The Best Educational Game For Any Age
How To Use The “Roll a ____” Blank Board Game
Have you heard of the “Roll a ____” Blank Game? Roll a…what? Roll a whatever-the-heck-you-want! This genius blank board game is so incredibly versatile. You can use it with ANY age! Yep, ya heard me right. Listen, I feel so “salesy” right now telling you about this product I made but by all means, you don’t have to get it from me. With this particular post I am simply trying to let all you moms and dads/teachers/caregivers out there know about this incredibly simple but oh-so-fun educational game. Interested? Click here to check it out for yourself!
Years ago, I created a huge 16 x 20 blank board game back when I first started as an AIS (Academic Intervention Services) teacher. I used this with every grade I taught (which was K-4 at the time). I never taught fifth graders but you can use it with fifth graders and beyond. The concept is simple. Fill in the blank circles with whatever content you want your children or students to learn. Here are just a few of about a zillion learning concepts you could use when playing this game:
Early Reading/Literacy Ideas
Learning the alphabet:
Fill in the circles with different letters from the alphabet. Have your child roll the die to see what spot to go to on the game board. Then have your child say the name of the letter they landed on. You can do different variations of this by doing all uppercase letters, all lowercase letters or mixing it up.
Learning letter sounds:
Do the same as the above directions- fill in the circles with letters of the alphabet. When your child lands on a new spot, have them say the letter name and then say what sound the letter makes.
To make this more challenging you can ask them to name a word that starts with that letter sound. Try not to worry about technicality here as the focus is simply on letter sounds. What do I mean by that? If your child rolls and lands on the letter c, for instance, they say the letter sound which is /c/. Then you ask them to name a word that starts with that letter sound and they say “kite” that should be perfectly acceptable because they are technically correct as “c” and “k” can make the same sound.
On the flip-side, if you are teaching an older child letter sounds, (let’s say a first or second grader) you can teach them that the word “kite” starts with the letter k and teach them the trick to remembering this “rule”. The trick is that words with the /c/ sound in the beginning that are followed by an e, i, or y will start with the letter k (as in “kite, key, Kyle, kit”).
Learning Sight Words:
Fill in the blank circles with whichever sight words your child is currently working on/needs to learn.
*NOTE* Sight words typically are words that cannot be be tapped out/sounded out/decoded.
Learning Story Elements:
This activity is an idea for older kids who might be learning story elements in class. You can play this game while your child reads their book. Stop your child periodically at predetermined stopping points (end of a page/chapter/etc.). Then have your child roll the die and see what spot they land on. If they land on “conflict” they have to state the conflict at this point in the story. You can even ask them to provide evidence from the story to prove their answer.
Math Concepts
Learning Numbers:
Fill in the blank circles with any given number. Working on identifying numbers 1-10? Fill in the spaces with the numbers 1-10. Reuse numbers that your little ones might struggle to identify.
Other variations: Write out the numbers in word form, draw tally marks, draw ten frames (more about those here), draw dice sides, etc.
Learning Other Math Concepts?
Learning addition? Put addition facts in the circles. Learning facts to ten? Add in facts to ten in the blank circles. Working on multiplication? Division? Write any kind of math problem in the circles. Then have your child roll the die and solve the equation for the one they land on!
In Conclusion…
This blank board game template is extremely versatile making it the best educational game out there (in my opinion). Reuse this activity time after time, year after year!
What ideas do you have for your blank board game? Share your ideas in the comments!
Happy Playing & Learning!
Check out the 2 listings for this awesome game on my Etsy shop!
To see the 16″ x 20″ click here & to see the 8.5″ x 11″ size click here!
*Also available as a digital download!* Click here!
