by Rachel Wells

 

Board games are a such a great way to spend time together as a family, and there are so many fun games that have children practicing their reading skills without them even realizing it.

We’ve rounded up 10 of the best literacy-building board games that are perfect for your next family game night.

 

Apples To Apples Junior

A super fun game where players match red object cards with green descriptive cards to create funny or fitting combinations.

Recommended Age: 9 and up

Number of Players: 4-8

Skills: Expanding vocabulary, reading

 

Bananagrams

This is a faced-paced spelling game similar to scrabble where players race against each other to build a grid of words using their own letter tiles.

Recommended Age: 7 and up

Number of Players: 1-8

Skills: Spelling, expanding vocabulary

 

Scrabble

A classic board games where players put letters together, build words, and earn the most points to win.

Recommended Age: 8 and up

Number of Players: 2-4

Skills: Spelling, strategy

 

Dixit

Players must use their imagination and intuition to guess which card one player (the storyteller) is describing.

Recommended Age: 8 and up

Number of Players: 3-6

Skills: Storytelling, attention to detail

 

Story Cubes

This dice game encourages players to invent stories based on the symbols they roll.

Recommended Age: 6 and up

Number of Players: 1 or more

Skills: Storytelling, story elements, creativity

 

Sequence Letters

This is a great sequence variation game where young players practice letter recognition and sounds throughout.

Recommended Age: 4-7

Number of Players: 2-4

Skills: Letter recognition, matching, thinking ahead

 

Alphabet Go Fish!

Match capital and lowercase letters in this variation of the classic game.

Recommended Age: 3 and up

Number of Players: 2-8

Skills: Letter recognition, matching, letter sounds

 

Hedbanz

This is guaranteed to bring laughs. Each player wears a card on their headband and asks yes or no questions to determine the pictured object.

Recommended Age: 5 and up

Number of Players: 2-4

Skills: Formulating questions, building vocabulary

 

Boggle

Shake the letters and see how many words can be found in a short amount of time.

Recommended Age: 8 and up

Number of Players: 2 or more

Skills: Spelling, prefixes and suffixes, word families.

 

Read My List

List as many words as you can that fit into a certain category or listen to a list of things and try to guess the category.

Recommended Age: 8 and up

Number of Players: 3 or more

Skills: Spelling, writing, categories