Welcome to Thrifty Thursday; a weekly installment of my latest thrift store finds and how we use them in our homeschool day. One of my first places to look in the thrift store is at the board games. So many people get rid of educational board games you can often find some awesome ones in amazing condition! I will confess, I’m a total board game addict! I always have been even as a young child. I remember asking my mom to play Candy Land with me over and over and over.

When I saw this game in the thrift store I picked it up thinking it was only $1 and even if we play it once it would be worth it. I honestly thought we wouldn’t get much use out of it until later down the road. My 3 year old son LOVES this game (the spelling side) and he is surprisingly good at it. We have played it so many times already!

The math side is basically just Shut the Box if you’ve ever played that game. If you haven’t heard of that game before, it essentially is played like this: You roll both dice and use their sum (lets say you roll a 5 and a 3, which is 8) to eliminate the numbers on the board. So, you can put down the number 8, or the numbers 7,1 or 6,2 or 5,3 and so on. The object is to put down all of your number tabs to “shut the box”. The game is a bit more fun than it sounds when trying to explain it.

The spelling side is the side we play most. You roll the dice and then try to make a word with the letters available to you by the dice and board. It can be any amount of letters and the object is the same — to put all your tabs down.

I highly recommend this game for any new reader. It’s a lot of fun and really encourages phonic spelling.

Can’t thrift it but gotta have it? Here is an affiliate link for your convenience.

POOF Count Down and Spell Up by POOF