Games That Teach

Games that teach, and nobody at the table knows it. A kid who will not do a page of logic problems will play Rush Hour for an hour. A kid who hates math facts will beat you at Math Dice and ask for a rematch. This shelf is the games and puzzles that do real work: logic, spatial reasoning, probability, planning, arithmetic, vocabulary, and the hardest skill of all, losing and playing again. Every one of them has been on a homeschool table somewhere and earned its place there.

How to use it: one game a week counts as a lesson. Put it on the schedule like math, because it is math. The ThinkFun single-player puzzles (Rush Hour, Gravity Maze, Laser Maze, Cat Crimes) are for the kid who needs to work alone for twenty minutes while you teach a sibling. The card games are for the whole table after dinner. The big board games (Ticket to Ride, Catan, Carcassonne, Wingspan) are for a Friday afternoon and a kid old enough to plan three moves ahead.

Two more things: The Builder's Science Shelf is the next stop for a kid who thinks with their hands, and the $49 map is where we build the year around how your child actually learns. Not sure this is the right shelf? Five questions will tell you.