The Best Board Games to Play with Your Child.

We got this for our daughter this past Christmas. This game is a relay race in which you stack the pancakes in the sequence found on the order card. Perfect for sequencing, teamwork, following directions, prepositions, and memory! It is great for a social skills group. You can easily use the pancakes and spatulas in open-ended, pretend play as well. We found our game on Amazon and it’s for ages 4+, though we do use it with our 3 year old. She doesn’t always get the concept, but the more we practice with her, the more she seems to get the concept of the game.

Contains 120 real picture cards. Players have a hand of cards and a “clue card” is presented with an attribute. The goal is to be the first one to lay down an appropriate card from your hand. First to get rid of their cards wins. 

This game will target word retrieval, memory, categories, associations, vocabulary, and turn taking. Ages 6+ are preferred for this game. I’ve used it with my clients in the private practice setting and it works very well. It’s along the same lines as Apples to Apples, but not as abstract or complicated. This is also a great game because it has real pictures. Kids learn to associate vocabulary when real pictures are used as opposed to cartoons.

This game contains a magnetic easel of Howie with magnetic bandages of different colors and sizes. Work on vocabulary (body parts, colors), prepositions, following multi-step directions, and turn taking. This also serves as a great reinforcer! This game is great for ages 3+, but you can even start trying to play it with kids that are around 2.5.

I love it because it works on body parts, which is great for when children don’t feel well or are hurt. Then they can tell you exactly where something is wrong. With this one, after you put the bandaid on Howie, have your child point to the body part on themselves. This will help with carryover!

Find out who committed the crime and with what weapon by elimination through asking questions. Target attributes, asking questions, describing, deductive reasoning, inferencing, and memory. This is a longer game, but you can make it shorter by not incorporating some of the people and weapons. Ages 8 and up are recommended for this one. I use this game at the highschool level when I feel the kids need to decompress. They have no idea that it is actually targeting their speech skills while we play.