14 of the Best Board Games for the Classroom

I’m a huge fan of using games in the classroom! Kids naturally love to play and I truly believe that learning through play is the best way to grow those little minds. Board games should be a part of every classroom from preschool through high school. Not only are they great for rainy day inside recess, board games can be a great supplement to your academic curriculum.

Before you rush out and buy just any old games, let’s look at some of the best board games for the classroom that are fun and build academic skills all at the same time!

What Are the Best Board Games for the Classroom?

Here are some of my favorite games for the elementary classroom that help build reading, math, science, and social studies skills.

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READING BOARD GAME IDEAS

Students who struggle in reading often don’t like to read, so getting them to pick up a book and practice is difficult. But board games don’t feel like work to these kids. Here are some games my students enjoy that help build decoding, spelling, vocabulary, and word recognition skills:

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Wordplay for Kids is a great game for kids that adults can also enjoy. Players spin the spinner to get two letters. Then they must think of words containing those letters that also fit it a certain category like foods or animals or something found in the house. This game is easy to learn and play. I would recommend it for 2nd grade and up.

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If your students like Bingo, they will love Zingo Word Builder! This game is for younger students, kindergarten and first grade mostly. Players must use letter tiles to build real words on their word mat. The first player to complete all six words on their board is the winner. I have also used this game with 2nd grade special education students who are below grade level in reading.

Bananagrams is sort of similar to Scrabble but instead of building off of each other’s words, players build off of their own. It’s great for kids 8 and up. There is actually a junior version for younger kids (4-8). In this version, some of the letters (like digraphs, blends, and vowel teams) are connected so students are building words by phonemes instead of letter-by-letter. Great for phonemic awareness and phonics skills.

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Math Board Game Ideas

I have a whole separate blog post on why you should use games to teach math because it’s that important. Math is one of those things that seems meaningless to many kids until they get out in the real world. Games help them make the connection even sooner.

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CrossMath by MindWare is one of the best board games for the classroom and an excellent game for building mental math skills. It’s best for 3rd grade and up because it involves all four operations. I think of it as a cross between Scrabble and Sudoku.

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My fourth graders really like this one and it helps them memorize their math facts. I’ve used this game with third graders too, but it tends to be a little slow paced because they don’t know their math facts as fluently and have to spend time figuring them out.

For younger students, I highly recommend Clumsy Thief in the Candy Shop. Not only do kids think it’s funny, they get tons of practice adding and subtracting up to 20. This was one my first graders LOVED! They could play independently which was a bonus for me. Now this is really a card game rather than a board game, but I still think it’s great. If you teach kindergarten or have students needing remediation, there’s a Clumsy Thief Jr. game that only goes up to 10. And for 2nd grade, there’s a version that goes up to 100.

Also for the lower grades, Race to Planet X is fantastic for building number sense and fluency in addition and subtraction. In this game, players try to collect sets of three cards that create a number bond or fact family and be the first to reach Planet X. I think the rules of the game are a little hard for kindergarten, but it’s a great game for first through third grades (because most third graders still need to memorize those basic facts).

A large majority of math-based board games focus on counting or addition and subtraction. But Blobby’s Pizza Math Game is a fractions and decimals game making it perfect for 4th and 5th graders. I’m currently an intervention teacher, so I work with struggling students who generally don’t like math. But wow, do they love this game! I mean the main character’s name is Blobby! I like the fact that each card shows a fraction and its equivalent reduced fraction plus the decimal notation.

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Science Board Game Ideas

When searching out the best board games for the classroom, most teachers will stop with reading and math. But games are fun way to learn in any subject area!

I haven’t found a whole lot of quality games for science. It’s definitely a neglected niche in the board game industry. Here are a few that my students actually enjoy that promote scientific thinking.

For a well-rounded mix of science trivia questions, give MindWare Science Trivia Challenge a try. The game features three types of questions:

• “Know It” cards are multiple choice and true/false questions.
• “Name It” cards require students to identify the object in the picture.
• “Rank It” cards have a list of scientific items that must be put in order based on specific criteria like size, distance, or speed.

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This is a really simple game to learn and play for even younger students. However, it does require the ability to read the cards.

Sometimes I pull out the cards to use as a time-filler. I read a question aloud and the kids try to guess the answer. It’s a good end-of-the-day transition activity while we’re waiting for the bell to ring.

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Another game that is super simple but very fun is Guess in 10 Animal Planet. There are other versions of the game but this one focuses on animal facts. It’s packed full of information about the animal world including animal classification and various adaptations.

This is really a card game, but I’m including it because science-based games are so hard to find. Each card has clues and players must try to guess the animal in as few clues as possible. You may notice on Amazon that some reviews mention factual mistakes in this game. I believe these have all been corrected. I bought the most recent version and none of those mistakes are in the deck I got.

Not really a game, but a FANTASTIC science activity that students will be quietly engaged in for a long time is