I’ve always known playing games made learning so much more fun for our children. However, as I wrote my last post on the benefits of using games for teaching, I was excited to find studies and information that confirmed what I knew experientially: playing games truly does offer many educational benefits!
Just a quick review of the benefits of using games for learning from my last post:
Games strengthen focus and memory skills, build motor skills for younger children, build socialization skills, problem-solving skills, analytical skills, and they also help with cognitive growth.
They improve executive functioning skills giving children the ability to accomplish tasks.
Games offer the opportunity to build character, helping children learn self-control and good sportsmanship as well as giving them the opportunity to learn to cooperate with others.
Games help build close relationships within the family, which is very important to most homeschoolers! They also give children a sense of accomplishment. Games are a wonderful way to teach and reinforce information that our children need to learn.
Today I want to share some great games to use specifically for building Language Arts skills.
The games listed here are “tried and true” favorites from homeschool parents who shared their favorite educational games with me on Facebook. Some are favorite games we used in our home as well. All in all, the games listed here are well-liked by children and homeschool parents!
For language arts, the first thing we focus on in the pre-k to kindergarten years is developing reading readiness skills.
What are reading readiness skills?
According to allaboutlearningpress.com, the skills needed to learn to read are print awareness, letter awareness, phonemic awareness, reading comprehension, and developing a desire to read. Click here to read their post on reading readiness skills.
Some wonderful games for developing reading readiness skills are: (these may contain affiliate links)
- Alphabet Memory games: for preschool/kindergarten age children
- Alphabet Go Fish Matching Game:
- Alphabet Bingo:
- Alphabet SlapJack:
- StarMall Alphabet Letters Matching Puzzle ABCs Flash Cards with Animals for Kids
- Alphabet Adventure (Leapfrog) Kindergarten: (need Leapfrog Interactive Learning system to use)
- Sequence Letters (for phonemic awareness once a child knows alphabet)
- Snap it Up Phonics & Reading (ages 6+ – teaches phonics/reading)
Once your children have their reading readiness skills down, it’s time to teach them to read and along with that, to spell. There are some wonderful games to help you teach your child to read and spell and also give them practice in both these areas.
Here are some games for developing phonics, reading and spelling skills:
- Candyland (add sight words to the color cards & have your child read the card as they move)
- File Folder games for Reading (grades 1-3) Build key reading skills—word families, long and short vowels, consonant sounds, parts of speech, compound words, and more – make your own file folder games with these templates:
- Scrabble or Scrabble Junior
- Bananagrams
- Quiddler (ages 8-adult, includes solitaire version)
- 10 Reading Comprehension Card Games (grades 3-5)
- Online Phonics Games:
Once our children are fluent readers there are some fun games for the older child that continue to build language arts skills:
- Taboo (age 13+)
Remember you can use games as a supplement to your language arts program, or for younger kids, as your language arts program! You can set up a language arts learning station with some of these games.
Games make learning fun and develop lifelong learners!
I’ll also be posting a resource list for games on my “Recommended” page as well and will update them as I learn of more games for this subject!
Please comment below if you know of other language arts games that kids would enjoy! And have fun playing!!
Next up, MATH games!
