The Power of Board Gamesfor Multidomain Learningin Young Children•

Daniela K. O’Neill and Paige E. Holmes

The authors conduct a broad, cross-cultural review of the literature in fields
such as psychology, education, speech-language pathology, early intervention, and library science concerned with board games and learning in young
children. They include experimenter-developed and commercial board
games and children’s learning in mathematics, science, and language, as well
as social, emotional, and cultural understanding. The authors discuss findings
related to teaching and the classroom, speech-language therapy, intervention
programs, and home and community settings such as libraries. Pointing to
the nascent nature of the research in many areas, they highlight how board
games, especially those featuring cooperative play, can foster multidomain
learning and offer promising avenues for future research. Key words: board
games; learning; play, playful learning; tabletop games; young children

Introduction

In summer 2019, in a graduate seminar on children’s language develop-

ment, we hosted a series of drop-in Family Board Game Fun events at a local
library. Our goal was to promote communicative interactions rich in learning
opportunities for children in a playful setting. We decided to do so by introducing families with young children at these events to the many new board
games available for children—games that foster different kinds of learning andfeature different and engaging themes. These games offered cooperative andcompetitive play in versions for children as young as two and had short playing times of less than fifteen minutes. To inform and engage parents further
at the events, we highlighted different types of learning afforded by the board
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American Journal of Play, volume 14, number 1 © 2022 by The Strong
Contact Daniela K. O’Neill at doneill@uwaterloo.ca

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

games for children under twelve in a set of posters for the events based on abrief literature review.
The board games and the information in our posters proved both new andof interest to many patrons, including parents, teachers, and librarians. Parents
who first declined our invitation to drop in, often claimed that their children
were too young or that they did not have enough time. When we described thefeatures of our games, many families came to take a look, then chose a game andbegan playing. The events became a big success, and the room soon filled up withtalk and laughter and play with siblings, parents, and grandparents, and play inseveral languages other than English. Feedback offered to the library was enthusiastic and included requests for a permanent, circulating collection of games.
When COVID-19 forced the library to close, we pivoted to conduct a morethorough and exhaustive literature search and review of learning during board
game play for children of elementary school age and younger (two to twelve
years old). Our review of this literature considers academic work from bothexperimental and nonexperimental fields and contributions from more informal sources such as blogs written by speech-language pathologists and otherprofessionals working with children. Although the board games mentioned inthese informal sources have yet to attract much academic research, they areextensively discussed informally by the experts in these areas. Moreover, someboard game manufacturers already consider children’s development in domains
such as language when designing their games, even producing pamphlets alongwith their games with tips for parents (HABA 2016).
We seek to present and summarize these findings about children’s learning
related to mathematics; science; language; and social, emotional, and cultural
understanding. Our goal is to help both academic and nonacademic audiences
gain a more detailed picture of what we know so far about young children’s
learning from board games. Further knowledge and organization of this literature can benefit a wider audience of parents, educators, and other professionals and community members wishing to provide rich learning experiences
to children in at least two ways. First, it can offer a wider scope of board gamelearning to inform a game’s design (and to evaluate such games for purchase anduse). Second, those observing children playing a game can better understandand recognize the full breadth of rich learning opportunities and experiences
taking place. Indeed, our findings both exceeded our expectations in terms ofthe number of domains and surprised us in terms of the lack of experimental
research in some domains, which we suggest worthy of further investigation.

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P L AYThe Landscape of Board Games and theGames Appearing in Our Review
The current board game landscape is vast and diverse. Some may not be familiar
with the board game industry and the distinctions made among board games, so
we aim to provide a short overview of the types of games included in our review.
We focus on the novice with respect to board games and their history because
most of the sources we reviewed were written by nonexperts who simply use theterm “board game(s)” without further discussion of their types.
To begin, very broadly defined, the types of board games (or tabletop games
as they are also frequently called) appearing in this review all fit the following
description in line with definitions in the board game field: any face-to-facegame played on a surface or table with various accessories, ranging from die,game boards, tokens, and cards (Parlett 1999; Woods 2012).
Also, many of the games we review were developed by researchers and feature a classic positional race style. That is, the contemporary board game market
has been divided into three categories (Woods 2012): nonproprietary, classicalor traditional games, that is mass-market games produced in large numbersand “constituting the common perception of commercial board games” (15);and games targeted towards a smaller market of “hobby gamers” (15). Although
we consider very few classical or traditional board games such as chess or Go,
many of the researcher-developed board games do take the form of traditional
positional race style games in which players race to be the first to reach the endof the board. Indeed, many are similar to Snakes and Ladders or Candy Land,
both of which were also among the first mass-market family games designed
primarily for children to play together with parents or under the supervision ofother adults such as teachers (Parlett 1999, 347–49).
Finally, one large category of hobby games includes Eurogames, and it
may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the contemporary landscapeof board games how few of the board games in the studies have the features ofnewer midtwentieth-century games, especially given the innovation of the past
fifty years. Nevertheless, in a few of the experimenter-developed board games wereviewed, we found three key features in midtwentieth-century games, including
Eurogames: thematic subject matter, off-board play, and several ways of winningincluding winning cooperatively (Donovan 2017; Estes 2018; Moriarity and Kay
2019; Parlett 1999; Woods 2012). We describe these three features more fully
in sections to follow.

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

First, in contrast with abstract, older-style positional games, midtwentiethcentury games were “chiefly characterized by a thematic subject matter” (Parlett
1999, 9), a subject matter often educational within the category of family games.
Theme games often seek to “simulate or represent some sort of real-life activity”(348), and this can range from simulation (involving some kind of practice forreal life) to representational (involving a less realistic focus on recreation andfun). In other words, some games represented very specific real-life activities(e.g., bullying) to teach and practice very specific skills and others educated ina less realistic way that emphasized fun.
Second, in contrast to classic board games, twentieth-century board games
featured “off-board play” (Parlett 1999, 346), an early example being Monopoly(published first in 1935) in which “the play of the game centres, so to speak,‘above the board,’ in the minds and interactions of the players themselves” (7),and board position is irrelevant to winning the game. Although the play inmany of the board games we reviewed still centers largely on the board, someof it occurs off the board, especially in those games in which children must act
cooperatively.
Third, in more contemporary board games, especially Eurogames, there
often exist multiple paths to winning, and winning is not everything—how
players play the game and make it a positive social experience can matter justas much. The Eurogame Settlers of Catan (1995)—originally developed inGermany and titled Die Siedler von Catan—sparked a new wave of criticalthinking games built on such new features as free-form boards and using
miniature pieces introduced by predecessors like the tabletop war simulation
game Kriegspiel and the family game Risk (Donovan 2017; Moriarity and Kay
2019; Woods 2012).
They were dubbed Eurogames because they had been first developed andintroduced in Europe, and Woods (2012) and others (Donovan 2017; Moriarity
and Kay 2019) have described some of their key features, including the rare useof dice; a randomized board layout; indirect rather than direct competition to
gain resources; the need for planning, critical thinking, and changing tactics; aflexible scoring system and multiple paths to winning that ensure no one player
can leap ahead early to win; high quality construction and aesthetics; accessible
to many ages; and set and predictable playing times. In some of these board
games, players at times must work together to further their individual goals;
some may be designed for entirely cooperative play.
The themes and topics of Eurogames are incredibly diverse (e.g., birding,

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P L AYhoneybees, early railroads), and some features are designed specifically to appeal
to children as young as two years of age, such as the short ten-minute playing
times and large wooden pieces of the cooperative game First Orchard, one ofseveral games in the My Very First Games series by HABA. In this review, we seegames that, for example, address broader themes and require strategic thinking
and consideration of multiple factors.

Active Learning in Board Games
Board games can be a very effective means to promote active learning whenchildren “are engaged in some activity that forces them to reflect upon ideas
and how they are using those ideas” (Collins and O’Brien 2003, 5). Noda,
Shirotsuki, and Nakao carried out a large metareview and effects analysis oftwenty-seven studies conducted in educational settings that specifically compared the knowledge of children both before and after they were provided an
active board game–based learning instruction versus a passive form of learning instruction such as a lecture. Studies that included children aged four to
twelve strongly suggested board games were an effective tool to encourage
active learning and the retention of knowledge. They also found that board
games helped increase students’ motivation for learning and even lead to positive changes in behavior (Noda, Shirotsuki, and Nakao 2019). These studies
covered different types of mathematical and scientific knowledge, but overall
the majority consisted of traditional, positional race games in which players
progress along a pathway by rolling dice and by answering questions about
whatever topic a teacher wished to teach players, all of which produced asole winner (See the appendix at the end of this article. Note that the board
games mentioned in this article that are also included in Noda, Shirotsuki,
and Nakao’s 2019 review appear with an asterisk.)
Inside or outside a classroom, games—including board games—can be aform of active, playful learning (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, and Eyer 2003), alongside free play and guided play. All of these foster learning because they engage
children in meaningful and socially interactive fun (Hassinger-Das et al. 2017).
Such guided play can help children learn as well as, if not better than, traditional
forms of teaching (Weisberg et al. 2015). During children’s board game play,researchers suggest, guided play might be incorporated by teachers or parents
asking open-ended questions that help children think more deeply about what

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learningthey are doing and help them absorb information at their own pace. Moreover,
the roll of dice or the spin of wheels can introduce the element of chance andhelp reduce adult control even as children maintain a sense of agency and control
in guided play (Hassinger-Das et al. 2017). Moreover, in keeping with a much
longer view of children’s play as important to many domains of learning (SuttonSmith 1979; Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek 2006), board games have thepotential to promote children’s learning more broadly.

The Scope of This Review
Sources
To aid our query into what children can learn from board games, we searched
the academic literature using the journal databases of our university’s library(e.g., PsycInfo, BioMed, ERIC, JSTOR, MLA, SSRN). We followed up on thestudies cited in that literature and conducted further, broader searches via suchsearch engines as Google Scholar and Google, looking for sources like the blogsof speech-language pathologists. For reasons of space—and in line with somedefinitions of board games (e.g., Parlett 1999)—we have not included games
played solely with cards or dice. The studies we reviewed also do not include
other types of hobby games, such as war games or role-playing games (Woods
2012), given that they tend to be for adults. Also for reasons of space, we capped
the age of children we considered at twelve years, a natural boundary between
elementary and middle or high school.
Use of Terms
Readers should note that the use of the term “board game(s)” in the empiricalstudies we reviewed was often not further qualified according to the typicaldistinctions made in the board game literature (e.g., traditional, positional,
Eurogame, etc.), largely because the authors and audiences for these articles
come from other disciplines, such as psychology or education. As a result,when we draw from or quote these authors, we often use “board game” without
further specification given its absence in the original source. However, when
we found enough information in the sources, we do give short descriptionsof the board games (in our text and in table 1) to help readers understand thegames’ natures.
We qualify the board games as one of three types: experimenter developed

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P L AYfor a particular study and thus not commercially available; author or child developed if created for a purpose other than an experimental study, such as for an
observational study or classroom project; and commercially available. Whenpossible, we give the specific name of the board game. In addition, in table 1
when we call a source an experimental study, we present only the results foundsignificant in statistical analyses conducted by the original authors.

Mathematical Learning
Numerical Knowledge
The use of board games to develop early mathematical knowledge is a wellstudied topic, but it is one that has taken place almost exclusively within lab
or school settings. A large number of studies, across many different countries,
have specifically examined numerical knowledge acquired via board games byyoung children, such as identifying numbers, comparing number sizes, adding
and subtracting, and number line estimations.
These studies have primarily used researcher-developed linear or grid
positional board games with numbered spaces, and we refer to them as “number board games.” The number of numbered spaces varies, reaching a maximum of one hundred, and the grid sizes range from about five by five inches toten by ten inches. Some of the grid boards contain extra up and down possibilities similar to Snakes and Ladders. Ramani and Siegler (2008; 2011) pioneered
the original number board game designs with fairly short play times (fifteen to
twenty minutes). Among four- to five-year-old American children from lowincome families, the studies found that after playing a number board game,children’s ability to carry out numerical magnitude comparisons, numeral
identification, and number line estimation tasks improved and that this effectwas observed up to nine weeks later. Eloffson and her colleagues (Eloffson et al.
2016) similarly found five-year-old Swedish children’s arithmetic calculations
improved following number board game play. In other countries, additional
research found playing number board games led to significant improvementsin three-year-old Canadian children’s ability to complete successfully anobject counting task (Dunbar et al. 2017), six-year-old German children’s
overall mathematical competencies (Skillen, Berner, and Seitz-Stein 2018), andfour- to six-year-old Chinese children’s interest in mathematics (Cheung and
McBride 2017). Number board games have also been shown to have benefitsThe Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

for the numerical knowledge of four- to ten-year-old autistic children (Satsangi
and Bofferding 2017). Within the setting of a children’s museum, Bustamanteand his colleagues (Bustamante et al. 2020) analyzed the effect a life-sized,
researcher-developed board game, Parkopolis, had on children’s and adults’
dialogue and interactions about numbers compared to another exhibit without
a board game. Parkopolis generated significantly more interactions featuring
such talk (e.g., fractions, patterns) than the exhibit not featuring a board game.
Although experimental studies in public settings such as museums are morechallenging to conduct, we are encouraged to see learning from board games
studied alongside other forms of learning children may gain from museum
exhibits (Andre, Durksen, and Volman 2017).
One outcome of this experimental research on numerical learning fromboard games has been the “cognitive alignment framework” (Laski and Siegler
2014, 853), which states that the more precisely the physical materials and learning activities are aligned with the desired mental representations, the more likely
students are to acquire these representations. So, for example, using a researcherdeveloped Race to Space positional board game with a grid of ten-by-ten-inchsquares numbered one to one hundred, Laski and Siegler (2014) compared theeffect of asking five-year-old children to “count-on” from their current number on the board (e.g., from square five, a child rolls a two and counts-on six,seven) versus the more usual “count-from-one” strategy (e.g., count one, two,
after rolling a two). The strategy of counting-on resulted in more mathematicallearning than counting-from.
To date, few studies have considered how, or why, board game play at home
may impact children’s learning of mathematics. Some studies suggest that how
often board games are played may matter. Among five- to six-year-old Italianchildren, the frequency of board game play at home was positively related totheir counting ability (Benavides-Varela et al. 2016). Similarly, among American
children four to five-and-a-half years old, greater numerical knowledge positively related to the number of settings in which they had played commerciallyavailable board games, either at their own homes or at the homes of others, andto the very mention of playing Chutes and Ladders. Board game play at home
was also more frequently reported for preschoolers from middle-income thanpreschoolers from low-income backgrounds, even when the middle-income
children were younger (Ramani and Siegler 2008, 2011).
In line with the cognitive alignment framework, Ramani and Siegler (2008,2011) suggest that the experience of playing board games at home such as Chutes

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P L AYand Ladders, which more closely align with the specific design features of theirresearcher-developed number board games, relates to greater numerical knowledge among preschool-aged children, particularly for those from low-income
homes. Furthermore, they suggest that board games in which children have toroll dice or twirl spinners, translate the dots into a number, use that number
to count out how many spaces to advance on the board, and receive multiple
kinaesthetic cues (such as hearing the names of the numbers or seeing the difference in length of distance moved with increased value of numbers) are likely todevelop children’s numerical knowledge. At present, however, these hypotheses
remain to be supported experimentally.
Mathematical Reasoning and Problem Solving
Among older elementary school-aged children, board games have beenused mostly within school settings to develop mathematical reasoning andproblem-solving skills, including the use of abstract strategies and different typesof reasoning such as inductive, metaphoric, or imagistic. But findings to datesuggest methods with more in-depth analyses of strategies and reasoning may
be required to understand how board games can foster these skills. For example,
when an intervention with elementary school-aged children has simply consistedof learning to play a game such as chess, findings are mixed: one study found asubsequent effect on mathematical problem-solving scores (Sala, Gorini, andPrevettoni 2015), and another suggested no such effect (Sala and Gobet 2017),
both with few further conclusions possible. Other sources describe how board
games can be used by teachers in a math class. For example, Ascher (2001)
describes teachers using such questions as “How many intersection points does
the configuration contain?” (98) in connection with Mongolian game boards tohelp develop elementary school-aged children’s geometric and logical thinking
in relation to different polygon shapes of the game boards. But, no data wascollected to show if and how such learning occurred.
In contrast to these studies, McFeetors and Palfy (2018)—by employing
a much more detailed qualitative analysis of children’s verbal reasoning while
playing board games—were able to show in much more depth how board gameplay can help develop children’s mathematical reasoning and problem solving.
They used methods grounded in Dewey’s (1938; 1997) theory that students
learn through active participation, collaboration with peers and the teacher,and reflection by the learner that ascribes meaning to the activity. Thus, they
had students from grades five and six in a math class play four commercially

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learningavailable board games that required the use of increasingly abstract strategies—Gobblet Gobblers, Othello, Tic Stac Toe, and Go. The researchers wereinterested in seeing whether they could observe and document children’s use
and growth with respect to different kinds of reasoning important to solving
mathematical problems such as inductive, deductive, metaphoric, analogic,
imagistic, indirect, and informal reasoning.
And indeed, by using multiple forms of qualitative data—such as children’s verbal answers and explanations to teachers’ and peers’ questions about
the strategies deployed, including drawings to support their ideas—they wereable to capture forms and verbs of reasoning demonstrated by students. They
were also able to show how this classroom intervention with this set of board
games led to growth in students’ emergent reasoning ability and strategy use
and development. The following detailed description provided by McFeetors
and Palfy of one student’s experience playing the game Go illustrates the point.
The student, Renée, first showed her skill at refining and modifying existing
strategies when playing Othello. But when her group moved on to the morechallenging game of Go, she started to analyze the rules and board arrangement possibilities which she explained using metaphoric reasoning (e.g., “tomake a wall” [118, figure 5]). She then began using metaphors as reasoning for
certain moves and conjectures of what might be an effective strategy for gameplay (e.g., “to capture the other player and mark territory” [119, in figure 6]).
These conjectures eventually led to greater imagistic reasoning and generalized
strategic claims employing inductive reasoning.
After playing the game over the nine, one-hour sessions, Renée could justify
her strategies and explain how they could be used by other students. Renée’s isbut one of several examples of rich mathematical reasoning during play withthese board games observed in this unique study.
Summary
Overall, the enhancement of children’s mathematics and problem-solving
skills by playing board games depends specifically on the type of game—that
is, researcher-developed board games designed for this enhancement, as arenumber board games—and played in a certain way (such as with specific feedback for particular types of errors). The use and investigation of commerciallyavailable board games for mathematics and problem solving appears much lessfrequently in academic and nonacademic sources. One notable exception is
McFeetors and Palfy’s (2018) in-depth investigation of children’s reasoning when

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P L AYplaying with a set of commercial strategy games. They note that ideas for using
commercial games more generally to promote mathematical reasoning (e.g.,
Farkle, SET, Rush Hour) have been shared by teachers but that they are not often
the subject of systematic research.
McFeetors and Palfy (2018) also reflect on the potential advantages of using
commercial board games in the classroom. They argue that such games promotestudent activity via their interactive nature and that their availability outside
the classroom leads to their perception as “authentic” board games. Indeed,
McFeetors and Palfy observed that children were immediately engaged by theboard games. They talked about playing them at home, some began to playthem outside of school, and they liked that the games were not developed forone specific mathematical idea.

Science Learning
Much stronger support exists for the use of board games as a tool to help students
increase their knowledge of scientific topics such as biology and nutrition. Peppler, Danish, and Phelps (2013) say such games help students make “deep connections to disciplinary content” (686). Students use this knowledge to motivate
behavior change and understand complex systems. Interestingly, with respect
to learning about complex systems, collaborative board game play may hold an
advantage over competitive game play.
In learning disciplinary content, for example, sixth-grade children
showed gains in their knowledge of anatomy and physiology, diet, and lifestylerisk factors after playing a researcher-developed health-themed board game,
Lifestyles, compared to a group receiving regular classroom activities (Bartfay
and Bartfay 1994). Wulanyani and associates (Wulanyani et al. 2019) used a
Snakes and Ladders–style, researcher-developed game to educate elementary
school-aged Indonesian children about the soil parasite taeniasis. The authors
concluded that the board game may be a promising learning tool, given children’s correct answers increased from 40 percent to 59 percent after playing
the game in small groups.
Noda, Shirotsuki, and Nakao (2019) found that board game play helped
increase the motivation of students for learning and even led to positive behavior changes. For example, teachers noted a growing interest in and appreciationof nutrition by eleven- to fourteen-year-olds after they played the researcher-The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

developed positional board game, Kalèdo, in which they learned about energy
intake and expenditure via a Mediterranean diet (Amaro et al. 2006). Moreover,in a very large longitudinal study conducted with over thirteen hundred, nineto nineteen-year-olds in twenty Italian schools, the group who played Kalèdo
showed improved nutrition knowledge and dietary behavior over six months
and significantly lower BMI z-scores than the control group receiving no intervention (Viggiano et al. 2015).
In another uniquely in-depth study that involved detailed recording andexamination of children’s talk with peers, Peppler, Danish, and Phelps (2013)
observed how greater scientific learning (especially learning about complex
systems) may occur when children play board games collaboratively rather thancompetitively. The study used its own researcher-designed positional board
game, HIVEMIND, in a classroom setting to teach six- to nine-year-old American children advanced scientific knowledge about honeybees and their collecting of nectar and how this communal behavior of bees constituted a “complex
system” (687).
To engage the children in complex-systems thinking, the game incorporated randomness and probability—for example, a bee does or does notobserve the dance indicating the nectar’s location—so students could assess
its impact on the system of nectar collection. The study also explored whether
playing the game collaboratively (single team score sheet) or competitively(individual score sheet) affected peer discourse during play, subsequent postplay debriefings by the teacher, and children’s learning outcomes. It found thatchildren playing collaboratively discussed scientific content and made patterninferences significantly more often those playing competitively. For example,
the collaborators noticed that not all scout bees found a flower with nectar,
which affected nectar collection and the winter survival of the hive. The collaborating children more frequently read the cards with scientific informationout loud together, stayed on topic, discussed their scores as a team, remained
engaged in the game, and proved more active listeners compared to the competitive group, who also, for example, showed little interest in the turns ofothers. All these collaborative behaviors may have promoted greater learningof the material, which the authors also attribute to the way collaborative playaligned with the collaborative nature of the complex system being examined(i.e., bees working together to collect nectar).
When we consider the benefits of board games for scientific learning
among much younger children, we find it interesting to note that some com-

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P L AYmercial board games may introduce scientific knowledge in a playful manner
to two- and three-year-old children. For example, the same topic—honeybees’
nectar collection—is the focus of Hanna Honeybee, a HABA game targeted atchildren as young as two and part of HABA’s My Very First Games collection.
Concentrating not just on honeybees’ nectar collection but also on how nectar

Figure 1. A three-year-old playing HABA’s Hanna Honeybee during a family board game eventat Kitchener Public Library. Photo taken by Daniela O’Neill on June 19, 2019, and provided
with permission of parent.

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

is turned into honey in the beehive, players work together to produce as muchhoney for the honeypot as they can before too many flowers wilt and fall outof the game determined by the roll of the die. Players use a large wooden bee
to fly to different flowers to collect nectar, fly the flower token (i.e., nectar) to
the three-dimensional beehive constructed from the box, deposit the flower
token, and watch a honey token emerge from the beehive to put in a honeypot.
Inside the box, the mechanism flips the token from flower to honey side before
it reemerges. (See figure 1.)
Like other games in HABA’s My Very First Games collection, Hanna Honeybee
comes with a pamphlet for parents that indicates how the game can help fostera child’s development in color recognition and identification, fine motor skills,
communication, and other areas. This pamphlet (HABA 2016, 4–7) also provides
tips for parents on how to encourage learning and discussion, which include
specific steps parents can take when they play the game with their children (e.g.,“Talk about Hanna HoneyBee, how she flies from flower to flower collecting
sweet nectar to bring back to the hive” [4] or providing explanations such as
what the wilted flower on the die means: “one flower is already wilted and has
no more nectar” [5]). Perhaps future research could consider whether even very
young children can learn complex systems through cooperative play at homeor with peers in a classroom setting with a commercially available game like
Hanna HoneyBee.
Summary
When board games are tailored to specific concepts, such as complex systems
in science, they can be used to help children learn these concepts (Peppler,
Danish, and Phelps 2013). Other than mathematics, most board game studies
consider scientific thinking, and the findings of those we reviewed suggest thatboard game intervention can lead to significant gains in the learning of scientific information—for example, increased knowledge about nutrition and diet(Amaro et al. 2006; Viggiano et al. 2015). Peppler and colleagues call for more
research to determine best practices for board game use as a teaching tool in theclassroom, especially since competitive play led to less learning and more tension among players (Peppler, Danish, and Phelps 2013). In addition, educators
may have to juggle student preferences for commercial games, which parents
and children sometimes viewed as more accessible, fun, and authentic. We addthat much remains to be explored concerning cognitive and scientific learning
within classrooms and also within informal home settings.

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Language Learning
Vocabulary and Discourse
Studies show that children’s early vocabulary and their later, more sophisticateddiscourse skills, such as maintaining a conversation or telling a story, can be fostered by playing researcher-developed and commercial board games. Within thedomain of speech-language pathology, in particular, commercial board games
are recognized as a means to develop these skills further during interventions(Poss and Bugaj 2020).
Hassinger-Das and her colleagues (Hassinger-Das et al. 2016) investigateda board game intervention aimed at increasing the vocabulary knowledge offour-year-olds. Children participated in shared book reading followed by definition review and guided play either in the form of a researcher-developed
vocabulary review game modelled on Snakes and Ladders or a nonvocabulary
researcher-developed version of the game. The vocabulary version of the board
game contained ten squares on which children were asked a question related
to a word they had encountered in the book. The questions ranged from low tohigh demand (e.g., “Can you point to the lane in the book?”; “Why might you
make a fierce face?” [75]). At posttest, children in the vocabulary game groupdemonstrated greater gains in receptive and expressive knowledge of the words
taught than those in the comparison group.
Along with other toys and playful activities, speech-language pathologists
use commercially available board games to build children’s language and communication skills and to meet specific goals in intervention and therapy withchildren. In reviewing personal sites and blogs, with respect to early vocabulary development, we noted they frequently recommended Candy Land to help
children learn vocabulary related to colors and candy (Galstian 2018). Poss andBugaj (2020) describe how many board games can provide numerous, similar
opportunities to model and target vocabulary and short phrases (e.g., get, take,
who, your turn, do you want) as well as possible new words (e.g., troll, princess).
Turning to more sophisticated, later developing language skills, Sorsana,
Guizard, and Trognon (2013) explored expository discourse skills among ten
trios of French four- to six-year-old children by having one child (the expert),
who had learned how to play a researcher-developed game “similar to the Gameof Goose” (1457), explain the rules and then teach it to two children (the novices)
who were unfamiliar with it. Successfully explaining a game relies on sophisticated pragmatic language skills such as taking the others’ perspective, monitoring

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

understanding and errors, providing clarifications if needed, and understanding
more complex vocabulary and syntactic structures. As the authors state, “Inorder to do this, both linguistic, cognitive, as well as interpersonal skills aremobilized” (1455). The study revealed that expert children demonstrated suchskills, explaining on average seven of eleven rules and answering approximately
90 percent of their playmates’ questions.
Toe and Paatsch (2018) explored expository discourse skills with Australian eight- to thirteen-year-old peer dyads, one an expert and one a novice. The
dyads included one child who had normal hearing and one child who was deafor hard of hearing (DHH) in both roles to compare their expository abilities toconvey the key elements and rules of the commercial board game Secret Square,a game in which children seek a token hidden under one of twenty-five small
pictures by asking yes or no questions. Despite differences in succinctness andfrequency, overall, both groups of children understood and communicated the
key features and rules of the game, and experts checked for understanding whilenovices sought clarifications.
Speech-language pathologists have often recommended Clue to help older
children develop the ability to formulate and answer questions and communicate
their reasoning (Fors 2018). Although they suggested no specific board games
to help children build narrative skills, Eeboo’s Fairytale Spin to Play—a board
game we used in our library events—provides a fitting example. Children spin
for a story background picture (e.g., castle scene), heroes and villains, and otherstory elements. When they have collected all the story elements, they are encouraged to make up a story to share with the players, something we saw children
do enthusiastically. Some board games directed more at parents also include
instruction booklets with ideas and tips that encourage the playful development of language skills while playing the game with a child, much like HABAMy Very First Games.
Learning a New Language
Board games can also offer a way for children to practice a new language in a
low-risk, fun environment (Smith 2006). Key features of board game play canalign uniquely with—and be supportive of—the process of learning a language,
helping provide the classroom atmosphere teachers wish to create. Students inlanguage-learning classrooms must feel they can take risks, make mistakes, becreative in practicing new words and sentences, and feel “psychologically comfortable and safe in their learning environment” (Ely 1986, 23).

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There are several reasons board game play matches these aims (Smith
2006). First, the vocabulary and discourse tend to be more constrained and easy
to understand and predict, which can reduce players’ anxiety about speaking
in an unfamiliar language. Second, board game play supports symmetric turntaking, which provides all players with a turn to talk, generates repetition thatlets players hear the language forms several times, and creates a more relaxedatmosphere. Third, if the board game has a collaborative feature, it can encourage both joint problem solving and experimenting with new language structuresand vocabulary related to the game.
In Smith’s study (2006), she observed four schools in the United Kingdom
where seven- to ten-year-old children played the researcher-developed board
game Have Fun with Verbs to explore the interactive behaviors of bilingual learners. The game’s sentence-construction task encouraged such experimentation,
creativity, and play with language because of the supportive help and encouragement of peer players. And indeed, students worked together to solve the language
problems, offer feedback and suggestions, experiment with constructions, andreact positively by nodding, clapping, and laughing.
Summary
When we consider the role of board games in enhancing language and communication skills, we find it striking that they are being used in many different
contexts for a wide variety of skills ranging from enhancing early vocabulary todeveloping sophisticated grammatical and discourse skills. The detailed analysis
of interactions during board game play in some of these studies have revealed
areas of difficulty with language and communication hitherto less recognized,
which now require specific assessment and potential intervention (Toe andPaatsch 2018). For example, we need to create authentic communicative experiences to reveal more accurately the abilities of students—especially those who
may be neurodivergent, shy, or reticent—to teachers who otherwise may havefewer means of evaluation (Toe and Paatsch 2018; Smith 2006). And we should
consider the possibility of capturing “the dynamic process of learning ‘in action’”(Smith 2006, 434).
We should note that most of the board games in these studies have been
researcher developed to align with language skills being taught. And this isviewed as key to the positive findings by these authors. In fact, in this literature,
the term “intrinsic integration,” coined by Kafai (1996) is used to describe situations in which a game’s design features and structure are well aligned with theThe Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

educational content to be learned (Hassinger-Das et al. 2017). Whether using
commercial games would result in similar findings has received little study,
and at present, arguments for their usefulness depend largely on some board
games receiving positive recommendations from the professional community
in descriptive articles (Poss and Bugaj, 2020) or informal sources such as blogs,
podcasts, or social media. These recommendations could serve, however, as abasis for further exploration of particular board games or a particular genre ofboard games (e.g., storytelling).

Social, Emotional, and Cultural Learning
Social and Emotional Learning
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is generally viewed as encompassing five
key skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills,
and responsible decision making (Weissberg et al. 2016). And many researchers
believe board games afford rich learning opportunities for SEL both inside andoutside the classroom, such as in clinical or therapeutic settings.
Two larger reviews exploring the role of games in playful learning (Hassinger-Das et al. 2017) and social and emotional learning (Hromek and Roffey 2009) have mentioned board games and SEL. Hassinger-Das et al. (2017)
suggest that, even when games are not designed to do so, the need to adhere
to a particular set of rules and to take turns may be one reason the games effectively foster self-management skills such as self-regulation. Moreover, games thatinvolve multiple players “inherently offer opportunities for social interactions
and practice in turn taking, communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution, and empathy” (200).
Hromek and Roffey (2009) argue that “the natural affiliation between children, play, and the desire to have fun with others makes games an ideal vehicle
for teaching SEL” (626), including such skills as regulating negative emotions,taking turns and sharing, and treating others in a fair, just, and respectful manner. The authors point out that even just allowing children to decide themselves
who will go first can provide a valuable opportunity for young players to balance
fairness, self-interest, and their emotions.
Cooperative board games, in particular, may offer valuable opportunities
for children to develop socio-emotional skills. Cooperative games are now aprominent and growing alternative to competitive games available commercially

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P L AY(Jolin 2016), but this style of game is not limited to adult players. Cooperative
games designed for families (and children even as young as two) have beensteadily gaining traction. Cooperative board games involve all players working
together to reach a common goal (Bay-Hinitz and Wilson 2005). The players
work as a team and share the payoffs and outcomes. Thus, if the team wins,
everyone wins; if the team loses, everyone loses (Zagal, Rick, and Hsi 2006).
Indeed, a tension between short-term goals and longer-term goals can arise incooperative games, so that the “group dynamics can get more complicated, notless” (51) in cooperative- versus competitive-style games (Moriarity and Kay
2019; see also Erway 2018).
As we have described, play interactions of six- to nine-year-olds with
HIVEMIND differed in its competitive and its cooperative versions (Peppler,
Danish, and Phelps 2013). With respect to team play and affective aspects, positive comments to others on their team (e.g., “go, team, go”) and a greater numberof shorter, productive rounds occurred more frequently with collaborative play.
Zan and Hildebrandt (2003) found that among younger children dyadic interactions displayed more developmentally advanced reciprocal negotiations andshared experiences during cooperative play. The study observed these interactions as first-grade children played two researcher-developed board games that
had similar rules, board game design, and ways of movement, but differed intheme and in goal structure—cooperative (Homesteader) or competitive (Badgers). Interestingly, the researchers did not use commercially-available cooperative games because they were unable to find equally challenging competitive
games (Zan and Hildebrandt 2003), a limitation that may have changed in theintervening years with many more cooperative strategy games now available.
Bay-Hinitz and Quilitch (1994) and Bay-Hinitz and Wilson (2005) used sets ofcommercially available cooperative board games (Max, Harvest Time, Granny’s
House, Sleeping Grump) and competitive board games (Candy Land, Chutes andLadders, Aggravation and Double Trouble) along with physical games with fourand five-year-old preschoolers. Unfortunately, the studies do not separate theresults for board games and physical games, although they did find that aggressive behaviors decreased from baseline during collaborative play as cooperative
behaviors increased. In competitive games, friendship status may also play arole. Nine- and ten-year-old friend dyads argued more about conflicting rules
in a researcher-developed positional Snake Pit board game than did nonfriend
dyads (Hartup et al. 1993).
Board game intervention may also increase empathy and the awareness

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learningof bullying. In a classroom setting, Nieh and Wu (2018) found that elevenand twelve-year-olds who played a researcher-developed collaborative bullying awareness-themed positional board game, Galaxy Rescuers, demonstrated
greater knowledge about bullying and changes in bullying attitudes and empathy
compared to a group taught using conventional methods.
Beyond the classroom, board games also find use in clinical and therapeutic settings to meet social and emotional learning goals for children. Speechlanguage pathologists also frequently use (and recommend) commerciallyavailable board games (among other games) to teach and build socialinteraction skills in young neurotypical and neurodivergent children such as autistic
children and children with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)—skills like turn taking, joint attention, and nonverbal communication, as well asother social skills such as the control of impulses (Katie 2013). In psychotherapy,
commercial board games (defined as any structured game with rules, such as
Candy Land) can be part of the treatment itself because they allow young patients
to work through many of the developmental goals of middle childhood including learning to sit still and wait for a turn, share with other players, restrain
impulsive behaviors, delay gratification, and tolerate losing (Bellinson 2013).
In particular, Bellinson notes that observing how children bend the rules (e.g.,refuse to land on spaces that might send them back to the start) can be revealing about whether they feel frustrated and overwhelmed in their everyday life
and will benefit from practicing alternative strategies. These strategies then takeplace in a low-risk setting where young patients receive adult modelling and help
develop such skills further (e.g., tolerating setbacks).
In clinical contexts, board games can be also be tools for socio-emotional
development. Fernandes, Arriaga, and Esteves (2014) used a researcher-developed Adventure at the Hospital intervention with nine- to eleven-year-old
Portuguese children facing surgery to evaluate an educational set of materials
provided in one of three forms (booklet, board game, or video). These educate
children about seven stages related to their hospital visit as compared to a set ofmaterials focused solely on entertainment (e.g., Snakes and Ladders). Children’sworries were significantly reduced after playing any of three educational set ofmaterials, and this decline was not seen with any materials in the entertainment set. In another study, six- to seventeen-year-olds with ADHD were taught
chess by an expert for eleven weeks, and they showed a significant decrease ininattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity between pretest and posttest scores(Blasco-Fontecilla et al. 2016).

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Summary
We see again that, with respect to social and emotional learning, board games(both researcher developed games and commercial ones) can be used in a wide
variety of contexts (e.g., school, therapy, intervention) to help foster early socialand emotional interaction skills in children. However, this area of learning has
been studied in much less depth than others and remains practically unexploredin more informal home and community settings. Hromek and Roffey (2009)
remark that for more than fifty years, games have lacked attention from psychologists and education researchers. But as our review shows, this has beenchanging since 2009. More recent studies have revealed what specific interaction
and socio-emotional skills may be enhanced by board game play, while also
taking into consideration differences that might arise as a result of competitive
versus cooperative game play. This limited research suggests board games canprovide benefits for children’s social and socio-emotional development, bolsteredby consistent recommendations of their use by professionals working with young
children. Future research, especially involving detailed analyses of interactions
and use of the increased commercially available cooperative board games (andEurogames) with their focus on maintaining a positive interaction for all players
will strengthen these findings.
Sociocultural Learning
Beyond individual children and classrooms, playing board games can be a way
to build and strengthen social relationships and social cohesion in families andcommunities (Krishnan 2019). After-school programs are an important informal setting for children’s learning and engagement (Lee and Hawkins 2008). A
Swedish survey study found staff at children’s leisure-time centers used board
games with their six- to twelve-year-olds to help children become acquainted,
learn social skills (e.g., taking turns), learn to think strategically and be challenged, and as a substitute for digital games (Haglund and Peterson 2017). In
libraries, board game programs have also historically been part of services formore than 150 years, with game rooms created in the midnineteenth century
to promote social betterment (Nicholson 2013). Gaming programs targeting children appeared in American libraries in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries when people believed that games could help children
enhance memories and could foster peer relationships (Pierce 2016). The past
couple of decades have seen a surge in advocacy for the inclusion of board games
in library programs and catalogues (Pierce 2016). A 2007 survey of American

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

public libraries revealed that more than 70 percent of respondents supported
gaming in some way (Nicholson 2013). Board game lending programs, such as
demonstrated in Figure 2, now routinely appear in libraries where patrons cansign out a board game just as they would a book (Dolynny 2018).
Museums also offer programs and events at which children and families
can play board games. Though long a feature in European museums, such as
the Deutsches SPIELEmuseum in Chemnitz, Germany, and the Victoria andAlbert (V & A) Museum of Childhood (now renamed the Young V & A) in
London, these play spaces now appear in North American institutions, such as
The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and the McCord
Stewart Museum in Montreal, Quebec. In more informal community settings
such as libraries and museums, the popularity of commercial board games has
been demonstrated largely through patron surveys. Very limited research has
yet taken place in these settings to explore the impact and outcomes of board
game play on children’s learning apart from the one study by Bustamante andcolleagues looking at numerical knowledge (Bustamante et al. 2020).
A survey of Canadian parents of first-grade children that considered at outof-school play found parents reported feeling good when their children playedboard games. Some of them valued this type of play because it built relationships
and self-esteem, but others encouraged board game play for academic reasons or
for relaxation and fun (Lehrer and Petrakos 2011). Similarly, an interview survey

Figure 2. The web page of Kitchener Public Library announcing the launch of its new board
games collection for young children in April 2021.

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P L AYwith parents in Australia, Europe, and the United States revealed that parents
viewed commercial board games as an opportunity for multigenerational play
between parents and children—and oftentimes grandparents (Rogerson andGibbs 2018). Board games arguably promote social cohesion among community
members throughout various cultures around the world, especially when they
involve multigenerational play (Ascher 2001). Board games with design featuresthat easily cross linguistic and cultural borders especially may facilitate social
interactions among groups of peoples (de Voogt 2017).
Looking more specifically at family functioning, Poff, Zabrieski, andTownsend (2010) conducted a large study including almost nine hundred
American families and found that involvement in a set of eight core family
leisure activities—one of which was playing board games more broadly—withvarious family members not only related directly to higher family functioning,
but also to greater and better communication within the family unit, and thiswas suggested to lead to improved perceptions of family functioning. A 2012
survey of over six hundred American families found that fathers who reported
regularly participating in this same set of eight core family leisure activities with
their young adolescent children also tended to self-report higher levels of familycohesion and that the involvement of fathers in family leisure activities proved
the strongest predictor of family cohesion from the view of both the father andthe child (Buswell et al. 2012).
Finally, board games may be an avenue for promoting cultural learning
among children. Although the research here is thinner, board games have a long
history of being used to help children learn information related to their own
country or culture. For example, in Georgian and Victorian times, board games
like Wallis’s Tour through England and Wales were designed to teach children
the geography of these areas, and some incorporated moral values (Dove 2017).
More recently, board games have been explored as a way to help children learn
important life skills. For example, Zeedyk and her colleagues showed that, after
playing a commercially available positional board game focused on road safety
procedures, four- to five-year-olds retained the increase in their knowledge forsix months compared to a group receiving no intervention (Zeedyk et al. 2001).
When youngsters play board games that originate from a culture different
from their own, or feature themes and elements of various cultures, children
can learn about these less familiar worlds, and they understand that games areintegrated in many different aspects of foreign life and social situations (Ascher
2001). In today’s market, however, such games have been almost exclusively

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

designed for players older than twelve, such as Greenland, which presents players with historically based strategic and logistical challenges (e.g., what to hunt,
what technology to use) faced by the Norse, Thule, or Tunit people in the time
period depicted by the game.
One noncommercial example is the development of educational board
games designed to educate school-aged children visiting the Gummingurru
Aboriginal stone arrangement site in Queensland, Australia. These board games
are part of a set of learning activities “viewed by the GAC [Gummingurru
Aboriginal Corporation] as significant reconciliation opportunities between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people” (Ross, Ulm, and Tobane 2013, 66).
Further examples of commercial and noncommercial board games foryounger children featuring themes and elements of various cultures appear
sparse. The few that we could find include Eeboo’s I Never Forget a Face, amemory lotto game featuring children from around the world, and Indigenous
Art Dominoes and Indigenous Art Matching Game, both featuring the artworks
of Indigenous artists.
Summary
The use of board games to promote social cohesion and cultural learning has along history in a variety of settings such as libraries, museums, after-school programs, and in the home, but this use has been the subject of almost no empirical
study. The recent appearance of more games for younger children in this domain
appears promising, and we believe there remains room for new games and for
new empirical work to demonstrate the kinds of knowledge children may be able
to gain about their own and other cultures from such games that offer opportunities to strengthen social cohesion inside and outside classroom settings.

Child-Developed Board Games:
A Classroom Activity with Many Kinds of Learning
One use of board games as an educational tool to foster almost all of the different types of learning we have discussed involve having children create their own
board games to learn about specific topics. Collins and her associates describe
a very successful example of this activity for a science unit that took place in a
first grade classroom in partnership with Collaborations: Teachers and Artists(CoTA) (Collins et al. 2011). In this project, students developed a life-sized

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P L AYboard game, coined Rainforestland, to learn about the geographic area andecosystem of the Amazonian rainforest. The classroom itself served as the board
and the children as the game pieces. The teacher’s goals for this activity were
not just related to the science curriculum but also to developing further children’s receptive and expressive communication, literacy, visual arts, and positivesocial-interaction skills. She also sought to engage students across their diverse
academic and socioeconomic profiles, to increase participation of learners ofEnglish, to promote community and reduce social exclusion.
Students and their teacher worked together to develop the rules and materials of Rainforestland, which was modelled on the popular game Candy Land.
Working in pairs, one student acted as the player while another acted as thegame piece. Children wore paper mâché masks of rainforest animals when they
became a game piece. After drawing a card, the player directed the game piece
to move forward to a colored square as indicated on the drawn card. Students
could also land on “traps” designed after features of the Amazonian rainforest(such as a three-dimensional pit of vipers) and could escape by correctly answering questions related to the rainforest, (such as: “What is the top layer of therainforest called? Answer: ‘Canopy’”) (Collins et al. 2011, 18). Students could
also take shortcuts. The first team of game piece and player to reach the finish
line of the game was declared the winner (Collins et al. 2011).
The children were part of the creation process of Rainforestland at each
step—from deciding on the rules, directions, and structure of the game to developing the question cards and materials for the game to finally participating in
the actual game play. Their teacher viewed the activity as successful in providing children with a chance to practice and improve their executive functioning
skills. These included planning and decision making, logical thinking skills,
communication skills (learned via the writing of the rules and questions of thegame), learning the content vocabulary, and maintaining positive interactions
using social skills such as turn taking when they created and played the board
game together.

Conclusion
Bord games, as proven by their long history and broad reach across cultures(Attia 2016), are forms of entertainment that engage children and adults alikein a large variety of settings. We believe our review also demonstrates that board

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

games present opportunities for developing skills in a wide variety of domainsof learning in young children. More broadly, they can promote “learning how
to learn” (Krishnan 2019; All Aboard Games n.d.).
Several authors have lamented the lack of academic research on board
games (Hromek and Roffey 2009; Woods 2012), even declaring it a “dead science” (Ortego-Gimaldo 2008, 34, cited in Woods 2012, 10). Although it is thecase that the largest number of research studies have examined children’s skills
and learning in the domain of mathematics, our review has shown that when theliterature is surveyed broadly across a number of fields and considers expertiseand practice in fields such as speech-language pathology that may be conveyed
in more informal or applied sources, a sizable body of evidence emerges that
supports children’s learning in a wide variety of domains using board games andin a manner that children still find fun and engaging.
Given that research in many domains with board games remains still fairly
nascent (e.g., language learning, social emotional learning) and that muchremains to be studied about the benefits of board games as learning tools inmany developmental domains (Hassinger-Das et al. 2017), we hope that research
exploring the benefits of board games in domains beyond cognition will continue
to grow. We believe one challenge of future research will be to find the right balance between board game design and mechanics aimed at promoting teachingskills and the accessibility and authenticity for enjoyable play (Wonica 2015).
Given the importance of the latter for children, we believe studies exploring
the rich potential of high quality contemporary commercial games—perhaps
with simpler, low- or no-cost adaptations to instructions or materials in keeping with the game mechanics—would be particularly valuable for educators,
professionals, community organizations, and parents in deciding which games
to offer children. Indeed, such studies, we would predict, will show the benefitsof board games for young children’s learning to be even more powerful than wehave been able to demonstrate here.
Playing board games is an activity in which children and adults spend
time enjoyably together. With the hundreds of existing board games focusedon various themes, frequent new releases, and the option to play cooperative
or competitive games, the choices for shared board game play are many. The
expansion of libraries lending out board games and the establishment of morecommunity-based and school-based board game programs has the additional
advantage of bringing these rich learning opportunities to families and children
in communities at large at little to no cost to individual families. Indeed, inter-

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P L AYested readers can view the first collection of board games for young children
launched in April 2021 by Kitchener Public Library with curatorial help from
Daniela O’Neill at www.kpl.org/board-games and a fuller description of thegames, the reasons they were chosen, and related openly available materials
on O’Neill’s University of Waterloo Children’s Communication Lab website(https://uwaterloo.ca/childrens-communication-lab/community-outreach/family-board-game-fun-kpl-board-game-collection)
The opportunity to borrow new games to play with children at home could
not come at a better time given that schools and most community spaces havebeen long closed because of COVID-19, which has no doubt fueled a larger
global resurgence in the appreciation of what board games have to offer.

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Appendix
Fuller descriptions of board games in sources reviewed, presented in order of appearance in this article.
Source (age or grade ofparticipants)

Game name

Design type

Description (Publisher, if relevant)Ramani and Siegler(2008; Ex. 1); experimental study (4- and5-year-olds)
Ramani and Siegler(2011); experimental
study (3- and 4-yearolds)

The Great Race

Experimenterdeveloped

Players use a spinner with numbers 1
and 2 and must move their token thecorrect number of spaces according to
the spinner from one end to the other ofa horizontal linear board with different
colored equal–size squares consecutively
numbered 1-10 from left to right. Children had to say out loud the number ofthe spaces through which they moved (ifthey could not do so, the experimenter
named them and the child repeated thename while moving their token). The
first player to reach the end wins.

Elofsson et al. (2016);
experimental study(5-year-olds)

Not stated in source

Experimenterdeveloped

Modelled after Ramani and Siegler (2008;2011) but with 3 more boards (11–20,
21–30 and 31–40) to extend play and adie with numbers 1 to 3. Children had tocount out loud while moving token.

Dunbar et al. (2017);
experimental study(3-year-olds)

Not stated in source

Experimenterdeveloped

Players use a spinner and must countout loud the number of spaces theiranimals can move according to the spinner from one end to the other of a linear
board with spaces numbered 1–20.
The first player to reach the end wins.
(Modelled after Ramani and Siegler
2008, 2011)

Skillen, Berner, andSeitz-Stein (2018);
experimental study(6-year-olds)

100 House

Experimenterdeveloped

Players must roll a die to move spaces
on a 10x10 grid numbered 1–100. First
player to reach the 100th square is thewinner. If a player landed on a squarewith a 5 in the unit position, they could
move up one floor (e.g., moving fromthe 15 square to the 25 square). Players were required to count-on in thenumber sequence or count-from 1 to 10
depending on the condition.

Numerical Knowledge

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Cheung and McBride(2017; Study 1); observational study (3- to
6-year-olds)

Not stated in source

Author-developed

Players must roll a die to determine thenumber of spaces they can move on a
5x5 grid. Some spaces moved a player
further away from the goal (similar tosnakes in Snakes and Ladders) and somespaces moved a player closer to the goal
(similar to ladders). The first player toreach the goal won the game.

Satsangi and Bofferding(2017); experimental
study (4- to 10-yearolds)

Not stated in source

Experimenterdeveloped

Same game as used in Ramani andSiegler (2008; 2011).

Bustamante et al.
(2020); observational
study (typical clientele
of museum are 2 to 7
years old)

Parkopolis

Author-developed

Life-sized board game. Players roll diewith whole numbers and ¼ fractions tomove down number line that has spaces
divided into fractions. Some spaces
direct to game cards with STEM learning activities (e.g., pattern pipes). Rules
are open-ended.

Laski and Siegler(2014); experimental
study (5- and 6-yearolds)

Race to Space

Experimenterdeveloped

Players had to spin a spinner to movetheir token across a 10x10 matrix gameboard numbered from 1–100. The blue
background color of the board deepened every two rows, and the spinner
had five sections labeled 1–5. Players
were required to count-on or countfrom 1 depending on game condition.
A figure of the board is included in thesource.

Benavides-Varela et al(2016); correlational
study (5- and 6-yearolds)

Not stated in source

Not stated

No details provided beyond mention
that the games “require children to
remember numbers and exercise thecounting procedure” (p. 8).

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Mathematical Reasoning and Problem Solving
Ascher (2001); reportfrom practice (no specific ages stated)“Board games of strategy from Mongolia”

Traditional Mongolian games

Game boards are often configured asn-sided regular polygons (see article
for figures). Using half of a set of markers that equals 1/2(6n-2), a player’s goal
is to place three markers in a row onintersection points, while interferingwith the opponent’s ability to place
three in a row.

McFeetors and Palfy(2018); observational
study (5th and 6th
graders)

Gobblet Gobblers,
Othello, Tic Stac Toe,
Go

Commerciallyavailable

Gobblet Gobblers is a variation of tic
tac toe in which bigger pieces can “gobble up” smaller pieces. (Blue Orange
Games)
Othello: Discs are placed on 8x8 grid tosurround and flip opponents pieces togain territory. (Mattel)
Tic Stac Toe is a variation of tic tac toe
where pieces can be stacked. (Melissa& Doug)
Go: Stones are placed on intersectionsof 19 x19 board to gain territory andremove opponent’s pieces.
(See www.usgo.org)

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Scientific Thinking*Bartfay and Bartfay(1994); experimental
study (6th graders)

Lifestyles Game

Experimenterdeveloped

Players try to be the first to collect 10
tokens to cancel out lifestyle risk factors on their score cards by providing
correct answers to questions about dietand nutrition, basic anatomy and physiology, and lifestyle risk factors associated with disease. (Not clear in source
if players move along game board to be
asked questions.)

Wulanyani et al. (2019);
experimental study (3rdto 6th graders)

Described as a Snakes
and Ladders board gameExperimenterdeveloped

Game board had 12 squares where
players had to draw a card and answer
a question. Another player checked theanswer. Players moved forward if correct, backward if incorrect.

*Amaro et al. (2006);
experimental study (11to 14-year-olds)*Viggiano et al. (2015);
experimental study (9to 19-year-olds)

KalèdoExperimenterdeveloped(Unclear if available. Contact
author S. Amaro)

Players move through board by rolling dice and must balance their totalenergy supply, denoted by food cards,
with their total energy expenditure,
denoted by activity cards, to reach dailyenergy needs. Player who attains maximum points for energy balance, foodbalance, and food variety is the winner.

Peppler, Danish, andPhelps (2013); experimental study (6- to
9-year-olds)

HIVEMIND

Experimenterdeveloped

Players must move their bee token
on game board using a 6-sided diethat determines different paths andoutcomes. On certain squares, players
receive card with scientific information
or directions. Goal is to collect as much
nectar as possible. Players assigned tocompetitive or collaborative scoring
condition. Figure of board in article.

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Language and Communication
Hassinger-Das et al.
(2016); experimental
study (4-year-olds)

Not stated in source

Galstian (2018); reportfrom clinical practice(no specific ages stated)

Candy Land

Sorsana, Guizard, andTrognon (2013); observational study (4- to
6-year-olds)

Not stated in source

Author-developed

Described as “derived from the Gameof the Goose but differed in content
and form” (p. 1458). There were 11 specific rules, a die with faces of different
colours and tokens.

Toe and Paatsch (2018);
observational study (8to 13-year-olds)

Secret Square

Commercial game(unclear if stillavailable)

Players must find a token hidden somewhere in a 5x5 grid of picture squares by
asking yes/no questions about the pictures. Authors added the rule that theplayer finding the token with the least
amount of questions, wins. (University
Games)

Fors (2018); report from Clue
clinical practice (nospecific ages stated)

Commerciallyavailable

Clue: Players must try to solve a murder
mystery by making guesses involving
the location, weapon, and suspect of
the crime. Once players have narrowed
down what they know to one of eachcategory, they can make an accusation.
The first player to make a correct accusation is the winner. (Hasbro).

Smith (2006); observational study (7- to
10-year-olds)

Author-developed

Players must move their piece across aboard by correctly forming sentencesusing verbs in the past tense.

Have Fun with Verbs

Experimenterdeveloped

Modelled on Snakes and Ladders. Players who land on one of two coloured
squares (by spinning a 2-coured spinner) must answer a question about 1 of
10 vocabulary words encountered in aprevious book read. Board contained 2
ladders and two snakes. “Bonus” roundasked about any vocabulary words notlanded on. Figure of board in article.
Candy Land: Players move spaces bydrawing colour cards. The first player toreach the final square wins. (Hasbro).

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Social and Emotional Learning
Zan and Hildebrandt(2003); experimental
study (1st graders)

Homesteader and Badgers

Experimenterdeveloped

Players move their markers on spaces
on a board by rolling a die with numbers 0 – 3.
Homesteader: Players must work
together to collect five food cards to filla basket and five pieces of wood cards
to build a cabin while also restoring
environmental damage done as a result,
before the environmental damages hit athreshold and all players lose the game.
Badgers: Players must try to be thefirst to collect four baby badgers andfour worms to feed their badgers while
also restoring a soiled nest with new
bedding before the nest becomes too
soiled.

Bay-Hinitz and Wilson(1994); experimental
study (4- and 5-yearolds)

Cooperative set: Sleeping Grump, Max,
Harvest Time, Granny’s
House

Commerciallyavailable

Sleeping Grump: Players must work
together to climb to the top of thebeanstalk and recover their treasure,
all without waking Grump. All players
win the game when everyone has someof the treasure. (Family Pastimes Cooperative Games)
Max: Players must work together to
get all the animals home before Max
the Cat catches them. (Family Pastimes
Co-operative Games)
Harvest Time: Players work together toplant gardens and harvest their crops
before winter arrives. (Family Pastime
Co-operative Games)
Granny’s House: Players must work
together to complete the journey toGranny’s house by deciding what items
to bring with them and inventing ways
to use these items when they reachobstacles. (Family Pastimes Co-operative Games)
Aggravation/Double Trouble: Be thefirst player to move 4 tokens aroundthe board and back to home. (Hasbro)

Competitive set: Candy
Land, Chutes & Ladders,
Aggravation, Double
Trouble (not describedin original source)

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Hartup et al. (1993);
experimental study (9and 10-year-olds)

Snake Pit

Experimenterdeveloped

Players must move their markers along
the path of the gameboard by spinninga spinner to determine the numberof spaces to move. On certain spaces,
players must draw cards, which havespecial instructions for additional
movement that players must follow.
Players were taught conflicting rules
for certain circumstances that appeared
every three to seven spaces around theboard.

*Nieh and Wu (2018);
experimental study (5thgraders)

Galaxy Rescuers

Experimenterdeveloped

Players arrange map cards of campus
to build game board that they movethrough with dice roll. Players needto collaborate with each other and use
defense cards, earned through answering training questions about bullying,
to choose between completing theirown task assignment or helping a
victim of bullying before the victim’s
mood scale drops to zero.

Katie (2013); reportfrom practice (source
aimed toward children
aged 3- to 6-year-olds)

The Sneaky Snacky
Squirrel Game, Hi Ho
Cherry-O!, Richard
Scarry’s Busytown,
among others

Commerciallyavailable

The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game:
Players try to help the squirrels prepare
food for the winter by spinning the
Squirrel spinner. If the spinner lands
on a colour, players can use the Squirrel Squeezer to take an acorn and put
in the matching hole in their log. The
first player to fill their log wins. (Educational Insights)
Hi-Ho Cherry O!: Players must spin aspinner to determine how many cherries they can take off their cherry tree
and put into their basket, or how manycherries they must put back on the tree.
The first player to collects all the cherries off their tree wins. (Hasbro)
Richard Scarry’s Busytown: Players
must work together to look for hidden
objects as they drive across Busytown
to the ferry leaving for Picnic Island.
(Ravensburger)

The Power of Board Games for Multidomain Learning

Bellinson (2013); reportfrom practice (no specific ages stated)

Mouse Trap, CandyLand,
Don’t Wake Daddy, Life,
among others*Fernandes et al. (2014); Adventure at the Hosexperimental study (8pital
to 12-year-olds)

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Commerciallyavailable

Mousetrap: Players must first work
together to build a mouse trap on theboard. Once the mouse trap is ready,player take turns rolling a dice to moveacross the board while trying to catchother players in the mouse trap. The
last player to be caught in the trap
wins. (Hasbro)
Don’t Wake Daddy: Players must maketheir way across the board to get therefrigerator for a midnight snack. If
a player lands on a space without acolor or number, they are safe. If a
player lands on a space with a color or
number and they don’t have a matching card, they have to press the button
on Daddy’s alarm clock the number oftimes indicated on the card. The firstplayer to reach the refrigerator without
waking Daddy wins. (Hasbro)
Life: Players must spin a spinner tomove across the board. As they move,they can make choices surrounding
their careers, financial moves, and family life. The player who reaches the endof the board with the most money wins
the game. (Hasbro)

Experimenterdeveloped

15-min board game (not describedfurther) that educated children about
7 aspects of their upcoming surgery(source contains Appendix with examples of information given).

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Social Cohesion and Cultural Learning*Zeedyk et al. (2001);
experimental study (4and 5-year-sold)Not stated in source

Commerciallyavailable in Britain(limited access)

Players try to be the first to get homefrom school safely by rolling dice andmoving their pieces around the board
and using their knowledge of roadsafety to cross the different road crossings safely.

Ross, Ulm, and Tobane(2013); report frompractice (no specificages listed)

A Part of Something
BiggerAuthor-developed

A positional board game akin to
Snakes and Ladders designed to teachschool children about the journeys to
the Gummigurru stone arrangementsite in precontact times. A pictureof the game board is available in thesource article. More games are available
at http://www.gummingurru.com.au/
Games.

Author-developed

Players try to be the first to moveacross the life-sized game board by correctly answering questions about therainforest. Fuller description in text.

Child-Developed Board Games:
A Classroom Activity with Many Kinds of Learning
Collins et al. (2011);
observational study (1stgraders)

Rainforestland*Indicates a study included in the meta-review by Noda, Shirotsuki, and Nakao (2019)