Using Board Games in the Classroom

I did a lot of shopping over the Thanksgiving break-too much shopping! :) I found some games on sale from Amazon and I purchased a few to make workstations. I like using games in the classroom because I believe it teaches the students a lot about playing by the rules, good sportsmanship, etc. I don't think many get this experience at home because they will say things like "he's cheating!". I ask-"how is he cheating?" and the answer is "he's winning!". Even teaching them ways to decide who goes first I feel is giving them tools, because otherwise they would spend their whole rotation time arguing about it.

So here are 2 of my creations. My students still struggle with vowel sounds, so I put the vowels all over the Candyland board and then put pictures of CVC words on the cards. They draw a card-for example-fox and then move to the letter /o/.

We also did sight word Twister! The words are on the mat and the spinner. To make this more challenging I might use vocabulary words and put the meaning on the spinner.

We had the joy of standardized testing all week this week. Fill in the bubbles and everything. It was an exhausting week for all of us so I was glad we could add a little fun and novelty to our workstations.