Episode Details

280: Board games that promote STEM skills

Guest Haley Story shares board games that promote STEM skills – and she has many ideas for all ages.

Why board games?

• A fun family time
• Great for summer
• Also some solo games for screen-free time

The kinds of board games she discusses 

• All of these games involve meaningful decisions—no Candy Land!
• No party games or word games
• Not only teaches children about cause and effect of their decisions—makes the games tolerable (and usually fun) for adults
• STEM focus.  All of these games involve making decisions based on:
  • Math to optimize score
  • Probability
  • Logical reasoning
  • Computational skills and reasoning
  • Spatial reasoning

How to learn rules (parents learn first!)

• If you (or your spouse) don’t love reading rules… Try Youtube!
• Also, many of the more complicated games have online versions and some people prefer learning that way

Games that reinforce math facts for young kids

• Uno
• Connect 4
• Darts (there are  great kid-friendly magnetic versions)
• Rummy Cube –slightly older kids (Caleb started around 5…kids have to learn to rearrange numbers/sets in their head to make the best moves…logic and some pattern recognition (mathematical sets) and some probability )
• Five Crowns Junior
• Blokus
• Katamino 
• Wedgits building tower with cards
• Pyramid stacking toy

Games for slightly older kids that teach mathematical logic and computational skill

These are all solo challenges, but kids tend to enjoy them, and the games come with a deck of challenge cards that begin easy and increase in difficulty

• Laser Maze
• Gravity Maze
• Rush Hour
• And others by ThinkFun–REALLY good for computational skills and logic

Similar reasoning, but multi-player

• Tsuro

For middle school/older:

Fast games:

• Point Salad