How the boardgame will help younger players
This exciting boardgame has been designed and
created with a view to help young players, in a fun and constructive way to
develop their hand-eye co-ordination, ‘fine motor’ skills and their visual
spatial awareness and concentration skills. The boardgame is also intended
to help with developing the memory and picture recognition skills of younger
players as they attempt to match a rhyming pair of cards (a method often
used to support children with dyslexia).
In order to
progress and learn, the players must compete with each other to race, whilst
matching a rhyming pair of cards as quickly as possible in order to progress
through the game and reach the bananas. Watch out for the logs that are
located along the way though!
SEN Values (Special Education Needs)
The
educational aspect of the boardgame was considered to be one of the most
important factors that the creator wanted to emulate. The boardgame aspires
to help young players in developing their
phonological awareness skills.
Through developing phonological awareness, young
players are then able to learn to associate
sounds with
symbols and later create
links to
word recognition which helps
to develop the decoding skills necessary for reading.
In
addition, the boardgame aims to enhance the
visual learning skills of
young players by encouraging those with certain learning difficulties to
boost their confidence. The pastel shaded cards, for example, have a wipe
clean surface that can be written on with a dry-wipe pen which can be used
as a useful learning aid.
The creator
also felt it was important to help develop the
kinaesthetic learning skills
of young players by letting them achieve a hands-on experience with the
boardgame by using the colourful counters and brightly laminated pictures.
Phonological Awareness
This
is the awareness of sound and rhymes, combined with the general
awareness that sentences can be broken down into words, syllables and
sounds. Phonological awareness consists of skills that typically develop
gradually and sequentially through the late pre-school period.
Understanding the relationship between sound and spoken language is an
important component of promoting ‘phonological skills’. You will often find
some dyslexic learners will find phonological skills difficult to develop.
Developing phonological awareness skills can lead to
improved reading success.
The
boardgame has been developed with an eye to having a multi-purpose use to
help keep young players interested in the finer art of learning. Why not
encourage young players to learn with the other stimulating ways to play:-
·Rhyming Pair Race
· Making Sentences
· Memory Game
· Creating Stories
·
Simply play the boardgame using counters and the die