We don't have to tell you that fun classroom games are worth their weight in gold! Encouraging critical thinking, building social skills, and helping engage students with the curriculum? Yes, please. Get ready to bring game-based learning to your classroom with helpful printables, escape rooms, and more educational fun for elementary school students.
With a long list of benefits of learning games on hand, the teachers at Teach Starter have spent hours creating classroom card games, board games, scavenger hunts, and more that can help students build core competencies while having a whole lot of fun!
Game-based learning has gotten a lot of interest in recent years, but what exactly, is it? We know you've got a lot to do in your classroom and not a whole lot of time to do it, so our teacher team has put together a quick guide to gamification in education. (Know all you need to know? Feel free to jump ahead to our printable and digital learning games!)
In essence, game-based learning allows you to borrow from the gaming world to allow your students to engage with their lesson material in more dynamic ways. They can help improve student motivation and help students achieve learning objectives.
We like to think of it a bit like the parents who hide the broccoli inside the tasty hamburger. A little bit of gameplay helps the medicine — or core curriculum — go down!
Games aren't just fun, after all. They have failure baked into them, along with repetition, and the chance to accomplish goals along the way. Playing games in a classroom fosters many of those social and emotional learning skills, even when the topic at hand comes from the science curriculum or is focused on an ELA standard.
We hinted at some of the benefits earlier, but let's dig deep into the benefits of playing educational games in your classroom!
Good teachers can make just about any lesson fun, but maybe you're looking for learning game ideas to mix things up. We thought you'd never ask!
Check out a few of our teacher team's favorite (and fun) ways to inject gameplay into your students' education:
Looking for a few fun ways to use games in the classroom? Our teacher team has a few quick ideas for you to try on for size!
Reinforce students' knowledge of rhyming words with this set of 30 picture cards.
Discover the lingo and symbols related to St. Patrick’s Day with this BINGO game set.
A set of 17 activity cards with instructions for drama games.
A fun scavenger hunt for students to do in the library.
A fun scavenger hunt for students to do in the library.
Build vocabulary skills surrounding Easter with a fun Easter game for kids!
Practice dictionary skills with your students with this active game.
Use inference and problem-solving skills to decipher the puzzles and uncover the hidden code.
A set of 24 measurement conversion task cards to use as a whole class scoot activity.
A comprehensive set of flashcards for CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words.
Practice computation skills by solving puzzles with this differentiated Halloween escape room game.<br /><br />
Practice determining the bigger decimal in the ones, tenths, and hundredths place with this “War” card game for 2 players.
An 18 page editable PowerPoint to use in the classroom when introducing multiplication and division fact families.
Practice identifying fractions with a fun fractions board game.
Practice writing simple and compound sentences with our Roll and Write activity.
Practice finding and comparing the area of a triangle with a game of WAR!
Learn to identify rhyme, rhythm, and repetition with a poetry Slapjack Game!
Bring spring into your classroom with a fun game of Spring Riddle Bingo!
Students move along board game spaces and use collective nouns in sentences with correct subject-verb agreement.
An interactive quiz to reinforce a range of measurement concepts.
A set of cards to be used in a Guess Who? Board Game for students to reinforce their knowledge of fractions, decimals, and percentages.
A game to practice working with common, proper, and collective nouns.
Practice telling time to the nearest hour, quarter hour, or half hour by matching 32 analog and digital clock dominoes.
An active game that allows students to build their vocabulary knowledge.
A game to play to when learning to solve long division involving remainders.
Introduce St. Patrick’s Day vocabulary words with our picture & word card headbands game.
An active PowerPoint game to practice decoding words with vowel teams.
Review how to add and subtract decimals with a small group bingo game!
An interactive, kid-friendly alternative to hangman.