Monday, August 16, 2010

Kids and Board Games With Benefits!


Aside from the “soft” benefits like spending time together as friends or family, traditional board games can teach young children such things as hand-eye coordination, visual perception, letter recognition, color recognition and number/shape recognition. Games can also teach children how to “play by the rules,” how to interact with others and ultimately, how to be a good sport.
For young adults, there are many games that are good for building critical thinking skills. For instance, checkers, chess and some card games require serious thought in order to excel. Computer games can be good for strategic thinking, as well.
Here are four games teachers and parents might explore to build financial skills and mental agility...

Kids and Board Games with Benefits:
Life
The latest version of Life takes players through a thought-provoking simulation of a person’s life from high school through retirement, with jobs, marriage, kids and many other big life decisions to be made along the way.
Payday
Games that get kids thinking about life, money and jobs!
Want to teach kids to make their money last? Consider the game of Payday. Using a 31-day calendar for the board, players try to make their monthly pay check last. Just like the ‘real world’, players have the choice of investing, taking out loans or going for a long-shot gamble – none of which provide any guarantees for success.
Monopoly
The best-selling board game in the world, Monopoly helps young people learn the basics of economics. It provides the opportunity to learn fundamental money concepts and the rewards of wise spending decisions.
Careers
Introduced in 1955, the winner of this classic board game is the player who achieves their life goals the soonest. Before the game begins, each player determines whether they want to pursue fame, money, happiness or a combination of all three. Success in achieving their goal depends on the path they take through the game.

What is your favorite game? Why?

3 comments:

Jenni said...

Oh, I love games! We have a closet (literally) full of just games! What is intended to be a linen closet in our house is jammed packed full of all sorts of games! I was fortunate enough to play so many with my goddaughters when they visited a few weeks ago:
Monopoly, Stare (works on memory) yahtzee, Uno, Jenga, an more!

I'd have to say that my all time favorite growing up was Yahtzee, having to decided strategically where to score each round was always a fun challenge.

Now, there's a game called Pirate Dice (the game they played on the 2nd Pirate of the Carribean movie) where you have to guess, looking at your dice, how many of a number is on the table. Another fun and strategic game!

Guess I am drawing to dice games...hm, wonder what that says about me?

Barbra The Bloggess said...

I know what you mean, Jenni. We actually haven't had to buy too many games because we know have so many friends with jam packed closets like you mentioned.
I love that pirate game! Come to think of it, I like games with dice, too. :)

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