Screen-free mornings that get young minds buzzing, where children are challenged, stretched and kept on their toes, and leave a little sharper than they arrived. The play is the hook. The skills they build are the real win.
We hand-pick brilliant board and card games, including several MENSA Select winners, and turn them into sessions that stretch young minds and build real skills, all without a screen in sight. Most families meet us at our independent holiday camps, and we bring the very same thinking into schools, mapped to the curriculum.
Independent, screen-free morning camps in the school holidays, where children play hard, think harder and make brilliant new friends.
See summer dates →Workshops, curriculum days, lunch and after-school clubs and PPA cover, all brought into the school day and matched to your objectives.
What we do for schools →Children think they are simply playing. Underneath, every session is quietly building the developmental, social and thinking skills that matter most in a digital world.
We are back in Stanmore for the summer, now over 240 games strong. Exciting new arrivals plus all the old favourites, for fun-packed, screen-free mornings with fellow gameschoolers.
MOREFUNReal mornings, real games, real focus. No devices in sight, just children leaning in, taking turns and working things out together.
Children come for the fun. Underneath it, every game is hand-picked for what it builds. The research on learning through play is clear, and a little surprising.
In a landmark study, young children who played a simple number board game for around an hour got measurably better at counting, comparing and estimating numbers, and the gains were still there nine weeks later.
Focus, working memory and self-control make up what scientists call executive function, the brain's air-traffic control. Researchers find playful games are one of the most natural ways for children to strengthen it.
A board game is a low-stakes place to feel frustration, wait your turn and try again. That is exactly where patience, flexible thinking and resilience quietly take root.
Face to face across a table, children practise real conversation, reading expressions and taking another person's point of view, the social skills no screen can teach.
Some of the best reviews come from the dinner table. Parents keep telling us that game night has made a comeback at home, with brand-new favourites appearing on family shelves and everyone gathering round to play together again, screens switched off.
I loved it! My favourite thing was playing Sleeping Queens because I love card games. We had so much fun, I wish I could go every day!
I really enjoyed the sessions because we played such fun games. I learned some brilliant new ones too. I can't wait for the next one!
Thank you so much for this board game experience. ‘A’ simply loved it. He was so excited for the club that he got himself ready by 7am! 😂
We partner with schools to bring purposeful, screen-free play into the timetable. Every session is run by an experienced teacher and mapped to KS1 and KS2 outcomes.
Single or themed sessions that drop into the school day and bring a topic alive through play.
A full day designed around your objectives, with games matched to specific KS1 and KS2 outcomes.
Weekly clubs that keep minds busy and social skills growing right across the term.
Dependable, fully-planned cover your teachers can hand over with complete confidence.
Tell us your year group and goals, and we will design a session around exactly what you need.
We are, quite happily, game obsessives. We spend our days digging through hundreds of board and card games to work out exactly what each one teaches, then designing sessions that use them to draw those skills out. Because the right game, played well, is a brilliant teacher, and nothing here is left to chance.
The Game School wasn't dreamt up in a boardroom. It grew from a stubborn belief that the things which shape a child most, the courage to speak up, the patience to lose and try again, the instinct to read a room, are slipping through the cracks of a childhood lived on screens. So we set out to teach them the way children have always learned best: by playing.
For Swati, it always comes back to learning. Seventeen years with children have made her brilliant at turning tricky concepts into games kids genuinely want to play, and a firm believer that, in a digital world, soft and developmental skills are not the extras, they are the core. LAMDA-certified in communication and presentation, she builds sessions where understanding and confidence grow side by side.
Kunjal believes every child deserves the full set of soft and developmental skills, and she has a real gift for making even the trickiest game feel within reach for anyone at the table. With a background in marketing and a sharp, practical mind, she shapes sessions that meet children where they are, then nudge them to weigh up choices, read the people around them and back their own ideas with confidence.
Drop-off mornings full of play, problem-solving and new friends.
Sessions are £23 each and fill up fast. Booking takes a couple of minutes and includes secure payment.
MOREFUN