Drawing Games

• Play guessing games with students using the chalkboard. Write a bunch of words or concepts related to a unit on slips of paper and place them in a bag. Divide students into teams and have one student at a time come up to the board, choose a word at random and attempt to draw a picture that represents the word on the chalkboard. The first team to get the answer correct gets a point. Another idea is to have students draw pictures representing their favorite scene from a book on the chalkboard and have other students guess what they drew.
  
  

Vocabulary Games

• Chalkboards are ideal for spelling and vocabulary games because students can easily erase misspellings and begin again. Divide students into two teams and hold a spelling race. One student from each team comes to the board, the teacher calls out a spelling word and students race to see who can be the first to correctly spell the word. Play a simple game of Hangman using spelling words. A student comes to the board and draws a line to represent each letter in the word. Students take turns calling out letters. If a letter is in the word, it is written on the line. If it is not in the word, the student at the board draws part of a stick figure. The goal is to finish the word before the stick figure is complete.
  
  

Sorting Games

• Teachers can use chalkboards to help students sort groups of facts or terms. Provide a list of words for students and have them create categories on the chalkboard to represent each of the words. For example, if the list was sheep, bears, rabbits, wolves, humans and eagles, students would place the words into the categories herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. Not all chalkboard games have to be played with chalk. For example, create columns for the basic shapes on the board. Cut out pictures that contain those shapes and have students race to tape the pictures under the correct column on the chalkboard.
  
  

Other Games

• Students can play a simple game of tic-tac-toe on the chalkboard by creating a three-by-three grid and alternating inserting Xs and Os until a player gets three in a row. Create a connect the dots game for children by placing masking tape dots that contain numbers on the chalkboard and having children use chalk to connect the dots to make a picture. Use masking tape to create a maze on the board and let children come up and try to solve it. Time students as they solve the maze to add more competition to the game.