Prepare for Back-to-School with Play!

back to school educational games

Even though it looms all summer long, back-to-school can sneak up on you! Kids are no doubt going to need some extra help to get back-to-school ready this year, but refreshing those skills can be fun! SimplyFun games not only reinforce core academic skills through the power of play, they also underscore social-emotional and fine motor skills. Between four core academic categories, there’s a perfect game to best prep your little one to head back to the classroom.

Today, we’re bringing attention and awareness to SimplyFun’s Reading & Language Arts game category.

Reading & Language Arts

SimplyFun’s Reading & Language Arts games span a variety of skills and abilities from preschool age and up. For instance, many games for younger children assist with beginning reading skills, listening, and verbal communication. While games targeted for older children support vocabulary and language use, writing, and spelling skills. Read on to learn about a few of our top Reading & Language Arts games that will prime your kids for success this fall.

Prepare kids for back to school with educational games

Rooby’s ABCs

Perfect for your earliest learners, Rooby’s ABCs helps children ages 3 and up learn and practice the alphabet through letter recognition and sequencing.

Rooby’s ABCs uses letter board ‘banners’ that show each letter in both uppercase and lowercase. The banners also show how the letters follow each other in the alphabet. To help little ones with the letter sounds, the banners show a picture of an object that starts with that letter. This helps associate sounds and letters together. Players practice letter sounds by reciting the names of the matching pictures while seeing both the uppercase and lowercase versions of the letters. Best of all, they learn the order in which letters follow each other in the alphabet and are introduced to left-to-right letter progression. Rooby’s ABCs is intended for 1-4 players ages 3 and up, and takes 10 minutes to play.

Also, Rooby’s ABCs just won 2021 PAL Award! This award recognizes exceptional products that promote play to advance language.

prepare kids for back to school with spelling games

Spell Trek

In Spell Trek, players are on an amazing trek around the world, taking pictures of all things they see! But somehow, all of the vowels are missing from the words! Focusing on vowels and spelling, first players must first find the missing vowels in the photo and complete the word. Then, they can move ahead on the game board. If a player completes a word, they move ahead as many spaces as the length of that word. Furthermore, a player must spell the completed word aloud for everyone to hear. If you forget to do this, you must move backward one space! Spell Trek and is great for 2 to 4 players ages 6 and up and takes 20-30 minutes to play.

Spell Trek has won awards from Creative Child Magazine, PAL Awards, Parents Choice Foundation and more. To learn more about this great reading & language arts game, check out Spell Trek here.

Prepare kids for back to school with word games like Word Bits

Word Bits

A game where players test their knowledge, vocabulary and spelling skills against their opponents…and the luck of the dice! Word Bits is great for strengthening spelling and vocabulary skills as players spell the words they say and include the required letters shown on the dice. Furthermore, Word Bits helps players learn quick thinking skills as everyone plays at the same time. Therefore, every player tries to be the first to identify a word using both the category card and all of the letters shown on the dice. If multiple players identify a fitting word, the winner is the player who calls out their word first! The player with the most category cards at the end of the game, wins. Word Bits is great for 2-4 players ages 8 and up and takes 20-30 minutes to play.

Word Bits has won awards from PAL Awards, Parent Tested Parent Approved, Tillywig Toy Awards, and more. To learn more about Word Bits, check out the game here.

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