Playing Scrabble on a rainy Sunday and Twenty Questions on a family car trip are wonderful family times. Games are, by their nature, fun, invigorating, and even exciting. Board games and card games also offer a wealth of learning opportunities. They can enhance our memory, teach spelling and mathematics, build cooperative learning skills, and provide lessons in strategy and logic.
Family games for fun and learning
Sometimes families get caught up in the win-lose aspect of the games and miss out on the fun. Parents should guide a young child through a game with words of encouragement. Ensure that she wins often by changing the rules of the game to fit both her level of skill and her level of comfort at losing.
For example, play a game so that there's more than one winner, or take the focus off individual scores by adding up joint scores and seeing how high a score the team can achieve. By the time they are ten, most children understand that they can't always be winners and they'll want to play the game just for the fun of it.
Word games for reading
By the time your child is six, you've probably found that riddles and rhymes have helped her talk her way to improved language skills. Encourage her to continue repeating these rhymes for you or playing other silly rhyming games at home.
Language games
Children aged seven and eight can practise reading skills in the junior versions of games like Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit. With help from family members, a 10-year-old can follow the instructions. Their spelling skills get a workout in Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Boggle.
Everyone is a winner!
You can't lose with an investment in these classic board games:
Age 6
Parcheesi
Pop-o-Matic (AKA Touble/Frustration)
Snakes and Ladders
Memory
Ages 7 and 8
Sorry
Scrabble
Bingo
Clue
Pictionary Jr.
Monopoly Jr.
Boggle
Ages 9 and up
Battleship
Monopoly
Clue
Trivial Pursuit
Page 1 of 2 -- Find more great family games to encourage a love for math on page 2
