Boardgame Ideas

Hey guys

So I had a game day with some of my older students (Junior High School) this past Saturday and it faired well but not as good as expected. I brought Dixit and Balderdash for two hours. Dixit was somewhat enjoyable but after an hour my students thought it wasn’t fast paced or exciting enough. Balderdash was a complete failure. My students are of a decent level able to have conversations on just about anything but I am at a loss to discern the reason why they didn’t at least enjoy Dixit? Was I too ambitious in choosing games? Do you guys know any Dixit variations that kids would find more interesting? Do you have any better board game suggestions? (Beyond the usual scrabble, boggle etc…)

Boardgames are fun sometimes, but they don’t always elicit conversation. The other down side is you have to wait your turn, resulting in some people not participating.

I find conversation games much more useful. They promote thinking while you wait your turn or even spontaneous involvement. There are hundreds of conversation games out there, you just need to look. Here are a couple sites to get you started. FYI: Some games on these sites are NOT suitable for children and are more suitable for adults.

http://ask.metafilter.com/64057/Games-for-two-players-no-pieces-no-board

http://www.hodu.com/con-games.shtml

and if you can’t find anything from those, try this:

http://www.google.com :wink:

Good luck!

Thanks for the suggestion quarters but during the semester we do a lot of conversation games so I wanted to do something else hence I thought about board games with a conversational element like Dixit and being left out was not a problem since there are only 6 people in the class with everyone having a role in the game. There are a lot of great conversational board games out there these days and what I am looking for is anyone who has had experiences with the slew of really great games recently released (Games that they implemented in the classroom)?

I always make my own games. Draw a gameboard, let the kids fill in what happens when you land on blocks, make question and answer cards etc.

I built a monopoly board for my class, I’d put a pic up but my facebook is set to private.
You can turn pretty much any board game into a lesson.

e.g. Risk, get a world map, tape on questions to each continent or set dice rules e.g. doubles = a question and then prepare a list of questions in advance. Risk is quite a good one for older kids, this also allows my post to be constructive and not just giving my opinion.

I didn’t play many board games as a child, I had starcraft at the age of 5 so I don’t really know many or use much.

[quote=“lostfool”]
Risk, get a world map, tape on questions to each continent or set dice rules e.g. doubles = a question and then prepare a list of questions in advance. Risk is quite a good one for older kids, this also allows my post to be constructive and not just giving my opinion.[/quote]

Risk is great fun. Though it does take a bit of explaining. Once set up, though, it can be a right laugh. The older kids like the conquest aspect, and most everybody here loves a dice game.

Chess is good for smaller size older classes, and checkers work well for some others. Go is fun and noisy. Have the kids teach you Chinese board games. Good way to get them to explain something in English.

I’m a big fan of Dixit but it can get boring if you play it several times in a row with people who are not over the top creative or inspired. It can be a good idea to limit the clues to a certain topic, like movies, pop songs, history…
Other boardgames that are heavy on words and communication are
Taboo http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1111/taboo
Activity http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8790/activity
Cranium http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/891/cranium
Of course those are not really new…

Are you exclusively looking for word games or any games that will be fun for the kids and that are focused on interaction?
I’ll try to think of some more ideas tomorrow.

By the way, a good website to buy boardgames and cardgames in Taiwan is http://boardgamer.org/ . And the above linked http://boardgamegeek.com is among the best resouces on the net to find pictures, ratings, reviews, rulebooks and general info on about any board- and cardgame that exists.

[quote=“crianp”]Hey guys

So I had a game day with some of my older students (Junior High School) this past Saturday and it faired well but not as good as expected. I brought Dixit and Balderdash for two hours. Dixit was somewhat enjoyable but after an hour my students thought it wasn’t fast paced or exciting enough. Balderdash was a complete failure. My students are of a decent level able to have conversations on just about anything but I am at a loss to discern the reason why they didn’t at least enjoy Dixit? Was I too ambitious in choosing games? Do you guys know any Dixit variations that kids would find more interesting? Do you have any better board game suggestions? (Beyond the usual scrabble, boggle etc…)[/quote]

Head over to Caca City http://www.cacacity.tw/
Get a membership card and rent a game.
My students really liked Catan. They have to trade resources to win, and so you’ll get them talking to each other.
Scotland Yard is fun. 5 kids have to team up and coordinate a search through London for Mr. X.
Ticket to Ride. You can teach cities and states in America.

That ought to get you started. If you really like the game, you can consider purchasing. The rental fee is 10% of the game per week, so it’s not too bad. It comes out to about 80 ~ 180.