During the formative years, when your kid is like a ball of energy and excitement, he wants you to spend time with him, play a lot with him. It’s always good when you present your child opportunities to learn simple yet useful things while you are playing with him. How do you engage your child in an activity which is fun and also mentally stimulating? Well, it’s easy.

Get him a board game or even better- A lot of different board games!

Board games are super-fun, and great way to engage your kid. Besides that board games also provide rich learning opportunities.                    

Here’s what board games can teach your kid?

1. Basic Arithmetic: Most games will involve some number recognition or counting. Such as playing dice games, kids have to count the number of dots on the die in order to play and move their piece to the right square. While playing these games- like snakes and ladders- kids learn to do basic addition, subtraction faster in their minds.

2. Improves vocabulary: The games like Scrabble encourage children to learn new words which add to their vocabulary. The instruction manual of the game or the if-then conditions- when your piece lands on the particular square- in the Monopoly improves the sentence comprehension in kids.

3. Reasoning skills and critical thinking: In the games like Chess, one is required to analyze the situation well, plan ahead and predict the outcome of the moves. When Children are exposed to such games at young age it helps develop their reasoning abilities to make the better choices- in real life too. According to experts, games like Chess enhance the critical, analytical and visualization skills in children. Even the rapid improvements in mathematical skills are seen.

4. Teamwork: Board games teach children to importance of playing as a team. It instills the spirit of togetherness and co-operation. Social skills such as communication, sharing, waiting for your turn, abiding by the rules are important factors that children learn while playing. They can realize the how playing along in a team can help achieve a common goal.

5. Sportsman spirit: Kids need to learn that one can’t expect to go on winning every time. Sometimes you will lose too. It’s important to remain graceful in victory and defeat and play the game in good spirit. Through board games you can teach your child how to go on playing to the best of his abilities without worrying too much about the result. And how this applies in all walks of life, too.

After all, board games provide a lot of experiential learning at very young age to kids, which stays with them longer and helps them along as they grow.