For those who still believe that play is not a serious activity either rigorous, I must tell them the games in general and the oware game and other Mancala games, in particular, can give practice and learning many skills necessary for personal, social and professional life. These games teach us to live with the mistakes we have made and learn from those mistakes; promotes creativity; involves decisions; gives an equal opportunity for all players.

Mancala games are probably the oldest board games that are played. Often these are played in a wooden board with several rows of holes where each player must move seeds, cowries or other pieces. These games are probably the most played in the world.

From few years ago the mancala games in Africa and other parts of the world are the subject of a real boom and there is a great interest in the western world. From Africa came to Europe through the three main colonial countries in that continent: Great Britain, France and Germany, and in recent years, through migration, these games have been a little more popular. New technologies and Internet, computer programmers and researchers have contributed to spreading these traditional games. The first ones have developed versions of these computer games to play online with other people or against computers, and the other ones, we have collected and documented many games and we have shared knowledge and experiences…

Obviously, video games have reduced the practice of playing board games like mancala games but a game as oware can do all the students will be motivated and interested, thus facilitating that an entire class can work, often unwittingly, and not be distracted easily.

Sometimes there are teachers there are teachers who are not supporters of board games because that involve competition and even rivalry. However, if we can redirect this emotional tension in a polite way and with fairplay, then we can help to improve educational factors that compensate these alleged problems of the board games. So, mancala games like oware have the following virtues:

Social sphere: mancala games can help to educate tolerance and respect differences; generate attitudes of coexistence, respect, know and comply with the rules.

Intellectual sphere: these games allow learning different concepts enjoying the game. These allow developing skills and abilities relating to the calculation and abstraction, the logical and mathematical reasoning, without thinking about it. Also, these allow us talk and share about historical data, cultural and geographical data, too.

Affective sphere: mancala games allow increasing the self-esteem and desire to improve and overcome communication barriers such as age, gender, cultural differences. A good observation allows the teachers to detect different attitudes of students during playing the game.

When we consider bringing mancala games in classrooms, we must consider the number of students, tables and chairs, and the arrangement of the place… We can talk about the educational use of a mancala game considering the appropriate time, what is the right way and their purpose.

Solving problems is a useful activity that motivates. This is an educational target. There is a problem whenever a barrier separates the reality from desired reality. The initial situations in the mancala games have these characteristics. When someone manipulates materials to solve problems, the activity becomes entertaining and provides to the students a good disposition. Games such as oware have this manual basis.

Do not forget we can add in any time, as inside and outside of the classroom, virtual applications and interactive such as the following that are our website available to the educational community, in particular, and to the Internet’s users, in general. These applications have several advantages compared to traditional teaching methodologies. We cite some examples: the contents are displayed in an attractive way, similar to the usual surroundings of the students; the possibility of an immediate self-assessment that allows the students check their progress and their difficulties; and encourages autonomy and responsibility when carrying out tasks proposed by teachers.