Board Game Buddies

Working with teachers at a local elementary school, the Board Game Buddies Drop-In Recess Program was developed by Daniela O'Neill and began in October 2017. It has been going on successfully since then (except for a pause in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-19). The original intention of the program was to provide early grade students, many of whom were learning English as a second language, with a fun opportunity to build their language skills in interaction with older students. It was amazing to see how much fun and learning could happen in a 20 minute recess and the children loved it, with sometimes over 60 children participating! You will be amazed at how Board Game Buddies fosters so much language, social interaction, and laughter! See the testimonials from schools below!

The original design of Board Game Buddies continues to work well! It can fit in one 20-minute recess time with all games being able to be played within about 10-12 minutes, leaving a few minutes for initial set up and clean up at the end. Schools usually hold the program on a weekly basis and in a drop-in fashion to make it as accessible to all students as possible. It takes place in a location such as the school library where all the different games can be spread out on tables and/or the floor, a few minutes before recess begins or in the first few minutes of recess.

For the first two recess sessions, only the older Grade 5 and 6 children volunteers take part in order to learn how to play as many of the 24 board games as they can (each takes only a few minutes to learn). Following this, for the remainder of the weekly drop-in sessions, younger grade students are invited to drop-in and play the games with the older grade children. An announcement in the morning at school reminds children on the day that Board Game Buddies is happening. You can see a detailed brochure describing how to run the program below.

In 2022, Daniela received a grant from the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation to expand this program in the local community. So far more than 10 Waterloo Region District School Board schools have been gifted their own Board Game Buddies board game collection to mount the program at their own school!  You can read more about the program and the new grant in this article in UWaterloo News. You can also see testimonials from teachers and staff members from these schools below!

We've made up a pamphlet with Instructions for Running Board Game Buddies based on what we’ve learned works well with tips to ensure it is successful within just a 20 minute recess period. (But feel free to adapt to fit your school’s needs best!)

In its first school location, the board games underwent lots of pre-testing over the first year to learn what worked well in this context and within a 10-12 minutes playing time that allowed for time also for set up and clean up. Over the years, the games in this collection have changed a bit due to discontinuations and new games that have appeared that meet the criteria listed below well. Generally, the collection has comprised about 24 games in total.

Some of the most important criteria that we took into account to allow successful peer-to-peer play (without adult help) and to fit the short playing time during recess were:

• suitable for children from approximately 5 to 12 years of age
• can be played at least once within a 10-12 min. time period in order to leave some time within the 20 minute recess for initial set up and clean-up
• if time to play is over, but a player “closest to the goal” can be determined, this was a helpful feature
• allow for up to 4 to 5 children to play at once
• can be played with an older peer without needing adult help
• an element of chance, so that older peers playing with younger peers won't always win
• simple rules that can be summarized on a 1-page sheet of Quick Start Instructions to facilitate reading and quick learning and teaching by older grade peers
• no commercial or popular culture figures or themes that might limit cross-cultural play and conversation
• wide variety of different themes and topics that would appeal across different ages, genders, and cultures
• a mixture of competitive and co-operative games
• beautiful aesthetics wherever possible - wooden pieces, eco- and child-friendly materials, art and design features - lots to see and talk about!
• high-quality and durable
• have no noisy elements (e.g., beepers, tower that crashes down) to avoid noise from games
• have no components that would be used up over time (e.g., dry erase markers, scorepads)

One of the special things we did for Board Game Buddies to help children learn the games easily and quickly was write simplified 1-page instructions for all the games using a similar format and simplified language that we called Quick Start Instructions. This also introduces a literacy component for older Board Game buddies that is more appropriate for their age than the original instructions that are often written for adults and may be quite lengthy. If relevant, we also incorporated in these instructions different ways to play a game, or how to determine the winner (if its a competitive game), if children don't quite finish the game within the 10-12 minutes. These instructions are placed into a plastic sleeve, along with a contents list for the game on the other side, and provided along with each game in its box or container. You will find links to a pdf copy of the Quick Start Instructions and Content List for each game in the Table below.

We have found two 3-drawer plastic carts, (we used the Type A Element Clear Lockable 3-Drawer Storage Tower), can hold the collection nicely. The depth dimension is the trickiest to find to accommodate the longer games. The cart we used has 3 drawers of approximately 17 inches wide and 13.25 inches deep. Once the organization of the games in the drawers is figured out so that games are easy to put in and out, we then mark each game in each drawer with a different coloured circle sticker and put the matching colour sticker on the outside of the drawer. This way, children can just look at the colour of the sticker on the game and match it to the drawer it should go into to be stored. This makes clean up super fast and easy! Some manufacturers have changed the wheels to smaller ones that break more easily. In those cases, we purchased an adjustable steel file cabinet caddy (the Office Star File Caddy)  and placed the drawers on this to solve the problem.

The materials here are provided openly for other interested schools and community locations to use and adapt according to a CC BY-NC license, unless stated otherwise. This license allows re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes and as long as attribution for the original is given to the creator (Daniela O’Neill). (Any further attributions are noted on the materials if relevant.)

Note that certain board games were discontinued by the manufactured as noted those below. We made new additions to keep the collection around 24 games in total.

We are very grateful to teachers and staff who have shared feedback about the impact of Board Game Buddies at their schools and also new ways in which the games in the collection are being used during the school day. We hope their comments inspire you to try something similar at your school! If funding is an issue, presenting the idea to parent councils may be an avenue by which funds can be raised. If you have any questions, please contact Daniela.

“C. and I really enjoyed doing board games club at our school. We did pause for a bit but it was a lot of fun with our students. Another way I have used the board games in Grade 3 is to teach probability! In this stand of math we were able to discover different types of probability within the board games and they provided rich learning opportunities that we otherwise would not have gotten. Thank you very much!”

“Game board buddies was such a big hit this year that we decided to split the grades up. One teacher taking a different grade on a different day. We had Grade 1's on one day, Grade 2's another and the Grade 3's on another day. Our buddies were very eager until recently when running club and track and field prep began. We decided to leave on a high note and finished Friday. We are looking forward to starting it up in the Fall once again. Thanks for this opportunity,”

“Yes we did use the games this year! They were such a great addition.  Teacher's borrowed them to use with their classes. We (the Special Education Resource Teachers), used them with our small groups, and EA's used them when bringing kids to the Resource Room. The comments I overheard about the games were:

• This game was so easy to learn 
• My student loved this game
• This game gave my small group an opportunity to work on winning and losing skills

While we did not get to building a whole grade games club this year. It remains on the table for next year. Thanks again.”

“We LOVE Board Game Buddies! It is scheduled every Wednesday during 2nd NB in the Library and it runs all year round (as per student request). We promote the initiative through our Digital announcements system (Board Game Buddies slide) and use our PALS leaders to support students with play, organization of the games and set up/clean up. Our main mission with the program is to encourage free play: how to include others, how to care for materials and how to decide which games you are interested in. It's a "free flow", "make your own choices" set up...which supports the idea of how to use your free or unstructured time wisely! A few more comments:

• we really like the printed instructions!
• we have stopped using the plastic carts because the wheels kept breaking and it became too much of a task to colour code the games: we now have them on two black rolling carts that are more grab and go focused.
• the games are also used in classrooms: certain teachers and/or EA's will borrow the games to support classroom or small group learning

Thanks for the check-in and again for these amazing resources!”

“Thanks so much for reaching out! We didn't get the chance to start a board games club this year because of the way our nutrition breaks have fallen (primaries and juniors go outside at different times). My plan is to hopefully start it up next year. Although we don't have a club, I have used the board games both in my classroom and with our GSA. The students in our GSA have enjoyed playing them as they get to know each other. I have used them in my classroom with my grade 1s and 2s. They loved all the games we played. Hiss seems to be a definite hit with all age groups. The older kids also really like the witch mountain game too. Thank you so much for this initiative. I'm excited to continue to play these games with my students.”

“We really enjoyed the program and ran it as two separate activities. In Board Game Buddies, we paired older students with younger students who were struggling, providing them with a safe space and a person to build a relationship with. The students loved meeting and getting to know each other, and many of the older students continued to spend time with their younger friends outside of the Board Game Buddies, playing games or talking to them. This not only boosted the younger students' confidence but also helped improve the older students' connection to our school and self-esteem. Our Board Game Time was a huge hit. We divided it into different groups and times throughout the week, providing a space for our students to play games together. It was very popular, especially from fall to spring, but as soon as the weather improved, most students stopped coming to the board game times. We look forward to running it again next year.”

“We used it board game buddy style and they really liked it! I think it's been really great to have a club our younger kiddos can join because most of the stuff we run is for the older group”.

“Game Board Club has been a hit here! Our primary students seem to be the most consistent for showing up and we have had a few juniors. It is so great to see the excitement and positive attitudes while playing the games”.

On our  Talk2Thrive YouTube Channel we feature short videos of some of the games that are in the our collections. This is a work in progress and we will upload more as we are able.