Inside: Fun Educational Games The Whole Family Can Play. Collaborative post.
Playing games with your kids is not just a bonding experience, it’s a joyous adventure. Learning doesn’t have to be dull, and numerous skills and areas of development can be enriched through the sheer delight of playing games. With studies proving that kids learn better when they’re having fun, why not dive into some gameplay to ignite their minds and cultivate their skill sets?
Let’s take a look at some of the games you can play with your kids and what the benefits are.
Photo by cottonbro studio
Mahjong
Mahjong is a traditional Chinese game of 144 tiles. You can buy a physical mahjong game, or you can play mahjong digitally online. It is a game of skill, strategy, and a little bit of luck; players need to shuffle the tiles, cast the dice, and allocate the tiles.
Then, you exchange tiles as you match them until there are none left. This is a simplistic breakdown of the rules, but the game can be a great way to have fun and test people’s memories and skill sets, and it’s great for families of all ages.
Chess
Chess is another game of strategy, and while it’s not for everyone, it can be a fantastic game for helping young minds learn skills and strategy as well as patience. It’s an amazing way to help people learn how to make decisions and display patience as they figure out their next move or contemplate what move their opponent is going to take.
The aim of chess is to checkmate the opponent’s king and to do this; you need to execute a strategy that leads to doing exactly this.
Bingo
Bingo is a great game for helping with numbers and response times. You need to be fast to find the numbers on the bingo card and shout for a win before anyone else. However, when playing bingo, you can help boost numerical skills and number recognition, too.
To make it more educational, you can use visual prompts to help you find the right numbers on the bingo cards or use audio only. It can be a fun learning game the whole family can get competitive over.
If numbers seem a bit challenging for younger players, you can easily adapt bingo to their level by using symbols, colours, or even familiar people. This flexibility not only makes the game more accessible but also helps build knowledge in other areas, giving parents the power to tailor the game to their children’s needs.
Story Circle
Story Circle is a timeless game that invites everyone to join in. The whole family forms a circle, and one person starts the story. It could begin with a single word, but as you gain experience or your kids grow older, you can expand it to sentences or a few words.
This game encourages kids to use their vocabulary and imagination to keep the story flowing, fostering a sense of connection and involvement in their learning journey. For added learning opportunities, someone can jot down the words or sentences, or you can record them for later transcription, allowing you to preserve the stories and retell them or continue telling them over and over.