Tag Archives: educational games

PBS Games

I couldn’t let National Literacy Month pass without talking about the very fun PBS site for kids. PBS games are fun, colorful, easy to play, and educational. Many support reading skills. There are so many games for so many ages that I can’t list them all. Here though, are a few of my favorites. In Global Gizmo, under the Arthur Section, the player matches pairs of musical instruments from around the world. When you click on the pictures you hear what the instruments sound like. There is a link that explains where the instruments come from. Some are familiar like … Continue reading →

Mastermind – fun and logic

Mastermind is a great game for introducing or encouraging logical reasoning. One player picks four colored pegs and hides them on the end of the board. The other players uses educated guesses to figure out “the code” of colored pegs. There are six colors to pick from. One the code breaker guesses, the code maker places tiny black and white pegs off to the side. A black peg means you have a correct color in the correct position. A white peg means you have a correct color in your guess, but it’s not in the correct position. Officially it’s a … Continue reading →

Bulls and Cows – a logic game

Kids love to crack codes, and its fun to use our brains. Here’s an easy to learn code cracking game that some schools are using to teach logical thought processes. I’ve even seen questions based on this game on middle school tests. The game is called Cows and Bulls. It’s similar to Mastermind, but you don’t have to buy anything to play it. You can play on a white board, or just a piece of paper. You need at least two people, but you play on teams or play cooperatively. One player thinks of a four digit number without zeros. … Continue reading →

Big Brain Academy

I can just imagine the reaction from my boys if I pulled out workbooks or anything school related this time of year. And yet they are thrilled with one of our new Wii games. Big Brain Academy, Wii Degree is all about exercising your brain and training it to work faster. The “Academy” tests your thinking skills in five categories, Visualize, Analyze, Memorize, Identify, and Compute. Each of the categories have three games. The graphics are cute and playful, and the games are short. Maybe that is partly why the games don’t feel like work. Some of the games even … Continue reading →

Set: The Family Game of Visual Perception

Set: The Family Game of Visual Perception is a unique card game. Set has won awards from MENSA, Dr. Toy, Parent’s Choice, and Games Magazine. It retails for under ten dollars. The rules say that the game is for ages six to adult, but younger children are able to play. They may get frustrated, though, at the lack of turns. That’s right. No turns. Everyone goes at once. If that’s the case, they may enjoy playing a solitaire version of the game. The object of the game is to match a set of three cards. The cards have squiggles, ovals, … Continue reading →

Monopoly as a Learning Tool

There are times when it’s hard to inject an atmosphere of fun into the schoolwork routine. My temperament is such that I want to get to work and get it done, where my children prefer to do it the fun way. We clash, I’m afraid. One day they kept begging me to play Monopoly with them when I was trying to get them to do school. I agreed, but on the condition that we make it part of school time. It turned out to be an excellent compromise. In counting out the money, the children learned the value of the … Continue reading →

Kid Friendly Websites: Fun Brain

Would your child spend hours playing video games everyday is they were allowed to? While getting outside or picking up a book is probably a much better way to spend your day, if your child love to play video games then the site Fun Brain is a great place to send them. Fun Brain is a site completely dedicated to bringing fun games to your children that are also educational. While on Fun Brain they will be able to play lots of fun games, but they will always learn a little something in the process. Most of the games on … Continue reading →

Taiko Drum Master

Posted on by

For those of you familiar with Dance Dance Revolution Taiko Drum Master works under the same principles. The controller for the game is a large plastic drum rather than a handheld controller. During game play a song will play and a bar will tell you when to hit the drum. The more accurately you hit the drum the higher your score. A toy store was going out of business in my town and I picked this game up for 75% off, which in my opinion was a steal. The game comes packaged with the controller, which is a definite plus … Continue reading →