4 ways Family Game Night makes your kids smarter!

The nights are definitely longer and the weather isn’t super for after dinner walks in the park. Instead of turning on the TV or plugging into a device, how about trying out a family game night? Time spent playing together as a family not only builds your relationships, but your children’s academic and executive functioning skills as well!

Most board games encourage cooperation, sharing and taking turns. Playing board games also increases your child’s ability to focus and attend for longer periods of time. Good sportsmanship, fair play and gracious defeats are life skills that board and card games support. As a teacher, I can tell you that classroom life is just plain easier for the kids who have experience interacting fairly with others! And don’t forget that the good and bad luck of a game can turn around in an instant too – great metaphors for life in general. Planning ahead, flexible strategic planning and predicting outcomes are lessons we want to teach our kids- and board games are a great way to do so while reinforcing the academic skills taught at school! This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Looking to improve fine motor skills and manual dexterity?

Try games like Connect Four, Jenga, Operation or Light Bright.

Want to increase strategy, reasoning, impulse control, working memory and problem solving?

Try games like Monopoly Jr, Battleship, Perplexus, Mastermind, Clue, Blokus, Mancala, Memory, Backgammon, Checkers, Chinese checkers, Chess, Snakes and Ladders or Sorry.

To improve literacy and language skills try:

Scrabble Jr, Boggle, Bananagrams or Apples to Apples

Family Game night improves Math skills!

Try card games like Set, Crazy Eights or Uno, patterning games like Connect 4, or Sumoku, Probability games like Yahtzee, or actual board games like Sum Swamp, Equate or Money Bags

When you are looking to improve your child’s speed and accuracy consider trying a board game! Repetition is an excellent way to automate skills and game playing is way more fun than drill sheets and flash cards! The variety of learning gives opportunities for mastery in the context of family fun. What could be better?

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