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The table games They are recreational activities that are used both inside and outside the school environment, since they fulfill functions of help in different aspects depending on the type of game that is used.
In this way a board game can stimulate:
- Fine motor skills, reading or pre-reading
- Phonemic awareness
- Memory and concentration
- Flexible thinking
- Planning
- Establish school knowledge such as adding, subtracting, dividing, etc.
- Promote merge and sort features
- Raise attention
- Encourage collective or group work
For all these reasons, it can be said that board games not only help a child to keep busy, but also favor the learning and assimilation of different functions.
Examples of board games for children
- Zingo
This game helps stimulate fine motor skills, coordinate pictures, and encourage first word practice.
Age: between 4 and 7 years (depending on each child)
It is an alternative to Bingo.
The game consists of matching the words with the image to which each one of them corresponds. In this way, the association of each image with its corresponding word is achieved. There are also versions of Zingo with numbers and even bilinguals.
- Super Why ABC
This is an excellent game to help children learn to read. It is usually recommended to stimulate phonemic awareness, basic reading, recognize the alphabet and learn to rhyme.
It helps children to recognize uppercase letters from lowercase as well as to recognize a word according to its context.
- Sequence (for kids)
This game tries to develop memory, stimulate visual-spatial skills and stimulate reading.
The game consists of distributing some cards where the images of animals are found. Then each player must place, on the board that is on the table, red chips on those animals that match their cards.
The game has many variations depending on the abilities and age of each child.
- Puzzle or Puzzle
With any puzzle, fine motor functions, teamwork, discipline in the game, patience, orientation through shapes and colors, as well as observation are being stimulated.
As we all know, the puzzle consists of assembling an image with the different parts of the puzzle.
- Embedded blocks
The blocks help the stimulation of visual and spatial skills, coordination and programming of projects or sequences (in case of forming towers or something similar).
The blocks are especially used in children between 4 and 8 years of age. There are, in turn, different varieties in terms of their size.
This is one of the games that is known as “free” since, unlike others, it is not necessary to follow an order of players, rules, etc. but, on the contrary, it allows the child to organize what mode you want to play.
It is a game widely used to evaluate the creativity of the child as well as to observe other disorders such as aggressiveness, frustration or fear, among others.
- Ludo
This game is widely used to promote the functions of order, teamwork, competition, logical sequence, patience, distinction of colors, compliance with the rules (through the rewards-punishments that the game itself has) among others.
It is used with children from 5 years of age.
It can be played in teams or up to 4 players.
This game consists of throwing the dice from a starting point where each player has their own token.
As the game progresses, players will work to roll the dice to reach the goal and win the game.
- Monopoly (monopoly)
With this type of game, it is possible to introduce children to the valuation of money, its exchange, the possibilities of its self-administration and the consequences of its wrong handling.
In the game you start with a certain initial amount of money. As the dice are rolled, players try to buy different properties. If the property already has an owner, you must pay rent (rent) to the owner.
- Pictionary
This game stimulates fine motor coordination, the elaboration of abstract thinking, the production of sequential thinking (since many compound words need to be drawn separately. This requires transformation, discrimination and knowledge of the words and their meaning from each player).
It is usually used in children older than 7 years.
In this game each player has a token. After rolling the dice you must advance to a box, draw a card where you will be asked to draw something.
Each player must develop mimic or graphic skills so that the rest of the players guess the word drawn.
- Scrabble
The Scrabble game encourages the construction of words, the correct use of spelling and the sequential functions of the alphabet.
The game consists of spontaneously forming words or phrases taking into account the letters that each child has on their board.
It also helps to know the type of words that the child has decided to form. It is not the same to form the word "worse" than to form the word "but" since the first has a negative charge while the second is only a connector between sentences but both have the same letters.
- Checkers and chess
With checkers and chess, advanced cognitive functions are stimulated since the game requires knowledge of rules and mobility or not of certain pieces. On the other hand, it requires from each player fine motor coordination (the placement of the pieces) as well as the development of sequential strategies in order to reach the goal of the game.
These games are used in children older than 7 or 8 years.
The game of checkers consists of moving the tiles diagonally to “eatThe opponent's pieces.
On the other hand, chess consists of the placement of different pieces that have different functions with respect to each other. Thus some pieces can advance diagonally (for example the bishop), others will do so straight (the rook), others will be able to advance several squares at the same time (the rook, the bishop, the queen) while others will only be able to advance one box at a time (the pawn and the king).
