Children's games, above all else, should be fun. The best kinds of games, however, are those that are not only enjoyable, but teach your children something, as well. Games that teach word skills, number skills and critical thinking skills can teach your child valuable lessons without him ever knowing that he is learning.
Word Games
Word games can help develop your child's language skills. Crossword puzzles are a fun way to practice spelling and develop vocabulary, as is Scrabble. "I'm going on a picnic" helps kids focus on beginning sounds and develops their memory, notes the website Apple Sauce Kids. To play, the first player says, "I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to bring..." and chooses something with the letter a, such as apples. The second player says, "I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to bring apples" and something that begins with the letter b. The game continues with each letter of the alphabet and each player taking turns naming all of the items already chosen and adding her own. Older children can include an adjective that begins with the same letter, such as "brown banana" or "delicious doughnut."
Another word game is "mystery word." Have one child hold out her hand and close her eyes while the other child "writes" on her hand with his finger. The first child must guess what letter the other child wrote. Start with just letters, or for older children, play with two- or three-letter words, pausing in between letters.
Math Games
Many classic card games can give young children math readiness skills, suggests the Education World website. Go Fish teaches counting, sorting and matching. Bingo teaches number recognition, and Uno teaches number and color recognition. The card game War teaches young children greater than or less than. Divide a deck of cards in half, have each child turn over one card from his pile at the same time. The player with the higher number card keeps both cards. The first child to accumulate all the cards wins.
Use a combination of dice and cards to practice both subtraction skills and teach odd and even numbers. Divide a deck of cards in half. Have each player turn over two cards, then subtract the smaller number from the larger number. Then have one player roll a die. If the roll is an even number, the player with the smaller number wins both cards; if the roll is an odd number, the player with the larger number wins. Play until one player has all of the cards.
Critical Thinking
Many board games help develop kids' critical thinking skills. Mastermind, a game which requires a child to use strategy to figure out an opponent's color pattern, is one example. Similar strategy is used in the game Connect Four, which requires a child to get four tokens of the same color in a row while preventing his opponent from doing the same. According to the Parenting Science website, children who play number line board games--games in which players move game pieces through a series of sequentially numbered spaces--develop thinking skills that help them to become better math students.
