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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
Boardgame is convenient. It can be played with the whole family, with friends and children and even the children of friends. It doesn’t matter what the situation is around - a compartment of a train racing along BAM, your kitchen or hotel room - a board game is always good and does not take up much space.
When a child asks: “Well, play with me!”, You don’t have to guess what dinosaurs you should turn into now. There are clear rules, it’s clear what to do with the cube, and even the great-grandmother figured out which chip is walking now.
Games out of the box have one more advantage: they can seriously improve a child’s abilities in various fields. And if traditional training involves additional motivation in the form of carrots and sticks, the game does not require coercion: the child decides to participate and follow the rules voluntarily.
So, how are all these cubes and cards useful and how to use the benefits most effectively.
1. Mathematical skills
The account of moves, points, money, points drawn on two dice, cards with resources for building a village is something that even preschoolers do in passing in the game. Almost all games require at least arithmetic calculation of the winner. There are tables with a clear eye on mathematics: in them, children train logic (“Set”) or practice addition skills within ten or hundreds (“Zeus on vacation”, “Sleeping, queens”).
At the same time, you can develop the ability to calculate even in a hand-drawn walker, say scientists from Boston College and Carnegie Mellon University. Researchers fought with children in “Gutters and Stairs” (we have this game known as “Snakes and Stairs”), after which they asked for revenge, and then they authoritatively informed that playing just like that does not mean anything. It is important how the child walks around the field: counting from one, or adding the result to the already counted fields, thus performing increasingly complex mathematical operations.
In general, parents who want to help the baby advance in handling numbers or simply start losing, scientists recommend paying attention to the field numbers and translating the conversation to the numerical axes.
2. Spatial Thinking
There seems to be nothing in common between the penchant for tabletop puzzle and the ability to park in the middle of two closely spaced German cars. American scientists Jamie Giraud of Rhodes College and Nora Newcomb of Temple University believe that there is such a connection. Researchers analyzed the data of 847 children aged 4 to 7 years and reported that board games, puzzles, and cubes very well help to pump spatial thinking of children. Neither drawing, playing games, nor riding a bicycle or scooter, nor telling stories - although where do they come from? - did not affect spatial intelligence like paper puzzles.
It’s worth taking into account the results of the conclusion that scientists have bewitched: those children who, in everyday life, played puzzles, puzzles and dice more than six times a week, won in the spatial competition those who took out boxes of tables three to five times a week or never touched them at all.
This, of course, does not mean that you need to buy a board game only with the condition: “Son! Remember six times a week! No less! ”We just got a new reason to rejoice, seeing how the kid is trying to put together a puzzle that depicts a black square of 1000 pieces.
3. Speech development and social interaction
Even if you don’t have a game aimed at inventing synonyms for the word “corps de ballet”, it will still have a positive effect on the speech development of the child. No wonder speech therapists have long taken this into service and lure the children to their office under the specious pretext - to play.
Sociologists more often speak not specifically about speech development, but about the wider communication skills that board games give us, that is, the ability to get along with others, agree on the sequence of moves, bargain about the price of the forest, and not cry when it wasn't you who won, and that other vile boy over there. It goes without saying that communicative skills will be easiest to hone if your game is not designed for solitary meditative unfolding of solitaire, but for a company of competitors.
There are games built not on competition, but on teamwork (for example, Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert). This is a fairly new and unusual experience for the children’s team: Vasya was stupid, and we all sank. But this is a clear demonstration of the benefits of group work, and training the very ability to decide who is at risk now and who is covering whom.
4. Concentration of attention, will, and preparation for school
Parents who are not obvious that all of the above are useful skills have a special point: yes, games are no worse than a preparatory studio preparing a child for school. “Fulfillment of the rules requires the child to have strictly defined actions, which increases the possibility of forming regulatory abilities and specific skills inherent in the game,” Nina Salmina, doctor of psychological sciences and Irina Tikhanova, candidate of psychological sciences, mysteriously expresses in her work “Psychological and pedagogical examination of board games” . A child to whom Mary Petrovna 500 times per lesson manages to say: “Do not lie! Sit still! Fold your hands on the desk! ”, - surprisingly sits at a table with a playing field for two hours and disciplined moves the red cap. Self-control and the ability to restrain impulses will eventually turn into the ability to concentrate on learning tasks.
5. Strategic thinking
In the game, actions have pronounced consequences, and these consequences eloquently affect your results. You have now turned a horse into a lady and thereby brought down the yen on the exchange. The game provides a kind of closed environment in which, firstly, it’s not scary to act, and secondly, cause-effect relationships are easily tracked even in 20 minutes. This allows you to think through the moves ahead, try to predict the behavior of the enemy and learn from experience.
Several experiments by American scientists have shown that children work their heads best if they accompany their actions with an explanation: "I chose the purple house because it looks like a witch's hat, but it turned out to be a mistake." Trying to explain his actions, the child begins to analyze, reflect on the hidden mechanisms of his own choice and comes to an amazing result that many school teachers discover: "While I explained, I understood myself." Therefore, a good board game should be accompanied by a parent who makes an incomprehensible face all the time and asks: “Why did you do this? Why? Explain ... "
6. Cognitive abilities and creative thinking
Cognitive interest awakens in the child when the father brings home a bundle, powdered with snow. Inside, there may well be a toy with which you can colonize new lands (“Colonizers”), lead railway networks to different countries (“Ticket to Ride”), or help the forces of nature (“Evolution”). Tables often contain a powerful educational element, which will be the stronger, the more the parent tells about the colonization of distant countries with trilobites.
In order to see a steam train racing to Romania in a plastic yellow trailer, you will need imaginative thinking. Scientists from the British University of Oxford Brooks found that children who use imagination in their games have more creative potential than those who continue to insist that there are no green furry men on the couch. So do not be discouraged if the child brought the crumpled paper in addition to the mathematical game and said that she would play as well - probably, the creative component is now developing strongly.
7. Improving well-being
The most amazing thing is that when you open your poker case, the children happily sit down to do science. They even lose the fatigue caused by the debilitating subject “The World around”. Psychologists believe that the attractiveness of board games depends on the age of the child. The preschooler will be hooked on the plot theme (“save the bunny from the hedgehog”, “make a cake for the cat”) and the imagery of the game material, that is, figures of people, cars will be important here, and the eyes will be drawn on the boat. The older the child is, the more interest he will be caused by the game's problem: get out of the maze, keep the fish on the fishing rod, extend 21. With the development of achievement motivation, gain will be more and more significant. And this means that the game will be even more interesting!
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