Monopoly

This games brings back pleasant memories for me but my husband has a different point of view (yep that picture on Facebook with the table turned over and game pieces everywhere….. that was his house). This is fascinating to me only in the sense of how impactful those early experiences are for children. When we make game play enjoyable (yes they need to loose sometimes) then the children learn social ques and also have to control emotions. I should also mention that this is a great way to encourage determination in a child. Help them to understand that the more they play the better they will get the better chance they will have of winning. *Though my husband started off well, with getting double several times and buying up a bunch of property, he ended up in jail a couple of times combined with having to pay high rent several times thus leading to he lose of cash. My son ended up as the winner, with several tram stops on his properties.*

Monopoly is great for a variety of different reasons.

There are a clear set of rules (and most people have played the game at least once in their life)
The rules can be modified as the players see fit – Go to jail – role snake eyes and you are free for the rest of the game. If you can’t pay the rent you can not move for 2 turns. etc
There is a wide variety of different themes. We have regular (40+ years old), newer version, Newton, NJ, and Simpsons. (I am hoping to add the Nightmare Before Christmas one soon)
The board and pieces are mobile (we played after dinner on Sunday). But we tried to play when on a trip in the motor home years ago. One would need a magnetic board other wise things move around too much.
The game comes in different formats so you can play by yourself (computer/tablet/phone/portable game) or you can play with as many people as you have game pieces for.
Learning experiences abound for this game: math, strategies, problem solving, persuasion, basic social interactions, turn taking, reading, and more. This game is great for learning basic math of addition and subtraction.
It can be used in a 40 minute classroom time frame for learning experiences and once the basics of the game are learned they can be changed to meet the learning needs of the students and course outcomes (http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/glpc_gamesforadigitalage1.pdf)