Playing Board Games: A Learning Tool for Students

Teaching methodologies continue to change, and play-based learning is the new trend. Many games today are educational and interactive, providing a platform to help students learn in a fun and more effective way.

Specifically, board games and puzzles games provide great learning opportunities for students to develop a variety of skills.  Among other benefits, these games can teach students to be patient and disciplined.  Likewise, they can improve thinking and communication abilities while increasing collaboration and teamwork proficiency.

Cartocat, The Traveling Cat Game: a new board game to learn geography

With Cartocat, The Traveling Cat Game, students can learn more than names and locations of countries and regions of the world. We believe that by increasing an awareness of the enormousness of our world and being mindful of the countries and regions beyond the one we live in, one can develop empathy for and interest in learning about people and cultures from different areas, thus enriching our lives tremendously. Beyond such comprehension, this world geography map game can aid in cultivating interpersonal communication, listening, attention to detail, motivation, critical thinking, decision making, patience, and adaptability skills.  All of these are valuable and transferrable assets for students to achieve their goals.

Playing Cartocat, The Traveling Cat Game

Learn geography

Students can play this world geography map game even if they don’t have knowledge of geography. Traveling with Ricky, the cat, provides a fun, low pressure, and entertaining way to learn geography, especially because players can help each other find the right location of countries on the maps. This interactive activity enhances collaboration, communication, and interpersonal skills. And of course, the more students play the game, the more they will practice their visual memory and increase their knowledge of geography.

Practice concentration

Many board games and puzzle games for students demand a bit of focus.  When playing Cartocat, players do need to pay attention to details.  Those include keeping track of country pieces, remembering to draw extra pieces, paying attention to the region and countries Ricky travels, and making sure they have the right pieces for Ricky to travel to a different region.  Awareness of all these aspects of the game help students learn the importance of planning, thinking critically, and acting intentionally, besides increasing their chance to play during a turn. 

Develop grit

Even though players get 10 country pieces at the beginning of the game, there are a total of 108 spaces to fill. So, it is highly likely that players may not have the right pieces to join Ricky in his travels at all times. This could be a challenge, but a great opportunity for hyperactive students and players used to fast-pace activities to practice patience, adaptability, and discipline.

Learn to think strategically

Even though each country piece corresponds with a single space on the map, players have three different options to play. Thus, this tile world puzzle game for students requires them to think strategically while developing their decision-making skills.