Board Games for Family Bonding

Are you looking for a fun way to spend some time with your family? My family loves to play a variety of board and card games together. Board games for families are a great way to bond with your family. Not only are you all spending time together, but you are creating a common experience. Through board games, you are teaching your children so many valuable skills.

Board games are great for when we have 30 minutes to an hour to spend time together as a family. These are great for nights when the family doesn’t have other extracurricular evening activities. Card games are easy to bring with your to a variety of places and can be played in just 5 – 10 minutes. These are great for times when the family all needs to be somewhere but only 1 or 2 people are involved in the activity.

Benefits of Board Games for Families

We love the family bonding time that takes place and all the social skills that we practice through playing games. Not only do the games pull us from all the screens in our world, but they also bring us happiness. We spend much of the game talking, laughing, and just having a fun time with each other. Our children work on cooperating together, often times to try to beat us. They also learn a lot of being a good sport. Many studies believe that the laughter and happiness also reduces stress.

I know I sure feel better when I’m smiling and laughing. Don’t you? Plus smiling and laughing is contagious. Once one person starts, it’s only a matter of time before everyone else is too.

Cognitive Development when Playing Board Games for Families

Beyond our family bonding time, we love all the cognitive benefits of playing games together. These benefits help develop your child’s brain and grow their thinking skills. Plus they can help improve your child’s reading and mathematical abilities in school.

Critical Thinking Skills

So many board games require critical thinking skills, especially problem solving and decision making using their creativity and communication skills. While playing a board game, there is a challenge to the players: to try to win. In order to win, children need to think about the best strategy. With each new turn and decision, they need to analyze where they are in relation to the end goal.

All throughout the board game children solve problems. Sometimes the problem is obvious, like in Jenga – children need to figure out where to remove the next block. Other times the problem is less obvious but involves developing a strategy to win the game. Throughout these games, the strategy might change and new problems might need solving.

Your child will also need to work on being flexible while playing board games. We love to map out the road to our success, but often times the numbers and other players don’t agree with us. Just because we know we could win in 5 moves if we rolled all sixes, doesn’t mean we will actually roll all sixes. As you play the game, your strategy needs to be flexible and change with the results from each turn. We are constantly reevaluating and making adjustments.

Mathematical Skills

When using a board, we often work on our spatial reasoning skills in a fun way. Spatial reasoning skills are necessary for navigation, engineering, mathematics, and science. As children move around the board they are putting their spatial reasoning skills into play. They need to know which way to move, how much they want to move, how far they actually can move, and even in which directions they can move. Throughout the game, children are counting spaces and trying to figure out what they want on their next turn.

In addition to spatial reasoning skills, we are also working on counting and one to one correspondence. Children will need to count dots on a dice, spaces they can move on the board, and possibly spaces until the win. Counting actual objects helps them master the skill of saying one number in counting order for each item counted. They will also need to be able to determine when they have moved enough spaces and are finished with their turn. What great mathematical skills for young learners.

Memory and Literacy Skills

And of course many card and board games help to increase our memory, comprehension, and language skills. There is nothing like a board game to bring out the talking about families. As we compete against each other or work towards a common goal, we communicate with each other. We may use vocabulary in new ways and even try out new sentence structures and grammar during board games.

Meanwhile, we are using our short term memory each turn and need to tap into our long term memory if we want any chance at winning the game by more than luck. Not only do children need to remember the rules of the games, but they need to remember what they are specifically supposed to do on their turn. Their turn might involving moving a certain amount of spaces, following directions on a card, or even earn a reward of some kind.

Most board games also have a component that involves reading. Your child may need to read words on the board, cards that they draw, or even the directions to figure out how to play. When reading, they will work on understanding what they are reading. Once they understand the words, they will need to immediately put them into action and demonstrate their comprehension.

Improving Attention with Family Board Games

We especially love these games with our middle son. Playing these longer games has helped to increase his attention span. Since he finds the games fun, he is more willing to concentrate and focus while playing. Throughout the game he really needs to decide what is important and what is extraneous, moving his attention to the parts he deems valuable while ignoring those that are just extra. This may even change throughout the game.

We also work a lot on self control as we improve our attention. While playing board games, he needs to be able to take his turn and then wait for others to have a turn. Both turn taking and waiting can be difficult skills for children. While waiting, it can be difficult to keep his attention on the game. However, when he is super engaged, he wants to keep his attention on the game because he doesn’t want to miss his turn. And for many games, the turn of another player can effect our own game play, so we don’t want to miss it.

Even more with self control, we can only do what the rules of the game allow. We might want all the money in the bank or to gather every similar card, but we have to wait and earn those things. We may want to jump to the end, but the fun is the journey to the end. Together we help our children learn to control their impulses and enjoy the entire game, not just winning.

Family Board Games and Fine Motor Control

So many board games let us practice our fine motor skills. They usually involve little pieces and/or cards which can help to strengthen fine motor skills, the skills important for writing, typing, and cutting. By moving the little pieces one at a time, picking up and reading the cards, and even rolling dice or spinning a spinner, we are using our fine motor skills.

The more we strengthen these skills by playing board games for families, the more we will improve our children’s fine motor skills. These little skills transfer into so many other skills: button their pants, zipping up their coat, tying their shoes, and buckling a belt. In the classroom, fine motor skills translate into good coloring, handwriting and cutting skills.

Social Emotional Skills when Playing Board Games for Families

Another great aspect of board games are the social emotional skills that they allow us to develop with our kids. Most traditional board games have a winner and some losers. This is a hard concept for kids and learning the art of losing takes lots of practice. The more board games your child plays, the more they will learn to be a better sport and delight in the win of others.

Developing Empathy

Your child will also develop some empathy for others. When we play the same board game a few times, children start to empathize with others who may get a bad card or spin. Why? Because they too have had that bad card or spin. Children begin to move outside their own egotistical self and see the viewpoints of others. Children become aware of other people’s feelings, especially the strong feelings of sadness, anger, and happiness throughout the game.

The more times we are able to help our children slow down and look at a situation from another’s view, the sooner they begin to show empathy for others. Each time you play a board game and your child struggles with getting a bad spin, roll or card, they have more experiences to draw upon to relate to others. And the same goes to receiving the good card, roll, or spin. They know what it feels like and can begin to feel happy for their sibling too.

Learning to Cooperate

Moreover, many board games ask children to cooperate with others in order to win. For these games, you child may need to compromise and make a deal with another sibling. Just think about Monopoly and trying to get your brother to sell you the last red property so you can start building hotels. You child may even need to collaborate with their siblings. My children love to wait until they all have a draw 2 card during Uno so they can make me pick up lots of cards at once. Sometimes they are unlucky and I save one just for this!

Expressing Feelings with Words

Board games are a great time to work on feelings. Throughout a board game, each player will have moments where they experience different feelings. Sometimes we are happy, but other times we may feel sad or angry. These feelings relate to our game play and how it stacks up with our goals. This is a great time to help your little one to express their feelings with words and to be able to articulate why they may be feeling that way.

Further, you can talk with your children about setting reasonable goals that are reachable. You can even address changing your goals based on the current situation in the game. Then tie their feelings into how they are doing with their own goals as well as the goals of others. These are both great skills for children to learn at a young age. Throughout their life they will need to set their own goals and manage the feelings that come with meeting or missing goals too.

Board Games for Families Let us Target Different Skills with Each Child

Board games are great for all members of the family. They let us work on different things with each of our children. One children might be working to learn good sportsmanship, while another is improving their speech, and yet another is working on their attention span. These are a great way to help all your children (and their parents) expand their wings and grow.

And board games grow with children. As your child develops new skills, you can easily change your focus and target a new skill for this child. And the great thing is that most of your older children have already worked on some of these skills. Therefore, they can support their younger sibling in their learning. By teaching others, they are practicing the skill again while developing a deeper understanding.

Finally, many board game experiences change as your child grows. Playing the same game years later offers a unique experience for the family. Now your child is ready for more strategy and problem solving. Their critical thinking skills have improved and their attention stamina has increased. They may even discover a new strategy to beat the parents at the game.

Looking for some great board games for your family, check out Family Bonding: Cooperative Board Games. These are games your whole family plays together and tries to win as a team instead of competing against each other. Leave us a comment to let us know your favorite board game for families and why you love to play board games with your kids.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.