The fun use of board games is another wonderful opportunity for parent-child interactions that can promote and enhance learning lessons for life, and at times, avoid boredom.
The following are just a few of the ideas written by Jean Barly in Toy Times Magazine, September 2020:
- Learn to Take Turns. Provides lessons on patience and fairness.
- Learn How to Win. Provides lessons on humility.
- Learn How to Lose. Provides lessons to learn that failure is an opportunity to grow.
- Build Resilience. Doing your best results in winners for life.
- Practice Delayed Gratification.
- Help Develop Strategies of Thinking. Improves observation skills while increasing social awareness.
- Reduce or Even Banish Boredom. Activity is a good escape.
- Play Equalizes. See the great feeling your child experiences when winning. Same goes for you.
- Take a Risk. Opportunity to learn the balances between risk and rewards.
- Build Confidence. Opportunities to enhance competence in counting, score keeping, attention, focus, memory, and other cognitive and affective skills.
Now a few words of CAUTION!
As a parent or other adult, please be sure to select board games that are most suitable to the child’s developmental age, (i.e., fine motor, gross motor, number skills, language skills, social-emotional level, and other development characteristics and skill levels).
A good reference source is www.drgsbrainworks.com.
