Mengham Infant School has started a board game club and rental service

Mark Mathews is a teaching assistant and the library lead for the school and he has embedded his passion for board games into the school – and it has sparked a trend.

A few years ago Mark went to Dice in Southsea and his eyes were opened to a new world of board game potential as they offer a huge variety of games that people can go and get involved in.

When Covid hit children had their learning moved to an online platform and when the lockdown was lifted Mark decided that he wanted to do something to get children to interact with each other in person.

He wanted to set up a board game club and the Southsea game lounge donated some games to kick start the club off and the teaching assistant’s ambition grew. Mark began getting in touch with board game manufacturers and he had a number of games sent to the school for the children to get involved in.

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Not only have they set up a board game club, but they have now established a rental service where families can pay £1 to borrow a board game for a week and all of the money raised will go back into the club to buy more games.

Mark said: ‘It is great to see families engage with it and it is nice to be able to offer something that isn’t expensive and is easy to get involved with.

‘It is nice to do something physical instead of sitting in front of a screen – I feel quite proud and it is always nice to share a passion with people because when you are passionate about something it is much easier to share with others.’

The school has had a brilliant response from everyone and they now have 87 games which have either been donated or bought using the money made from the rental service and all of the games equate to approximately £1,400.

Mark added: ‘Nothing comes out of the school budget, they pay to come to the board game club or the rental service and it’s great to put money back into it.’