Play and learn with these free educational online games
The effect of violent computer games upon game players, particularly young gamers, has long been debated in negative terms in the press. It’s to conclude from this that games have no intrinsic benefit to the players when in actual fact there are many examples of free games that are highly educational to the player, and are enormous fun to play.
A great example of this is a game such as Letter Swap. In this game, the player has a 16 letter grid of four letters by four letters and has five swaps of tiles available to them. With each swap, the player has to create as many new three and four letter words within the grid as possible.
This game helps develop language skills in several ways. Firstly, it helps children recognise what are common letter patterns that form words, secondly it helps children improve their spelling as incorrectly spelled words score no points. Finally, it also introduces children to new words as the scoring system can make them aware of words they never previously knew, expanding their vocabulary.
Mathematics is also not left behind. Games like Hoop de Loop allow children to recognise sets of similar objects quickly and allows them to improve their logic understanding, when they reason that if they can remove a single ball, it will set off a chain reaction to remove lots of others. Dart Duel will work children’s mental arithmetic too, allowing them to work on their subtraction and factors of all numbers between one and 20.
The truth is, many free games not only offer great entertainment for the visitor, but some also do offer worthwhile educational opportunity. They allow the user to practice key skills in a fun and enjoyable environment and they are a perfect way to hone some key educational skills, while having a great time in the process.