5 Fun Back to School Brain Games

Those calendar pages are quickly turning towards the first day of school. These educational games fun, free and fast. There also unplugged and no supplies are necessary. You don't need a thing to play these games except everyone's attention. Whether you're throwing a back to school party, sitting around the dinner table, or riding in the car, get the kids to put on their "thinking caps" and get ready for silly but smart fun.

For many of the preschool years we've played Rhyming Round Robin in which one player offers a word and everyone follows with a rhyming word until we've exhausted our list or can't stop laughing. We've also played many rounds of the Alphabet Soup where we listed items in alphabetical order. As our children have gotten a little older and we've expanded our road trips, we needed some new brain games for the car or for unplugged family time.

Last Letter, First Letter game is fun for kids seven and up.

The idea behind last letter, first letter is that each player adds a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word.

Here's an example of how our last round went with players from age 7 to 53.

We started with apple and went to extraordinary, yellow, work, kangaroo, octopus, school, love, ear, radical and on and on.

While it reinforces phonics skills, this game also helps build vocabulary. "What does "lurk" mean," our seven year old asked.

It also helps build spelling skills. Young kids will quickly notice how many words end in silent e.

Silly Syllables is a new family favorite.

Dividing words into syllables is a great skill for first grade and up. Each player takes turns giving a starting word and each player has to offer a word with the same number of syllables. Players begin with one syllable and move up to five. It sounds really easy but it can get be challenging.

Here's an example of some of our syllable matching games.

The word hurt brought lick and egg.

The word washer brought sneaker and lightning.

The word Florida brought hyena and Saturday.

The word ballerina brought watermelon and stationary.

The word emancipation at first stumped everyone but eventually we got proclamation and evaluation. Try to think of another 5-syllable word. It's a fun challenge.

Blends Blizzard is a blast.

Consonant letter blends is another fun skill to work on with elementary age children. Think of a list of letter blends like "ch," "tr" or "st."

Each player takes turns offering player offering a blend word like cheese and the other players follow with answers like chunk, challenge and chart.

This fun game works on phonics, spelling and vocabulary building. It really starts stimulating students!