SLC S21W4/ Educational games for better learning.

Steem greetings @everyone from the motherland-Cameroon and welcome to my blog where I will be sharing my thoughts about educational games with children. It is a skill enhancing exercise creating games with kids that will boost their confidence and self-esteem, build a strong community and social bond between you and your kids.

^{Image design on Canva.}

That said, for this exercise I decided to create a scrabble game to be played with my 8 years and 4 years old kids. When I put in place all the materials to be used for the game, I had to explain to them the rules of the game. Each vowel letter has 5 points and consonants letters a point each. In words that has more vowels, you earn more points and I was recording the points in a book.

Spelling a wrong word, you run around the house 5 times before sitting to play again.

Explain the creative process step by step, including illustrations. Don't forget to share the materials used and the final

For the scrabble game I used the following materials to create it.

• Cardboard paper
• A book
• pen
• plastic ice block tray
• Letters carver
• Letters sticker.
• A dictionary
• foam

I started with using my old plastic ice block tray because it was good to differentiate the letters. I took a letters sticker I had at home and sticked them on each segment. Each letters placed in a block that way it will be easy for them to identify the different letters.

Then I had to calve the letters differentiating the vowels from the consonants with different colours. The vowels with lemon green and the consonants with dark blue. I used my letter calver from a mathematical set to calve the letter from a foam.

I had to calve some of the letters in uppercase and some in lower case. To spell a word, the kids must start with a uppercase letter.

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I used a normal white card board which was used to spell the words on it.

Describe the purpose of the educational game you created. What do you want to teach with the game?

There are several reasons why I decided to create this game. They are as follows:

• The first purpose of the game was to improve the spelling skills of my 8 years old daughter as in 2 years to come she will be sitting in for an entrance examination into secondary school. The scrabble game was a best way to start improving whet spelling skills.
• It was a good way to build their vocabulary. Each word spelled, I had to read out the meaning and explained the word to them using the dictionary.
• The scrabble game also helps to improve their creative skills as they think on how to create new words.
• The game was purposely to boost their memory skills. It helps them to think efficiently when confronted with a challenging task.
• Lastly, it was a good way to boost social interaction and bonding with the kids. When they spell wrong words, running around the house 5 times was a good exercise as well and we talked about it and share challenges.

In your own words explain how 1 point is played

As I earlier said, each consonant represents 1 point and a vowel represents 5 points.

When they spell a word with more vowels, it means you scored more points. A word spelled correctly, we referred to the dictionary to check the meaning of the word.

^{My 4 years old was focused spelling 3 letters words while my girl was focus on getting words with more vowels that will earn her more points.}

Then we add the points following the corresponding points placed on each letter. Then I record the points against their names in a book.

At the end of the game, I sum up the points and declared a winner.

Did the child like the game? Was he bored or entertained? Do you think this game contributed to the child's learning? Tell us about your experience and that of the child playing the educational game.

My kids were excited when I told them we were creating a scrabble game to play at home. Most often they play visual games on the laptop, iPad and phone. Initially, I never bordered about creating such games because I knew they have visual games. But the excitement they portrayed when I brought up the idea of creating a scrabble game was amazing.

It was fun playing the game especially when a wrong word was spelled and I asked them to run around the house 5 times. I thought it was a way of punishing them for spelling a wrong word but it was instead more fun running and coming back more determined to spell correctly.

The game contributed greatly to the children’s learning ability to spell new words. They were able to learn new vocabulary words and also their meanings after I read out the meaning of the words spelled from a dictionary.

It was a great experience for me as I was impressed with the level of my daughter’s vocabulary skills. It was also fun bonding with them and listening to them share their challenges during the game.

^{My daughter assisting the brother to arrange the word well.}

The kids enjoyed every bit of the game and requested we often play the game during weekends. It was an opportunity for my daughter to assist her kid brother to place the letters correctly. In sum, it was fun playing the game with the kids. I will invite @crismenia, @m-fdo, @aviral123 to share their entries to the learning challenge.