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Choosing the Right Game at Every Age
While in the long run we need to teach values, ethics, academic skills, and the importance of playing by the rules, in the early years the primary goals are helping your child become more self-confident and ambitious and to enjoy playing with others. If you're playing with more than one child, divide the family into teams, giving each player a job he can do well: A younger child may be responsible for rolling the dice (which he considers important, since that is where the luck comes from), and an older child the job of sorting the Monopoly money.
As children approach 5, they have more sophisticated thinking skills and can begin to incorporate and exercise their number, letter, and word knowledge in literacy-based games. By 6, children may prefer more cognitively challenging games like checkers, which require and help develop planning, strategy, persistence, and critical thinking skills. Here are some of our favorite game picks for 5 and 6 year olds.
Scrabble Junior (Milton Bradley): This is the younger cousin of the tremendously educational and challenging Scrabble, which we all know and love. Using large yellow letter tiles, players match letters to words already written on one side of the board. The reverse side has an open grid where older children can create their own words.
Learning highlights: Fosters literacy and language skills.
Monopoly Junior (Parker Brothers): As they do in its senior sibling, players roll dice to move around the game board and buy real estate. The game is shorter and uses smaller dollar denominations so kids can figure out winnings and penalties more quickly.
Learning Highlights: Develops math, color recognition, reading, reasoning, and social skills.
For many of us, parenting has not strayed that far of course, but don't we all feel like the evenings are spent too much in isolation? One parent is reading, and the other might be working on a laptop. One kid is at the iPad, and another is busy at the video game console playing Mario. There are many reasons on why you should consider changing your routine with technology and begin playing board games with your kids. Below are the top five reasons why you must.
Bonding- This is not a secret, a family that plays together stays together. We can relationships tend to get stronger with constant interaction among parents and children.
There are games that teach a lot of life and practical lessons too, and that's a bonus.
Life and Practical Lessons- Some of the board games provide lessons in life, virtues and good deeds. Examples for this are Snakes and Ladders, and The Game of Life. Of course, there are many business-related board games that might encourage the development of career skills, or teach them the value of money, the art of negotiation and risk-taking. An excellent example for this is the ever popular Monopoly.
Grammar and Vocabulary- Reading the instructional manual and discussing the rules with your children is enough for children to serve as a grammar and vocabulary lesson. Non-native English speakers can actually practice and be educated with the English language by merely playing the board game. There are also board games that specialize in teaching grammar.
Education- Another important benefit of playing board games with your children is self-education. Children are curious beings, and they tend to explore things they find peculiar. For example, there is a unique animal or unfamiliar nation featured in the board game, playing the game might encourage children to research them further. Also, the Civilization board game gives a lot of historical tidbits that can help the kids in further understanding of world history, and of course, geography. These activities will stimulate learning without our help or from the children's teachers. The children will continue to explore and expand their knowledge base.
Saving Money on Entertainment- In addition to all these wonderful benefits, you get the most bang from board games for your buck. As long as the board game remains intact, you can play them over and over. Many will last for years, and you'll be playing them with your grandchildren.
Regardless of the weather, board games are always an option. They provide opportunities for parents to spend quality time with their children in the winter. And in the northern climes where winters are bitterly cold and nights are long, board games are readily available in specialty stores like this one in Denmark. And on those dark and stormy nights when the electricity goes out, just turn on a flashlight, and you're good to go.
Board games are just a medium, an enjoyable and useful one, for us parents to communicate with our children. We can use this time to ensure that we will always see our children grow up with our own eyes. Board games have the added benefit of accessibility. Because they do not require much in the way of heavy physical activity, there's not much investment here but time.
Then there are the possible intellectual benefits.
Many board game--including the classics, like chess, go, and various mancala games --encourage players to
• detect patterns
• plan ahead
• predict the outcome of alternative moves
• learn from experience
