The Important Role Of Board Games In Child Development
Of the many areas where board games make a positive impact, none is more important than the role board games play in the developmental advancement of children.
On a very basic level, games encourage agreeable social norms such as turn taking, communication and competition. More than that though they can assist children at most stages of their development. Many games for instance support numeracy, from counting cash in classic family board games through to counting in traditional card games.
Use of language, geographical knowledge, deductive reasoning – for any kids or family game which has been in the market for a long time, a major developmental benefit can be identified.
Even classic physical games like Twister help to develop co-ordination and physical dexterity. We once research tested a selection of physical games for a small board games company, and were surprised to find just how quickly children developed key skills needed to be successful in the game, even if they had not been exposed to similar activities before. The trick though is to pitch the level of challenge at the right level for each age group, as abilities can vary wildly in just a few years.
For parents, one of the major reasons why they keep on buying games and playing them with their children is because of the understandable parental desire to have a positive impact on their child’s development, and board games are proven to offer significant benefits in this area.
For developers of new games for children and families, perhaps R&D efforts should include a review of the primary developmental areas for children. Here are the primary areas of child development:
- Cognitive development
- Speech and language
- Social and emotional development
- Fine motor skills
- Gross motor skills (no, this is not playing with ‘boogers’!)
If you want to know more about these key areas of child development, you can Google each of these areas, but the key point to consider going forward is that if your new game doesn’t help in at least a couple of these areas, it may not prove compelling for children and parents.
We represent leading board game factories in China & India. We have saved our clients more than $10m over the last decade by connecting them with reliable factories with the right certifications who can offer more cost-effective board games manufacturing. For more information: http://www.KidsBrandInsight.com/services
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