Topical Teaching

Battleship: In Battleship, “you are thinking about space,” Jirout says. “You need to figure out which direction their ship is in and how you can use effective questioning to get there.” It’s not a game one might immediately jump to when you think of STEM skills, but those are precisely the skills it builds.

Hopscotch: Although, not in the category of blocks, board games, and puzzles, this very physical game also involves numbers and spatial orientation, says Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, Director of Defending the Early Years, an organization dedicated to helping educators fight testing and all the things that take away from the way children truly learn. “Children practice large and small motor skills and spatial relationships as they draw the game with chalk, McLaughlin says. “And then toss their pebbles and jump along the numbered spaces. There is so much to figure out and do.”

Chutes and Ladders: Many parents probably have fond memories of this game and of rolling the dice and climbing to the top only to shoot back down the slide. But this game is more than just luck and chance and fun. “The board itself is made up of a grid,” Jirout says. There is a counting, math component to it all, but also a strong sense of spatial orientation. Where is my opponent compared to me? How can I catch him? What number do I need to get to get there?

Jenga: There was no game more exciting — or more simple — than Jenga. Simply pull a block from the tower and hope and pray it doesn’t fall. But there is so much more to it, says McLaughlin. “Children develop eye-hand coordination and experiment with gravity as well as cause and effect,” she says. “They will learn that the blocks are more stable on some surfaces than others. The sounds that travel from the falling blocks will very depending on how high the tower gets, and the surface they are playing on.”