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Reading, Phonics, Vocabulary

  • Bananagrams. My HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.  There’s just so much educational power in these tiles – and that’s for students ages 3-103!  This game is sooooo much better than traditional Scrabble.
  • Scrabble Slam.  Another good game to promote phonics and expand young vocabularies.  Demo here.
  • Big Boggle.  Good for kids and a lot of fun for adult parties too.

Math/Geometry/Coding

  • Yahtzee.  Great for learning the math facts.  Less than $10 but you can do it cheaper too.  Buy dice at your local retailer or pharmacy.  And download the score sheets from the web.
  • Tangrams.  There are many variations of this classic shape puzzle game.  My son played it online.
  • Rush Hour.  More of a logic/thinking game.  Very highly recommended by math teachers though.
  • CoderBunnyz. The most comprehensive coding board game. It was also created by a young prodigy girl in San Francisco.

Geography

  • Ticket To Ride.  Five star, huge seller on Amazon.  A more complete review will be forthcoming.
  • 10 Days In Europe.  A great game. Kids will unsuspectingly learn the layout of Euro zone countries.  Parents too!

Strategy

  • Quirkle. It’d be hard to find an *educational games* list anywhere that doesn’t include this huge seller.  Belongs in the math category too.
  • Blokus.  Same for Blokus.  I don’t remember it back when I was a child….but it’s a popular winner today for sure.
  • Chess.  The ultimate game for mind development.  Approached properly, chess also builds character – not to mention….chess is an international, cross-cultural language.  We are a big-time chess family now.  Email me and I’ll tell you exactly how to get started with this rewarding game.
  • Backgammon.  Another classic game.  Good math practice for youngsters too.
  • Go. Go was invented over 2,500 years ago in China.  Very old, but complex game.

Toddlers/Younger Children

  • Zingo.  Mine really loved this one.  It might have been their introduction to board games.
  • Lauri Primer Pack.  My daughter carried around and played with *her letters* to no end.

There are plenty more games, but I’ve stuck to my best recommendations here.

My BEST “building” recommendation….and everyone needs this is KEVA Planks.

I have 5 big boxes of them!  Trust me on this one.

Also for building I LOVE KNEX and Magnatiles.

ANOTHER terrific gift idea for the special children in your life is my son’s book – Kid Trillionaire: How a Little Kid Can Make a Big Fortune.  Click the link to check it out.  John, has now sold over 1,000 copies of this book, mostly by hand, on the streets of Manhattan and at business conferences.  Seriously, this book will change your kids’ lives!

If you want to learn how I got my son to algebra by age 5, to read the entire Harry Potter series by 6, and to calculus by age 7 – CLICK HERE, scroll down, and opt in to my email list.