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How to Use Classic Board Games as a Fun Way to Do School Review
Whether you take a summer break or school year-round, all kids can benefit from these fun ways to review content using classic games you probably have at home right now! Read on for ideas on how to use four different board games to do school review!
SCRABBLE: This is probably the most obvious and easiest choice to turn into a review game. And there are several ways you can put this CLASSIC BOARD game to extra use!
1} PARTS OF SPEECH SCRABBLE: Instead of playing regular SCRABBLE, players can only spell specific parts of speech. You can play an entire game of just adjectives or you can change with every round and work on verbs, nouns, and more. It’s a simple change and requires no additional prep work on your part! And it allows for kids of all ages to review parts of speech at their level.
2} SPELLING LIST SCRABBLE: Print off a list of whatever spelling or vocabulary words you used during the year. The rule can be that players can only spell those words, which might be kind of limiting. Or, for an easier time, you could make it that anybody who plays one of those words gets bonus points. And if you have different kids with different lists, this is a really fun and easy way to help everybody review spelling and/or vocabulary at their own individual level.
3} MATH SCRABBLE: Instead of using letter tiles to spell words, players use number tiles to form math problems. For this, you’ll need to either buy a couple of sets of number tiles {which are surprisingly inexpensive and could also be used for a ton of different math activities,} print off the free tiles found in this pack or deface the SCRABBLE tiles you already have by writing numbers on the backside. But no matter which you do, it’s super easy to turn SCRABBLE into a math game! Everybody draws ten number tiles, the first person creates an equation, if they can, and the next person has to use one of the previously played tiles in his/her equation. And so on and so forth. You can adjust the plan as you go to fit your players. One easy-to-implement adjustment would be to make the function {+ – x / =} tiles free and swappable. You would just lay out all of the function tiles and players could use them in a new equation or even replace what’s already on the board to make their own equation work. This would even allow kids of different skill levels to play together and work on their math skills!
HEDBANZ: This game has endless possibilities to use for review.
Instead of using the cards included in the game, you’ll need to make your own but the effort this takes pays off when you consider the fact that you can fully customize the game to review anything…history, science, geography, foreign language, grammar, literary elements, Bible stories, states & capitals, anything! You can simply use index cards or print the free blank game cards found here to turn the game into anything you need it to be! HEDBANZ uses images and text, which makes it great for all ages/levels, but if all of your players can read, you can skip the images and only use text. This will cut down your prep time considerably. And another easy alternative is to use pre-printed flashcards, which are available on dozens of subjects!
PICTIONARY: This is another game with an infinite number of ways to review school! Just print the blank cards found in this free pack, fill them in with the subject matter and play PICTIONARY as normal!
JENGA: Again, this one can be fully customized to review literally any subject! And it’s simple!
On the end of each block, use a Sharpie to write a number from 1 to 54, assuming your JENGA set has 54 blocks. Make sure you write the same number on both ends of every block so that no matter from which angle you are looking at the stack, you can see numbers. Then make a list of 54 questions that review your desired subject and number them 1-54. Before a player can pull the block he wants, he must answer the corresponding question correctly. If he knows the answer, he can pull the block. If he pulls it successfully, he gets the number of points from the block. If he doesn’t know the answer, he can’t pull the block and misses his turn. OR if he doesn’t know the answer, he still has to pull the block but gets those points deducted from his score. There are so many fun options with JENGA! And, if you want an easy-to-print blank list, you can find one here.
So, which will you use: Scrabble, Pictionary, Jenga or Hedbanz?
Grab the Free Blank Game and Tiles Printable Pack here!
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