaining game! Instead of using the word cards provided, I write the secret word myself on each player's booklet. I have done this with CVC and CVCE words, as well as common vocabulary words that I thought they could recognize. Some students really froze up and "drew" a blank when they looked at the first word so I sometimes start by reviewing a set of vocabulary words and the spelling and telling them that one of the words in their booklets will be selected from this set of cards. This helps the game go more smoothly and achieves the goal of reveiwing and evaluating my students' reading and spelling abilties.





ThinkFun Zingo Word Builder Early Reading Game - Award Winning Game for Pre-Readers and Early Readers

This is a hit amongst all ages and it truly is Bingo with a zing! It spices up a normal Bingo game and things can even get quite heated or competitive. The gadget that slides the tiles out two at a time is very fun to handle and my students always want to take turns doing it. The tiles also make that fun clinking sound that kids seem to love and the slots for inserting the unneeded tiles makes an exciting "click" that could be incentive enough to say the target vocabulary or sound.

I have made two sets of boards to use with my students who are not ready to creatively make up their own words without any visual clues. The first set is a set of boards with just letters. I did this by having my older students sort all the tiles into three-letter words and arrange them so that all the letters are used up. This can be played as just a letter-recognition bingo where the kid who calls out the letter first gets to take the tile and put it on their board. There is some overlap but at least half of the kids will not have to compete for the same letter. For more advanced students, you can have them read the three-letter word they spell (CAT, FOX, etc.) once they get all the tiles on it. I have also played this where they have to say the sounds or a word that starts with that letter inorder to take the tile.

The second set I made has pictures of words that start with each letter tile. This was easy to make using the letter boards by just replacing those letters with pictures. For my CAT board I have a picture of a cat, an apple, and a top instead of the three letters. They can try to read the words once they've covered the pictures with the letter tiles. After playing this many times I have noticed a big improvement in my students' phonemic awareness!





Educational Insights Raccoon Rumpus Game, Dice Rolling Color Matching Preschool Game, Ages 3+ and Educational Insights Koala Capers Card Game

These two adorable games are my go-to for clothing-themed lessons! They are so cute and simple! You take turns rolling two dice: one has different colors (Racoon game) or patterns (Koala game) and the other has different items of clothing. Then you have to find a card with that combination and dress your animal card. There is one side of the die that has both a shirt and bottom which allows you to select two cards and one side has underwear which means you have to put back all of your cards and start over. If this is too frustrating for some kids you can just let them reroll! The point should be to have fun, practice vocabulary and matching, and practice taking turns. These are also nice and compact and always a great price on Amazon so you could even buy two if you had more than four students/players but I like to just pair kids up to make the game move faster.





Guess Who

This game is great for practicing asking questions. I write down some sample question patterns for my students to reference. They all love playing this game. This particular version has different themed cards you can slide in, which makes it very versatile. I have also made my own cards to practice different themes or include some of my students favorite characters like Disney, Pokemon, Sumikokurashi, etc. It is harder to find this version now but if you can wait for a price drop or thrift it, I highly recommend this version!



I have also written about these educational games here.



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