Buyer Beware!!

As this Christmas season approaches I have been researching toys for my kids. I am a BIG fan of educational toys and my kids really love learning. I was looking into the new Leapfrog learning systems and found that another blogger had written a review on the didj, their system for kids 5-10. I was excited because my son picks up on things pretty fast and I wanted a system that would grow with him. I don't mind buying him new games, I just don't want to buy a new system. They are expensive!

This blogger said that her child has one and she was disappointed because the older kid games were more like the Nintendo DS games, and didn't have a lot of education in them. Man. How sad. Why can't we make learning more fun for our older kids, not just our younger kids. Sure it is easier to have them jump along a given path with their ABC's then to create a program where they find the value of x or use a digital protractor to determine which triangles are right angles before they can go through the castle door to slay the dragon after answering his questions about a passage they read earlier.

Many games claim to be educational but really aren't. Talk to someone before you buy the game or look closely at what you are getting before you spend the money.

Here are some truly educational board games that I used in my classroom.

Totally Tut- This is a game that can be played with children as young as 8 but can be challenging for adults too. Your goal is to make every line in your pyramid equal to the number at the top. Younger kids use addition and subtraction, older kids use multiplication and division.

Doubles Wild - My second graders LOVED this game. They all fought over who would get to play it. This game teaches grid coordinates, and for older kids multiplication facts (which are very important to memorize!!!)

Bananagrams - This is game is just like Scrabble. It just doesn't have a board. Anyone can play. This would also be an easy game to make with your computer by just putting letters in boxes and cutting them out. Make their spelling words worth extra points!

Timing it Right - This game helps kids learn to tell time. You first role the dice, move your piece, make the clock show that time and then read what you get to do from the book. This is great for second graders. This is a difficult concept for them!!

Bike Racers - This great game helps build reading comprehension skills. It's works for up to 15 people and is a lot of fun.

Around the Garden - This is kind of like sorry. You have to guess the vocabulary word with the clues given. The less clues you use the more spaces you get to move. I had a parent make cards for this game so it fit with my students vocabulary words. It was great.

I found the last two games on the Lakeshore Learning site. I only wrote about the games I have played from this site but the others look great too.

Remember educational is a loosely used term to get people to buy something. It is easy to say the game is educational because it teaches strategy. While this is important it's not always what you are looking for. Make sure you do your homework so you aren't disappointed when you open that game for the first time and find out the education the game is teaching is colors for your 10 year old.

What educational games have you found that have helped your child learn something? What games have you found that claim to be educational but really weren't?