Learning Color Words with CandyLand

Ever wish you could get more educational value from board games you already have on-hand? Here’s a quick and easy way to make CandyLand, a childhood classic from Hasbro, even more educational for your kids while sneaking in some sight word learning too!

To give this game a fun and educational twist, I decided to remake the cards so that the sight word determined how far you move.  By reading each card, you then know to which space to move.  For instance, if you draw a card that says red, then you move to the next red space.  Draw “two blue,” then you get to move two blue spaces.  Draw a pink picture card?  Then move to that location, just like the original cards.  

I created two sets of cards.  The first set is for younger children who are just learning the color words, so the color word is that color (ie the word red is red).  By using this set of cards, the child subconsciously begins to associate the word with the color.  The second set is for children who have been previously introduced to the color words and are ready to move on to reading.  In this set, all of the text is written in black, so the child has to read the word, rather than just identify the color, in order to move.

You can get the younger set here, or the more advanced set here.

We had so much fun playing this game together. In fact, within a day’s time of playing this game, my son had learned the primary colors of the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple!

This guy was not happy about getting sent back to the candy cane – at the bottom of the gameboard.

Need ideas for other sight words? Another favorite “game” we played was Chutes and Ladders, which we used to learn the number words.

Do you have a favorite board game?  How do you make it educational?