I'm a bit behind on my game of the month posts. Did I miss two months? Ooops. Anyway.
Our game of the month is a modern classic literacy game. It will remind you of Scrabble, but in my opinion it is a zillion times less stressful playing Bananagrams than playing Scrabble.
Note: This post contains affiliate links
How to play Bananagrams:
Players draw Bananagrams tiles and attempt to create words cross-word style. There are specific rules regarding how players may rearrange tiles and how they can draw new tiles or exchange old ones. The first player to use all his or her tiles, wins.
The official rules give several alternatives, such as playing for a certain time frame, or with a set number of tiles.
Playing with young kids:
Kids need to have reading skills to play Bananagrams. However, we have played many times with our-then pre-reader, who simply teamed up with an adult. The adult team member can suggest, "Find me a 'n'," or "Let's look for a 'ssss' sound tile."
No reading skills are still developing so he still plays on a team unless it is just him and one other patient grown-up.
We have also altered the rules to make it easier or to give grown-ups a handicap.
Tips:
This game can easily be played as a solitaire game, and is a fantastic way for kids to work on their literacy, spelling and reading skills. If I leave the banana bag on the table for them to find, they will often set to work making up words. They will spell out messages for each other or me, or sometimes, they just work on writing out something silly:
Have you ever played Bananagrams?
More games of the month you may enjoy:
Even in Australia says
Bananagrams is fun but I prefer Scrabble. I feel like in Bananagrams it all comes down to the last 2 seconds.
Erica MomandKiddo says
Ah, yes. I can see how that would be. I guess the reason I like Banangrams better is you are not so dependent on others putting down the right letters.