How Popular Adult Games Like Wordle Help Kids Learn

Is playing Wordle part of your daily routine? If the answer is yes, you are not alone. In fact, there are many new and classic single player games that adults love to play, that also provide great learning opportunities for students.  While designed to play solo, you will likely need to adopt a team approach with younger kids. They will find these games so entertaining, they may not realize they are educational too, helping expand vocabulary, logic, math, and even geography!

Have your kids check out these games their parents, grandparents and teachers love to play. Especially if they’ve never tried Wordle!

Wordle

There are several Wordle clones online and the app stores in the wake of this game’s huge popularity, but the original, official game is owned by the New York Times and can only be played once a day – for free! Wordle has become so popular because it’s simple enough for everyone, right down to kids of age 7. One everyday word, 5 letters, 6 attempts to guess. But it’s a great game for teaching new vocabulary, challenging thinking skills, and the once-a-day aspect makes it a super-fun, super-great candidate for becoming a daily habit!

Is your child already hooked on Wordle? Try these Wordle clones that have been pre-approved by our own Joanne Sallay’s son: Mathler, Nerdle, WordHurdle, Quordle, and Squardle.

(Where in the World is) Carmen Sandiego

If you remember playing this classic game in the school computer lab with a World Almanac in hand, you’re in good company. Carmen Sandiego took sleuthing schoolkids all around the world, looking for clues about landmarks, countries’ flags, and geography to indicate the next point on her trail. The game was updated for Google Earth, and with the help of an online almanac (or some great Googling skills) kids will be able to track Carmen down based on eyewitness help just as we did in the old days.

Sudoku

Classic Sudoku is a logic-based number placement puzzle game played in a 9x9 grid made up of 9 9x9 subgrid squares. Does this sound confusing? It’s actually very easy to get the hang of it… Every row and every column must have the numbers from 1 – 9 in it, and every subgrid square must have the numbers 1-9 in it. You’ll have to use the numbers provided to help you figure out the missing numbers everywhere else through process of elimination!

There are hundreds of sudoku apps which you can control the difficulty in, but Sudoku is great because you can pick it up easily in a travel-friendly book in any magazine section, good for on the road or anywhere you have a few minutes to work on it.

The Oregon Trail

Just like with Carmen Sandiego, if you were born in the 70s or 80s, then you know exactly what this game is and why “You have died of dysentery” is something of a merit badge for Gen X and older Millennial parents. The great news is that even today, our kids can also travel, hunt, and ford the same Oregon Trail in the same game, as it has been ported via emulator to a web-friendly model (though this will mean managing with ads).

Have a great time learning together by sharing these popular adult games with students!