The children are going through a phase of rediscovering all their board games. This may be because they have more time to use them now they are not at school but also that they are a bit older and have a better understanding and abilty for some of them. I have been quietly observing the learning that is taking place and sometimes joining in.
Some games have an obvious learning curve to them like Scrabble for spelling and volcabulary and dominoes for basic numeracy. Others seem more trivial and fun like the Harry Potter Trivia Game with questions based on the first book. I have noted them realising that like in exams, you have to read the question carefully to acertain exactly what is being asked, before blurting out an answer. Cluedo has seen them developing powers of deduction and working with the process of elimination. Star Wars Episode 2 Monoploy is a maths masterpiece really, also allowing for study of the concept of mortgaging property and cruel business strategy (you’d charge your own mother for staying at your hotel???). Chinese Chequers and Connect 4 are such simple games but lateral thinking soon develops with them and they become exceedingly complex entities. There’s no telling what random facts you will pick up while playing Trivial Pursuit and the Da Vinci Code Game is a little extra mathmatical practice.
Seeing all these benefits combined with fun makes me feel rather sad about the way games are used in state schools. Despite complaints of underfunding they often do have a marvellous collection of games for all ages and abilities but these are so secondary to the curriculum of written work. I don’t see this as the teachers fault as they have to tick their boxes and show that work has been completed. Games are often taken out when there is an odd five or ten minutes left to fill in and then they are not completed or even always set up and understood before the bell stops learning in it’s tracks…dramatic pause followed by ear-splitting, nerve jangling electronic bell sound!
Scrabble – a classic point scoring word game – great for developing literacy skills.
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Chinese Chequers is one of my own favourites from childhood – develop those strategies!
We have the family edition of Trivial Pursuit which includes a pack of cards with questions for children – sometimes the adult ones are about things that happened or were in the news before they were born.
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