5 Exciting Learning Games for Kids to Play

Games for kids are a fantastic way to ignite learning. Kids naturally love to play. So, when we can combine something they love to do with something they need to do, they enjoy the task more. Here are 5 fun games that are easy to throw together at the last minute. Plus, a free quick guide page for you to print and links to Amazon for any supplies you might need.

Amazon affiliate links are included at the end of the post.

Side Walk Chalk

As a kid, sidewalk chalk was one of my favorite things to play with because I could have fun being creative. Now, it’s always a crowd pleaser when my students can get outside and draw on the sidewalk at school.

Sidewalk chalk is a great way to encourage creativity and collaboration with reading responses. There are so many ways you can use sidewalk chalk to create learning games for kids. You can create math facts, word searches, tic-tac-toe boards and more.

Try this reading response game:

First, decide which book you want to use as the read aloud text for this game.

• Divide students into 6 groups.
• Give each group their own color of chalk (this will help as they start responding to other group’s work)
• Have students create a team name and write it in their space.
• Then, tell students they will answer 6 questions as a group (questions below). They can write or draw their answers. After all groups have answer the question, the group will move to the next area.
• Give groups about 3 or 4 minutes to respond to each question.
• When the groups rotate, they can create a new response or add on to what the previous group wrote/drew.
• Keep rotating until all questions have been answered.
• Bonus whole group review: snap a quick photo of each groups work. Share it with yourself so you can display it on a computer screen or active board and review how the groups answered the 6 reading response questions.

6 reading response questions for students to answer:

Cards & Dice

Cards

What’s the last card game you played? I always enjoy playing war with my students during indoor recess. They get pretty competitive.

So, why not use that love of cards to practice math facts? When we play Math Fact War, students play with a partner. They decide before they start what math operation they are focusing on (multiplication, division) or if they want to practice fractions.

Math Fact War Rules of Play

Dice

Much like cards, dice are a simple way to turn any content area skill into a fun learning games for kids. There are tons on free dice roll activities for reading and math online, but it’s just as easy to create your own for a specific content area.

Since dice games tend to be fast pace and repetitive, I like using them for reviewing challenging information that just doesn’t “stick” in our kids’ minds. This makes repetitive learning games perfect for social studies review since names, dates, and places can be challenging for students.

Social Studies Dice Roll Challenge

There are several ways to use dice in your classroom.
– Whole group: the teacher rolls the dice and students answer on paper or dry erase boards
– Small group: students work in teams to be the first to cover all the required information
– Partner: students work to write and answer review questions based on their dice roll
– Individual: students work alone to roll and answer the review questions. This is a good homework option if you assign homework.

Basic review questions for your dice:

Story Coins & Letter Tiles

Unpopular opinion: I enjoy word study. My mind just likes the challenge of breaking words apart and creating something new. Students, however, don’t always feel the same way. In fact, vocabulary work is usually one of my kiddos’ least favorite center activities.

That was until I starting making word work fun by incorporating learning games and the word of the week strategy. Two of my favorite learning games for kids work to build a deep understand of words. These two games are “secret word” and “word list”.

Don’t forget your free quick guide

Secret Word Game

There are many variations of the game “secret word”, but the premise is the same. There is a word that one partner is trying to get the other partner to guess. The catch is, the partner who knows the word can only give clues to help the other person figure out the word. This game is create for word study because it stretches students vocabulary, creativity, and team work.

To make this game extra fun for my kids, I let them use Story Coins to jumpstart their creativity. You can use the coin icons as a “theme” for explaining the vocabulary word or allow students to have free play. Here’s a video of my 5th graders enjoying from free play word work:

Word List Game

The other favorite word study game is “word list” using letter tiles from our Banana-grams game (you can also Scrabble tiles or something similar). For this game, students use our vocabulary list to create synonyms and antonyms for each word. They can also create new words using the root of our vocabulary word if possible. This is a great game for a small group of 4-6 students.

Popsicle Sticks & Play-Doh

Much like social studies, science tends to have a lot of important facts students need to know but don’t often remember. The awesome thing about science, though, is hands-on activities are a natural fit. One way to support student understanding of challenging concepts is through creating replicas with popsicle sticks and/or play-doh.

Ok, so this isn’t technically a learning game, but it is a great way to incorporate play-based learning into upper elementary. Plus, research shows that providing students opportunities to create replicas, models, or representations helps create a deeper level of understanding.

Science Concepts to Create:

Plastic Eggs

If you want to get kids excited about test review, create a scavenger hunt with prizes and watch them work. I use this learning game strategy during unit test review and high stakes testing (i.e.- state testing) because it gives kids a content review without pressure.

Creating a review scavenger hunt does not need to take a lot of time. I created multiple choice questions for each team and then added the questions to a Google quiz form. This step is a game changer. Once students find the plastic eggs, they put the answers into the Google form and the points are awarded instantly. Who doesn’t love learning games for kids that don’t require you to keep track of the points?

Quickly Create a Scavenger Hunt

Amazon Links to Support Games for Kids

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