Board games are an ideal alternative to spending quality time with the family. Perfect for stimulating the cognitive development of children and boosting their concentration and memory, they are also a good resource for teaching them to respect the rules and deal with frustration.
However, not all games are worth taking advantage of these benefits. For this reason, in the Children’s Stage, we have compiled some educational board games that are not only fun and contribute to child development, but also go one step further and encourage learning.
Board games are a great way to learn, laugh, and have fun together. They are excellent tools for teaching children and have great educational benefits for children of all ages.
The social aspects of board games are unmatched, while the educational components make playing an uplifting experience for everyone around the table. Without further ado, let’s dive into the best educational board games we could find.
What Are The Best Educational Board Games That Make Learning Fun?
Playing board games as a family is one of our favourite ways to spend time together, and it’s even better when they are educational board games!
1. Articulate
This is a Fast Talking Description game, it is a successful description game that can be played by kids as young as 6 and as old as 12. Articulate for Kids Game is a gripping, fast-paced language and vocabulary-based game.
Articulate for Kids is obviously a fantastic game for building up literacy and language skills in children and adults, as adults make the effort to describe words in terms children would understand.
In Articulate you will need to be as descriptive as you’ve ever been in order to win. Bring your competitive self out to the table while competing against family and friends.
It contains 336 cards with 2,000 entries and you can have 4 – 20 players
2. Pancake Pile-Up
Pancake Pileup is a simple physics-based game where players see how many pancakes they can add to a stack before it falls over.
Pancake Pile-Up teaches early math skills while also working on balance and coordination. Kids will definitely get a kick out of this relay-style game that involves racing to stack pancakes as displayed on the selected card.
3. Photosynthesis (8+)
Photosynthesis is an abstract strategy game for 2-4 players that takes about 60 minutes to play
One for the budding biologist, or any appreciator of beautiful board games really. Photosynthesis is a strategy game that allows you to plant trees and create forests on the board – but think carefully about where you plan to sow, as the revolving sun and location on the board can affect growth.
As a two to four-player game, with intricate tokens and tree models, it’s the ideal choice for a chilled afternoon sat around the kitchen table.it is sold at £39.95
4. Horrible Histories Board Game (8+)
Horrible Histories Board Game The ghastly-fun but educational Horrible Histories Board Game will have players frantically racing through history.
Roll the dice, and make your way through time, answering questions and picking up chance cards along the way. You can even enjoy a spot of charades with this educative board game, so it’s a super choice for the performers in school or at home.
5. Wordsearch Board Games (8+)
Here’s another educational word game for the whole family to get stuck into, but Wordsearch is far more fast-paced. Rather than creating your own words like in Scrabble, the aim is to spot as many words on the board as you can.
To play this game, you need to place the game in the middle of the table, the players will choose a game card and place it onto the white wheel on the baseboard, fitting the holes to the pins.
The transparent playing board is placed on top of this, with rounded openings facing up. Finally, the green ring is put into position.
Turn the transparent playing board around to the point where the green starting space is positioned in the opening of the green ring. Each player is assigned a colour and will play with the corresponding marking pieces.
Finally, it is essentially a large and competitive group word search. A lot more stressful than the lazy Sunday morning word searches you complete on your own, but way more fun.
6. Ghost Blitz
If you want to stimulate the mental agility, reflexes and psychomotor skills of your children at home, this game is perfect for you. The board game includes some objects and cards that represent those objects.
The idea is simple, one of the players must draw a card and place it face up so that everyone can see it. The objective is for the players to go for the object and, the first one to get it will be able to keep the card.
The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins the game.
Read Also: Benefits Of Bilingualism: Why Is Bilingual Education Important
7. Operation
Children that are fans of biology and medicine will be delighted to put their skills into practice with this game. Although it is not conceived as an educational game in the strict sense, it is perfect for stimulating the psychomotor skills of the little ones while they exercise their knowledge about the human body.
The game consists of extracting pieces from different parts of a toy body without touching the sides or setting off the alarm. Each time the alarm goes off, pass the turn to another player. Thus, the one who manages to extract the most pieces wins.
8. Blokus
Despite being an abstract game, it is easy to learn and fun to play. Students won’t even realize they’re learning, there’s also Blokus Trigon and Blokus Duo if you want to mix it up and have more options.
There is only one rule for Blokus – tiles of the same colour can only touch at the corners, so faces cannot touch.
This becomes increasingly difficult as the board fills up with colourful pieces. Players will develop important critical thinking skills as they creatively arrange their Tetris-like pieces in a way that results in the fewest tiles remaining unused.
This is all about strategy and thinking ahead, plus adjusting as others play. It helps develop critical thinking skills, is a great strategy game, and is a fun way to stretch your kids’ minds.
Conclusion
Finally, Playing board games can be a fun way for kids to build important skills, from math skills to critical-thinking skills.
This article is here to guide you on the right choice of game, enjoy.