The developmental benefits of tabletop games may not be immediately apparent. People sit around a table and occasionally shout out “Fish!” But from a scientific standpoint, the benefits of tabletop games are just as significant as the pile of currency collected by the winner in Monopoly.
Tabletop games are convenient. They can be played with the whole family, friends, children, and even friends’ children. It doesn’t matter where you are – on a train, in your kitchen, or in a hotel room – tabletop games are always enjoyable and do not take up much space.
When a child asks, “Will you play with me?” you do not have to guess which dinosaur you should turn into. There are clear rules, it is understood what to do with the dice, and even great-grandmother can understand which game piece is currently in play.
Games in boxes have another advantage: they can significantly improve a child’s abilities in various areas. And if traditional learning requires additional motivation in the form of rewards and punishments, games do not require coercion: the child chooses to participate and follow the rules voluntarily.
So, what are the benefits of all these dice and cards, and how can we use these advantages most effectively?
1. Mathematical Skills
Counting moves, points, money, dots on two dice, resource cards for building a village – even preschoolers unconsciously practice these skills while playing games. Almost all games require at least arithmetic calculations to determine the winner.
Moreover, the ability to perform calculations can be developed even in a hand-drawn maze, according to scientists from Boston College and Carnegie Mellon University. The researchers played “Chutes and Ladders” with children, after which they asked for a rematch and then authoritatively stated that playing just for fun is not enough. It is important how the child moves across the board: counting from one or adding the result to already counted fields, thereby performing increasingly complex mathematical operations.
In general, scientists recommend that parents who want to help their little ones improve their numerical skills or who have just started losing the game pay attention to the field numbers and translate the conversation to numerical axes.
2. Spatial Thinking
It seems that there is nothing in common between a propensity for a tabletop puzzle and the ability to park between two closely parked German cars. American researchers Jamie Jirout from Rhodes College and Nora Newcombe from Temple University believe that such a connection exists. The researchers analyzed data from 847 children aged 4 to 7 and reported that board games, puzzles, and cubes are great for developing children’s spatial thinking. Neither drawing, playing with toys, riding a bike or scooter, nor telling stories – although what do they have to do with it? – had the same effect on spatial intelligence as paper puzzles.
3. Developing speech and social interaction
Even if it’s not a game aimed at coming up with synonyms for the word “ballet”, it will still positively affect a child’s speech development. That’s why speech therapists have long taken it up and entice children to their office under the pretext of playing. Sociologists often talk not specifically about speech development, but about broader communicative skills that board games give us. That is, the ability to get along with others, agree on turn-taking, negotiate over the price of wood, and not cry when someone else, a nasty boy, wins. Of course, communicative skills are easier to hone if your game is not about solitary meditative solitaire but about competing with a group of rivals.
There are games built not on competition but on teamwork (such as “Forbidden Island” and “Forbidden Desert”). This is a relatively new and unusual experience for a child’s collective: Vasya messed up, and we all sank. But it is a vivid demonstration of the advantages of teamwork and training that same ability to decide who is taking risks and who is covering whom.
4. Concentration, willpower, and preparation for school
For parents who do not see the obvious benefits of the above skills, there is a special point: yes, games prepare a child for school no worse than a preparatory studio. “Following the rules requires the child to perform strictly defined actions, which increases the possibility of developing regulatory skills and specific skills embedded in the game,” mysteriously express Doctor of Psychological Sciences Nina Salmina and Candidate of Psychological Sciences Irina Tikhonova in their work “Psychological and Pedagogical Expertise of Board Games.” A child who Marfa Petrovna manages to tell “Don’t fidget! Sit still! Fold your hands on the desk!” 500 times per lesson amazingly sits at the table with the game board for two hours and moves the red hat in a disciplined manner. Self-control and the ability to restrain impulses will eventually turn into the ability to concentrate on academic tasks.
5. Strategic Thinking
In games, actions have pronounced consequences, and these consequences have a clear impact on your results. You’ve just turned a horse into a queen and thereby caused the yen’s exchange rate to plummet. Games provide a closed environment in which, firstly, it’s not scary to act, and secondly, cause-and-effect relationships can be easily tracked even within 20 minutes. This allows for forward-thinking moves, attempting to predict the opponent’s behavior, and learning from personal experience.
6. The Importance of Games in a Child’s Life
Several experiments by American scientists have shown that children work best when they accompany their actions with an explanation: “I chose the purple house because it looks like a witch’s hat, but that turned out to be a mistake.” By trying to explain their actions, the child begins to analyze, contemplate the hidden mechanisms of their own choices, and arrives at a surprising result that many school teachers have discovered: “While I was explaining, I understood myself.” Therefore, a good board game should be accompanied by a parent who always looks bewildered and asks, “Why did you do that? Why? Explain it to me.”
7. Cognitive Abilities and Creative Thinking
A child’s cognitive interest awakens when their father brings home a package dusted with snow. Inside, there may be a toy with which they can colonize new lands (“Settlers”), lay railroad tracks to different countries (“Ticket to Ride”), or help the forces of nature (“Evolution”). Board games often have a powerful educational component that will be even stronger if the parent explains the colonization of distant lands with trilobites.
To see a steam engine racing to Romania in a plastic yellow wagon, one needs imaginative thinking. Scientists from Oxford Brookes University in the UK found that children who use their imagination in their games have a stronger creative potential than those who continue to insist that there are no green furry people on the couch. So don’t be upset if your child brings crumpled paper as an addition to a math game and says that it will also play – perhaps their creative component is developing strongly right now.
8. Improving well-being
The most amazing thing is that when you open your poker set, children happily sit down to study science. They even lose the fatigue caused by the exhausting “Environmental Studies” subject. Psychologists believe that the attractiveness of board games depends on the child’s age. Preschoolers will be drawn to narrative themes (“saving a bunny from a hedgehog”, “making a pastry for a cat”) and the imagery of game materials, meaning figures of people, vehicles, and pawns with drawn-on eyes will be important. The older the child gets, the more interest they will have in the game’s problem-solving aspect: getting out of a maze, catching a fish on a fishing line, or getting a 21. As the motivation to achieve develops, the significance of winning becomes increasingly important. And this means that playing will become even more interesting.