Stella and I love game night. We do at least one game night a week, maybe two. Ever since I bought Stella her first game when she was 3, time playing games has been a favorite activity to enjoy together. There are lots of reasons to incorporate a regular game night into your weekly family schedule, but today I’ve outlined six reasons to play board games with your child.
1. Spending quality time together… for free!
It’s important for our children to enjoy unhurried and unscheduled time with us, time in which the sole purpose of activity is to have fun and bond. Games give us an excellent opportunity to engage face-to-face with our children without distractions. Board games help children develop their skills in active listening, and offer a time to simply laugh and make memories with one another.
Togetherness tips for playing:
- Turn off devices and put them away when playing games with your kids. Game time is an excellent way to build in fun screen-free time into your day.
- Game time is about innocent play and fun. Let your child pick their favorite games, even if you’ve played them a hundred times already.
2. Gaining social skills
Children learn all sorts of social skills when playing board games. They learn how to interact with family and friends, adults and children alike. They get a chance to use their verbal communication skills while practicing sharing, waiting, and taking turns. And don’t forget one of the most important social lessons when playing games–the essential element of friendly competition.
3. Understanding game play
Learning the essentials of basic game play is crucial for small children. Through playing games, they can learn to understand instructions and and explain them to others. Children love to feel safe through clearly defined boundaries and guidelines, and games offer a perfect example of that. Children learn to use tools such as dice and spinners, and they develop manual dexterity by learning to shuffle and deal cards, move pieces around the board, and other hands-on skills.
Learning opportunities while playing:
- When playing with someone new, encourage your child to explain the rules to the new player.
- Let them experiment with using tools of the game–for example, if they spin a spinner in and it barely moves, let them have another turn and teach them to spin it more effectively.
- A note on rule breaking: pick age-appropriate games and clearly communicate what the rules are. Don’t deviate from the rules or encourage breaking them while they’re learning, and don’t dismiss rule-breaking as something kids do because they are young. With an age-appropriate game, they will be able to stick to the rules. It’s vital that we teach our children how to work within the boundaries they’re given.
4. Developing logic and reasoning
Game play is excellent to teach children logic and reasoning skills such as strategy and thinking ahead. The older I get, the more I realize that critical thinkers and decision makers are not common in adults. These are skills we can teach our children while they’re young, through game play. When playing, children also learn that their actions have consequences in a safe environment.
5. Cultivating skills for the classroom
Skills learnt when playing games are transferrable skills–meaning they can use what theyre learning in a variety of environments. Games can help children foster an ability to focus, build memorization skills, and lengthen their attention span, all of which are excellent for learning in a classroom. Lots of games incorporate letter recognition, spelling, and reading, as well as math skills like using dice and counting scores. Not to mention gaining manual dexterity skills, which is great for building on skills like learning to hold a pencil and use scissors.
6. Learning to lose
One of the most crucial learning outcomes from game play is losing. Do not underestimate the value of teaching your children how to lose with grace. Game play is a great way to help children understand grit, persistence even when things might not be going well, and the idea of never giving up. When others lose, they learn to win gracefully, and they get to practice showing empathy and kindness to others.
- Teaching Kids to Lose Gracefully from Sleep Should Be Easy
- The Benefits of Board Games from Scholastic
- What Cooperative Play Can Teach Our Children from Peaceable Kingdom
- Bringing Back Family Game Night from PBS