Games for Memory Work,
Drill, and Review

Why Games?

We love to play games at our house. Games offer a chance to gather together as a family or with friends, to socialize, to challenge ourselves and to engage in friendly competition. There are many ways to incorporate games into our homeschooling days, and we enjoy using both commercial and homemade games to practice our skills and review what we've learned. Any educational material can be made into a game, or a game can be used to liven up memory work, drills, or review.

There are many different types of games that can be used in learning. Many classic games are good practice in and of themselves. There are many math, strategy, and reasoning games for all ages, from Hi-Ho Cherry-O, Go Fish, Concentration, Rack-o and Yahtzee to chess, checkers, Othello, Mastermind, and Go. These games can be used at different ages to reinforce and build mental math skills, problem-solving skills, and advanced reasoning capabilities. There are also language games available, such as Scrabble, Boggle, and many variants. These can easily be used to build vocabulary, practice spelling, or reinforce foreign languages.

What gets even more interesting, though, is taking content information and turning it into a learning game. Everyone can participate in dreaming up and making games, and just the practice of making a game can be a wonderful drill for children, particularly if the game involves question cards for which they must research the answers. For any game, there is an element of challenge in planning and executing a design, and assessing its effectiveness in terms of playability.

What Do You Mean, Drill?

Memory work and drill are an essential part of grammar stage classical education. We always have a list of things that we are working on memorizing, and as things are learned we move them gradually from a regular review list to game status. While the material is in the learning stage, it's easy to take the information and begin creating the game. Then, when the kids are ready to review, test their knowledge, or just play for fun, the game is ready for them to use.

What kinds of things do we drill? Here's a sample list of some memory work and drill practice for young children: the books of the Bible, the 10 plagues of Egypt, the names of the apostles, the beatitudes, the armor of God, the fruit of the Spirit, the ten commandments, parts of speech, synonyms and antonyms, rhyming words, compound words, spelling words with R-controlled vowels, suffixes, alphabetical order, phonics, counting, math facts, place value, ordinal numbers, fractions, telling time, greater and lesser numbers, counting money, animal families and characteristics, simple machines, parts of plants, the solar system, weather facts, the food pyramid, the life cycle of frogs and butterflies, the water cycle, states of matter, safety rules, food groups, parts of the body, the five senses, manners, states and capitals, presidents, continents, countries of the world, landforms, habitats/flora/fauna, days of the week, months of the year, the four seasons, the colors of the rainbow, the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, national monuments, facts about the American flag, facts about specific historical events or eras, Greek and Latin roots and prefixes, and foreign language vocabulary words.

This is not an exhaustive list; you can make a game out of anything you want your children to remember!

Getting Started

There are many kinds of games to make, and many ways to make them. Some things to consider at the outset are the age and number of the intended players, the type of learning you want to have taking place (is it for teaching, drill, or review), the subject matter (is it a skill area, like math, or a content area, like science or history), the specific scope of knowledge that you want to drill or assess, and the type of game that is best suited for achieving your goals.

There are some standard game patterns that can be used with different themes to make very individualized games. Your theme can match the content of the game, but it doesn't have to. For example, you can drill horse facts with a gameboard that has a horse theme, or you can practice math facts using a game that has a horse theme if that is your child's interest. Either way, you can create the theme based on whatever you desire, and use the standard game pattern that best fits your needs. Some of these standard patterns are card games, and some are board games.

One type of game pattern involves simple matching, and might include such games as Go Fish, concentration, Bingo, Lotto, or a simple picture- or word-sorting game. These games are great for younger children, and simple match-ups or sorting games are great for single player memory challenges. Another game pattern is the path game, in which players move tokens from start to finish by rolling a die or spinning a wheel. This type of game lends itself to answering specific content questions written on cards, and can be made more interesting by adding special squares to land on, chutes and ladders effects, and special action or wild cards.

Maybe you would like to make a game similar to Uno, or Connect Four, or War. Any game that you can think of can be used as a pattern for another game that you would like to create!

Nuts and Bolts

We use file folders to construct many of our games; we started with commercial versions, and branched out into making our own based on what we'd been learning. The inside of the file folder becomes the gameboard, and can include a bingo or lotto card on either side, a path gameboard that covers the whole inside of the folder, or words or pictures for simple matching games. The gameboard or gameboard pieces are glued into the folder, and matching cards, tokens, and spinners are included in a plastic bag and stored inside the folder. All of the pieces are reinforced with manila file-folder paper or tagboard, and the pieces and the folders themselves are laminated with clear contact paper for durability.

If you prefer, you can also use the more durable boards from old games as the basis for your new ones. You can find old games at second-hand stores for very little money and recycle them by designing your own board surface and glueing it down over the old one. You may also find inexpensive tokens, spinners, or dice for path games this way.

Card games are easily made from card stock, manila file folder paper, or index cards. Commercial flashcard blanks can also be used, if you want to invest the money. Again, they can be laminated with clear contact paper for durability if you wish. We store our cards in plastic ziploc bags; freezer bags that have a write-on square are great for labeling your card games.

Storage

We store our games in bins; we found plastic dishpan-type bins at the dollar store, and stocked up on them. We have several for file folder games sorted by subject; the file folders fit perfectly in the 12x14 bins, with the fold down and the name tabs easily visible. Our young children can easily locate the game they want, and put it away when they're done. For our card games, we have a few more bins that we just toss the bagged decks into; if you begin to stockpile a lot of card games, you might want to devise a system to make it easier to locate the particular cards you want.

Active Kids

If you have really active children, use active games for learning. Make a really big gameboard, and let them be the pieces in the game! Twister mats can be used as active gameboards, or draw a board on the patio or driveway with sidewalk chalk, and let your kids move around it. If the weather doesn't allow for outside play, stay in and use masking tape to lay out the gameboard on the floor. Play a "simon says" type of game with your own criteria for moving forward, or drill while jumping rope. Memory chants and jingles lend themselves well to this kind of activity. Many board games and matching games can be used with large objects as easily as small ones, and active playground games can be incorporated into learning play as well. Bring your content lessons into your physical education time, think BIG!, and let your imagination be your guide!

Let's Go!

If you'd like to start making some of your own learning games, we've compiled some resources to help you get started. Other game-makers around the web have devised many different ways to make and store their games, and we hope you'll take advantage of their great ideas. Experiment with what works best for you, and have fun!