Grade School Games

Early Grade School Games for LD Learners
by Amy Lesher

Guess Who
A wonderful blend of deduction with a form of 20 Questions. Two players try to deduce the identity of their opponent's "Mystery Person." Using game boards with 48 frames apiece and an equal number of cards displaying character faces, players ask one another yes or no questions that help narrow the pool of possibilities. Through process of elimination, the identity of the Mystery Person slowly becomes evident. As kids' skill levels grow, their questions become more strategic, allowing them to solve the mystery faster and faster. The faces on the cards are cheerful and clever and designed to give subgroups among the 48 characters just enough similarities to challenge players.
Guess Where
Where oh where has everybody gone? In Guess Where? players will find out who is hogging the bathroom, who's lurking in the kitchen, and who is lollygagging in the bedroom. Each player gets a two-sided fold-up plastic house and two sets of the same family members, one with pegs and one with tabs. After each player hides all the pegged family members throughout their own house, they begin asking yes/no questions about the whereabouts of the other player's family. As the answers to the clues build, players place tabbed family members in the lower half of their houses, in the locations they believe them to be hiding in the other house. Questions can be general (Is there a guy upstairs?) or specific (Is Grandma in the kids' room?). First person to guess where everyone in the other house is, wins! This is a terrific game for developing deduction skills.
Balloon Lagoon
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, step right up to Balloon Lagoon, the amazing 4-in-1 carnival game created especially for kids. Players giggle with delight as they race to complete each fun-filled carnival activity before the merry-go-round music comes to an end. Kids fish for letters at Letter Lake, match tasty treats at Snack Hut, spin a picture puzzle at Tumble Tides, and flip frogs back home at Frog Pond. Every catch, roll, spin, or flip is a chance to cheer and get more balloons. The first player to collect 15 balloons is the winner! Each game lasts about 15 minutes, but kids will want to play again and again!
What’s Gnu
A perfect game for beginning readers. Kids love the scramble to build words! Phonics practice comes naturally when kids attempt spell their own words from letter tiles. Who "Gnu" learning could be this much fun! A winner of 3 Awards of Excellence: iParenting Media's Excellent Products Award, 2006 The National Parenting Center's Seal of Approval, 2006 Canadian Toy Testing Council 2 Star Award The object of the game is to spell more three-letter words than the other players. Word-Starter cards which have one letter and two blanks are spread out for everyone to see. Players slide the clever Letter Getter to magically reveal two letter tiles. At the same time, players must look at these tiles and try to make three-letter words by filling in the blanks on the Word-Starter cards. The player with the most three-letter words when all the tiles run out wins! Building your vocabulary is three times more fun with What's GNU? The three-letter word game that spells FUN.
Enchanted Forest
This game promotes concentration and working memory, imagination, and a fun competitiveness. The rules of the game are easily adapted to suit different age groups.
Mystery Garden
Randomly place the 48 picture cards face down around the game board. The youngest player begins by picking up any one of picture cards, being sure not to show it to any of the other players. This picture card shows an exact picture of an object on the game board. The other players try to guess the object by asking "yes" or "no" questions. After each question, the single playing piece is moved along the path in the mystery garden. The player who correctly guesses the object shown on the picture card keeps that card and draws another one from around the game board. Then the questions begin again. If no one has guessed the object by the time the playing piece reaches the castle, the player answering the questions keeps the picture card and draws another one and the questioning starts over. The player with the most picture cards at the end of the game wins. In addition to providing hours of entertainment, this fun game teaches recognition, association and deductive reasoning.