In the last one and a half to two decades, board games have ceased to be very popular due to the rapid onslaught of computer games and special gaming gadgets, but the demand for them has not completely disappeared. Today, board games are still produced for different age categories of players, but now the main target audience for such products is young children. Many have realized that this entertainment has a pronounced benefit. Some parents buy board games for children 2-4 years old.
Benefit
It is widely believed among adults that any children's games (even active ones, even board games) do not carry any other content, except for entertainment. This understanding of the game process is fundamentally wrong, since 99% of games somehow contribute to the development of the child.
Probably the only exception can be called those games that contain a certain immoral meaning or involve the moral humiliation of the loser.
If we talk about board games for children 2-4 years old, then there are no useless options at all - each one gives useful practical skills.
Training
At 2-4 years old, the child is still too young, so even those tasks that seem elementary to us can be difficult for him - and even unsolvable. Such a kid does not always confidently count up to ten, not to mention larger numbers, has a relatively poor vocabulary, insufficient motor skills and a very short-lived memory.
All these qualities need to be developed, but the little one does not yet understand their value at all, so he himself will not do it purposefully. It remains only to interest him, so that he himself constantly wants to improve these and other skills.
And then it turns out that even ordinary "walkers" are useful, because there you have to count the moves, and let the numbers be small, but the counting speed will greatly increase over time.
These or those types of dominoes and loto will help you remember more new words, and this is useful both for vocabulary and for training memory. There are also reaction games that can improve the child's physical activity.
Socialization
In the modern world, the greatest success is achieved by the one who knows how to quickly and correctly establish contacts with any people. This quality is not innate, anyone can learn it, but it is necessary to start learning at the earliest possible stage - only in this way the child will grow up as an open person. Board games are great for this purpose as they are fun enough to keep most kids interested and usually require at least two players.
If the gameplay is organized with the family, then all members get the opportunity to spend time together - even if their interests and hobbies do not generally coincide. In addition, play relieves tension and normalizes the atmosphere within the family.
Realizing the true meaning of board games, they are actively used in kindergartens, which allows kids to find new friends. It develops communication skills and allows you to learn a lot of interesting things. Kindergarten friends will most likely be forgotten in elementary school, but the skill of finding friends will remain.
Improved mood
After all, there is nothing wrong with entertainment (even without regard to the practical component). No parents want their children to be unhappy - it is also worth considering that this will result in problems for the parents themselves, who will have to calm down a crying or just unhappy baby.
In addition, if a child feels good, he is almost always alert and active, and in this state it is much better to perceive any new knowledge and skills - it turns out that a timely dose of positive helps to improve learning and somewhat speeds up the development process.
Psychologists who have carefully studied this issue point to the behavioral aspects of the developmental effect of board games. In particular, children are usually quite picky, it is not always easy to teach them to any rules (and in general the concept of rules). Only a game in which you either observe them, or do not play at all, allows you to give the baby that skill, without which he cannot do in life. Board games allow you to accustom your child to the fact that not always everything will be in his favor without serious consequences., but this is not a reason to get upset or give up.
Varieties
In terms of the variety of assortment, board games for children 2-4 years old are somewhat inferior to games designed for older age groups - this is due to the relatively small number of existing skills among players of this age. However, games do not differ very much only in content, but there are countless forms you can think of. It is worth highlighting the best educational games of various types.
If you strictly pursue the goal of learning, you should pay attention to the so-called didactic games. Their specificity is that they do not provide for winners and losers, and there is usually only one player - a child. The game itself is initiated by an adult and is not even like a game, but a task, but so well disguised that the kid perceives it exclusively as entertainment.
If specific examples of such games are needed, then the most striking example can be lotto, in which, for example, you need to "feed" drawn or printed animals with chips with the food they prefer. In the process, the baby acquires basic knowledge about the surrounding nature and the skills of associative thinking, trains memory. If you ask him to name the animals and their favorite foods, you can also develop the speech apparatus.
Similar topics can be developed by other associations - for example, who lives where, fruits and vegetables.
If you wish, you can make a didactic game yourself. The simplest thing is to take the same boxes (three pieces) and paste over them with colored paper of different colors, and then cut fruit figurines from the same colored paper. Stir the resulting chips and ask the child to sort them into boxes, focusing on color, and at the same time let him pronounce the names of the colors. If the products are bright and beautiful, the child will definitely like it.
Another common type of board games for toddlers is walkers. Of course, people of any age can play such games, but only for very young children such a gift can provide real development. First of all, the players gain the counting skills necessary to walk. Since for 2-4 years old standard cubes can give out too large a number, manufacturers often equip play sets with special cubes, where the maximum number of moves is limited to three or four, which even a very tiny child can do.
However, the benefits lie not only in teaching counting - an important role is also played by the external environment, which was originally designed to interest children. After all, no one goes to the finish line in an abstract way - there is always a certain plot, whether it be racing cars, each of which wants to arrive first, or fairy-tale heroes rushing to help their friend, or even conventional mice who want to eat cheese as soon as possible.
For adults, this is just a shell, and kids, finding themselves in a new situation, imagine themselves in the place of the acting heroes, begin to think about what they would never think about in their everyday life.
This promotes the development of imagination, and in the long term - the ability to think creatively, not to mention the fact that an unfamiliar plot can give a young player some new information about what he did not know before.
The walker is also quite easy to make yourself, especially in the age of computer technology. For the field, you can use any picture you like from the Internet, supplementing it with cells for walking through a graphic editor. A game cube is sold at every toy store. The situation with playing chips looks a little more complicated, but they can be cut out of colored cardboard. It remains to come up with an exciting storyline - and you can create a really interesting game for the kid that you will never find in stores.
Domino is another popular children's game. This option is great for kindergarten, as it allows a relatively large number of participants - up to 4-6 people. The play set itself does not contain paper elements, there are only relatively heavy dice, which allows the use of summer playgrounds and fresh air for the game.
In children's dominoes (in contrast to the "adult" variants), not numbers are used, but pictures. The theme is the same: animals, vegetables and fruits. Although the game seems completely primitive, it greatly contributes to socialization, and most importantly, it requires the highest level of development among all those mentioned. At the very least, one cannot do without a clear understanding of the rules, and this requires active mental activity.
The child is not limited by the need to do what the cube tells (as opposed to the walkers) - he can independently choose which dice to lay out for him, and over time will begin to understand how to use this in order to win. In addition, due to the use of various images on children's dominoes, the child remembers their names faster.
It replenishes vocabulary and trains memory, and the gameplay itself will surely provoke discussions between players, further stimulating the skills of mental activity and speech.
The use of "adult" sets of dominoes at the age of 2-4 years is impossible for two reasons - without pictures it seems too boring for kids, and it is still more difficult for them to master counting than pictures.
For a few more options for games for children of this age group, see the next video.
Tips for choosing
A board game is usually perceived as a pretty good gift, but (like any other product) it can be chosen as apt or inappropriate. Since it is given so that the child learns useful skills of his own free will, and not when he is forced, it is very important that the child likes the game, so that he becomes interested in it and begins to play regularly.
There are some simple tips on how to achieve your goal:
- For a child, play is a holiday. Even if she makes him think hard, he himself is still enjoying not the process of solving a complex problem, as in chess, but from the entourage. For this reason, a board game for a small child should be bright and beautiful, as well as assume a certain legend that resembles an interesting fairy tale.
- The child plays for the sake of receiving vivid positive emotions, he does not think about the benefits - this is how he differs from an adult who loses the tenth game of chess in a row, but still sits down for the eleventh game. This means that the task set by the rules of the game should be accessible both for understanding and for performing - even for such a small child. Otherwise, the gift will be quickly forgotten, because not only the brightness of the details, but also the process of engagement "catches".
You can be sure that the process of outside supervision will get bored much faster than your own active participation, and there will be much less benefit.
- At 2-4 years old, children usually do not yet have a pronounced preference for board games, however, they can already be laid in this way. At the very least, don’t buy games about princesses for boys, and games for girls, the plot of which at least superficially mentions wars, battles, any forceful solution to problems.
Pay attention to the fact that during these years the very first hobbies are formed, but they can both disappear within a couple of years, and gain a foothold for life.
Reviews
The overwhelming majority of comments on board games for children 2-4 years old express positive emotions. Children are drawn to everything bright and are really addicted to such gifts, and the effect is visible rather quickly - kids who constantly play board games turn out to be more developed than their peers.
There are other promised benefits, such as having more friends, increased sociability and a good mood, and a warmer atmosphere in families where board games are practiced at home. Many parents specifically single out designers who, with a relatively small set of game meanings, have come up with dozens and hundreds of different visual designs.
There is very little criticism, and it concerns extremely low-quality game parts, which is really likely when choosing in favor of inexpensive options.
