The Study Kids Played in Class. The Games Weren't Educational.: Educational board games

Somewhere on a store shelf right now, a box promises your kid will "build math skills" and "boost brain power". It probably costs more than a game that just promises fun.

We play a lot of games with our two daughters, so we wanted to know: do kids actually need games labelled educational? We dug into the studies. The short version: games can teach a little. The label on the box teaches nothing.

The quick answer

• The surprise: The biggest classroom study used ordinary card and party games. Not a single "educational" one.
• What holds up: small gains in working memory and early math, measured right after the games.
• The study nobody has done: educational games vs. ordinary games, head to head. It doesn't exist.
• The honest verdict: Researchers themselves say the evidence isn't strong enough yet to prescribe games as brain training.

The classroom study that went viral

In Spain, 522 primary school kids from first to sixth grade took part in a randomized trial. Half their classes played board games during school hours: twelve one-hour sessions over six weeks, in small groups of three to five. The other classes had regular lessons (Vita-Barrull et al., 2024).

The games? Not a math drill in sight. According to the trial registration, they were short commercial games like Halli Galli, Kaleidos Junior, Sherlock Express and Bananazul. The kind you’d pull out on a Friday night.

The result: the game classes improved more in what psychologists call updating, keeping track of what just changed and dropping what’s no longer relevant. They also improved more in reading and math than the classes with regular lessons.

Sounds great. Now the fine print:

• Short-term only. The kids were tested before and right after. Nobody checked months later.
• Not every skill moved. In the later meta-analysis, the same trial shows no clear gains in self-control (inhibition) or mental flexibility for most grades.
• The comparison was regular lessons, not another fun activity. Part of the effect might simply be “something new and fun happened in class”.
• The researchers run game programs themselves. That doesn’t make the study wrong, but it’s worth knowing.

What 24 trials say when you add them up

In 2026, a team that includes the same researchers pulled together every randomized trial they could find on board games and thinking skills, across all ages. 24 trials made it into the review, 16 into the statistical analysis (Estrada-Plana et al., 2026).

Here’s the part most articles leave out: only 4 of those 24 trials had a low risk of bias. Most had “some concerns”, and seven a high risk.

The pooled results:

• Kindergarten: a small but solid effect on short-term memory for things you see.
• School-age kids: no pooled effect was statistically significant. Not for working memory, not for self-control, not for flexibility.

The authors’ own conclusion is refreshingly blunt: with the available evidence, they “cannot recommend using board games as cognitive interventions”. They also call the results promising and want better studies. Both things are true.

The number game that works (for preschoolers)

The best evidence for learning with games comes from a game you can’t buy. Psychologists Robert Siegler and Geetha Ramani built a race game with a straight row of squares numbered 1 to 10. Kids spun a spinner, moved their token and said the numbers out loud: “five, six”.

Four- and five-year-olds from low-income families played it for about an hour in total, spread over a few short sessions. Afterward they were better at comparing numbers, placing them on a number line, counting and recognizing them. The gains were still there nine weeks later. Kids who played the same game with colors instead of numbers didn’t improve (Ramani & Siegler, 2008).

Two details make this interesting for parents:

1. A straight track beat a circular one (Siegler & Ramani, 2009). The game’s shape mirrors a number line, and that’s what kids learn.
2. It’s not a big effect. A 2025 meta-analysis of 18 studies on these number board games found a small positive effect on math in preschool to second grade (Nelson et al., 2025).

So yes, a classic roll-and-move game with numbered spaces can help a young child with numbers. Not because it says “educational” on the box, but because the numbers sit on a straight line and get said out loud.

What this doesn’t tell you: whether it works for older kids, or for Monopoly. The studies were with four- and five-year-olds and a custom 1-to-10 board.

In defense of roll-and-move

Mention roll-and-move to hobby gamers and you’ll hear groans. Roll the die, move your token, hope for the best: no real decisions, all luck. We hear that a lot in the community, and for a grown-up game night, we get it.

For a four-year-old, though, that “boring” mechanic is the math lesson. Every turn, the child counts the spaces, says the numbers out loud and sees that 8 is further along than 3. That’s how the race game in the study worked, and it’s what the version with colored spaces couldn’t do.

So the classic kids’ race game with numbered spaces isn’t a design failure. For the youngest players, it’s the best-studied math game there is. Two things matter: the spaces carry numbers, and the numbers get said out loud.

Chess: the most famous brain game falls short

If any game should make kids smarter, it’s chess. An early meta-analysis found a modest effect on math and reading (Sala & Gobet, 2016). Then the same researchers looked closer: the better a study was designed, the smaller the effect got. In the one study with a proper active control group, almost nothing was left (Sala & Gobet, 2017).

A randomized trial with around 4,000 fifth graders in England confirmed it. Chess lessons in school didn’t change their results in math, reading or science (Jerrim et al., 2018).

Chess players are smarter on average, sure. But that’s most likely because people who are good at this kind of thinking are drawn to chess, not the other way round.

“Educational” vs. “just a game”: the study nobody has run

This is the question behind every educational board game: is it better than an ordinary good game? We looked hard. There’s no study that puts a game marketed as educational up against an ordinary one and compares the results.

The closest thing comes from Spain. 68 kids aged seven to twelve played either games picked specifically to train thinking skills or other modern board and card games. Both groups improved, and the “brain games” did no better (Moya-Higueras et al., 2023). The researchers’ takeaway: pretty much any modern game can exercise these skills, except games that run mostly on luck.

And one study shows what doesn’t work: in France, almost 3,000 first graders took a card game and a board game home for the summer holidays. They felt more confident afterward, but their math and language scores didn’t differ from kids without the games (CSEN, 2022).

A box on the shelf isn’t a program. In the studies that found effects, someone sat down and played with the kids, regularly, for weeks. That fits a broader finding: play guided by an adult beat direct instruction for early math in a meta-analysis of studies with children up to eight (Skene et al., 2022).

What this means for your next game night

1. Skip the label. No study shows an educational game beats a good ordinary one. Buy the game your kids actually want to play again.
2. For little ones, numbers on a straight track. A simple race game where your child counts the spaces out loud is the best-studied “math game” there is.
3. Less pure luck as kids get older. Games where your decisions count give the brain more to do. The exception is a numbered race track for preschoolers.
4. Play along. The studies with effects had adults at the table, not just games in the cupboard.
5. Keep expectations small. Games won’t raise IQ or grades. They’re time together, with a bit of brain exercise as a bonus.

More on why board games can’t replace free play is in our article Board games vs. free play. And which games suit which age is in Board games by age.

What about you: has an ordinary game ever taught your kids something you didn’t expect?

Sources

• Vita-Barrull, N., Estrada-Plana, V., March-Llanes, J., Sotoca-Orgaz, P., Guzmán, N., Ayesa, R. & Moya-Higueras, J. (2024). Do you play in class? Board games to promote cognitive and educational development in primary school: A cluster randomized controlled trial. Learning and Instruction, 93, 101946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2024.101946
• Estrada-Plana, V., Vita-Barrull, N., March-Llanes, J., Badia-Bafalluy, A., Ayesa-Arriola, R. & Moya-Higueras, J. (2026). Can executive functions be improved by playing board games across the lifespan? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 18(4), e70194. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.70194
• Ramani, G. B. & Siegler, R. S. (2008). Promoting broad and stable improvements in low-income children’s numerical knowledge through playing number board games. Child Development, 79(2), 375–394. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01131.x
• Siegler, R. S. & Ramani, G. B. (2009). Playing linear number board games, but not circular ones, improves low-income preschoolers’ numerical understanding. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(3), 545–560. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014239
• Nelson, G., Boedeker, P., Devlin, B. L., Lesner, T. A., Drake, K. R., Sutherland, M., Wilke, E. J., Cook, M. A. & Schmitt, S. A. (2025). Investigating main effects and moderators of linear number board games: A meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543251383552
• Sala, G. & Gobet, F. (2016). Do the benefits of chess instruction transfer to academic and cognitive skills? A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 18, 46–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.02.002
• Sala, G. & Gobet, F. (2017). Does far transfer exist? Negative evidence from chess, music, and working memory training. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 515–520. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417712760
• Jerrim, J., Macmillan, L., Micklewright, J., Sawtell, M. & Wiggins, M. (2018). Does teaching children how to play cognitively demanding games improve their educational attainment? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial of chess instruction in England. Journal of Human Resources, 53(4), 993–1021.
• Moya-Higueras, J., Solé-Puiggené, M., Vita-Barrull, N. et al. (2023). Just play cognitive modern board and card games, it’s going to be good for your executive functions: A randomized controlled trial with children at risk of social exclusion. Children, 10(9), 1492. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10091492
• Conseil scientifique de l’Éducation nationale (CSEN) (2022). Note n°7: summer game distribution trial (Lubineau, Dehaene, Potier-Watkins, Gurgand et al.).
• Skene, K., O’Farrelly, C. M., Byrne, E. M., Kirby, N., Stevens, E. C. & Ramchandani, P. G. (2022). Can guidance during play enhance children’s learning and development in educational contexts? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child Development, 93(4), 1162–1180. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13730