Being a parent can be engaging as well as tiring. Those mad years are spent managing deadlines, attending parent teacher meetings, working long hours and returning home to a messy apartment. It’s a crazy whirlwind that sweeps you off your feet and keeps you busy and happy at the same time. However it is very important to connect with your kids and make beautiful memories to be cherished and remembered with smiles by you and your kids, later in your lives. Here are the top ten fun games you can play with your kids and indulge in some light-hearted moments filled with smiles and the sweet sounds of laughter and impish giggles.
1. Pen and Paper games
These are the simplest games that require only a piece of paper and some writing instrument. They can be very addictive and hours can go by with your kids, mulling over strategies and thinking creatively. Tic-tac-toe is one such staple game where one has to draw a grid of two vertical and two horizontal lines. The first one to get three of your symbols in a row is the winner. However tic-tac-toe often results in a draw when played between two experienced players. Another similar kind of game is dots and crosses. It consists of making boxes joining the dots in the grid by straight lines and putting your symbol in the finished boxes. The one with the most boxes to his/her name will be the winner. These two are examples of such simple and entertaining games in our age of smartphones and digital media.
2. Puzzles
Puzzles and riddles induce kids to think out of the box and helps develop their problem solving abilities in colourful and fun ways. Solving Sudoku and crossword puzzles is a great way to improve your kid’s mathematical skills and vocabulary. A store bought puzzle or a homemade puzzle engages the kids attention and helps you to spend quality time with them. So pour out those puzzle pieces in a big heap and let your kids have a blast matching them. Watch them scrunching their cute faces in deep concentration and have fun helping them out.
3. Chess
Chess is the one of the most popular strategy games and hardly needs any introduction. Chess is a two player board game played on a black and white checkered game board with a 8×8 grid. Each player begins with 16 pieces, black or white. Chess stimulates strategic thinking and intelligence and can be the most useful way to spend time with your kids. It helps your kids develop their thinking abilities and logical perceptions. Chess can be a very good way to connect with your kids in an educative and serious manner. It can be fun teaching your children different moves, counter strategies and the various subtleties of this intriguing game.
4. Fun with Lego blocks
Lego blocks are a constant in every kid’s playroom. The can be used for creating buildings and any other related structure. These colorful interlocking bricks can be used to construct miniature buildings, bridges, trains, castles and can be taken apart once again to build new structures. Introduced by a carpenter from Denmark in 1932, Lego blocks have been encouraging the budding architects in kids for over half a decade. It encourages imagination and creativity in kids and also develops color senses in small children. So pile those bright colored bricks on the floor in a big heap and start building your very own kingdom with your kids.
5. Scrabble
Developed in 1938 by an American architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, as an adaptation of an earlier word game Lexiko, Scrabble remains one of the most popular word games till date. It is played on a game board consisting of 15×15 grid squares. It can be played by two to four players and they can score points by placing tiles on the squares to form words defined in a standard dictionary. One having the most points will be the winner. Scrabble became popular in the early 1950s and has been one of the most enjoyable word games since then. Playing Scrabble with your kids can be a great way to improve their vocabulary and have fun at the same time.
6. Chinese Checkers
Chinese checkers is a strategy game played on a star shaped game board with colorful pieces. It is one of the most popular games played across the world as it has a very simple rule of moving ones pieces to the star shaped corner opposite to one’s starting point. Developed in Germany in 1892, it was originally named “Hop Ching Checkers” and the name was later changed to Chinese Checkers in the United States to make it sound more exotic. Chinese Checkers is a family game than can be played by two to six players individually or in groups of two. Therefore it is an exciting strategy game to be played with your kids and be ‘checkered’ with their cheerful ruckus and noise.
7. Musical Chairs
Musical Chairs is a staple game in picnics and outings enjoyed by both kids and adults. It is a simple game requiring only some kind of music and a group of chairs. The chairs are one less in number than the players who have to circle around the chairs as long as there is a melody. When the music stops suddenly, there is a mad rush for the chairs and the one standing is out of the game along with a chair. The music starts again and the same process is repeated till the last one standing is the winner. It is a crazy, mad and fun game you can play with your kids and have some wacko moments with them.
8. Memory Games
Memory games can bring with them some really funny and loony moments. Most of the memory games require minimum two people and the game starts with the first player saying a phrase. The other players have to remember this phrase and the second player has to repeat it and add a phrase of his/her own. The third player has to repeat the first two player’s phrases and add something to that and so the game will continue till someone makes a mistake and gets out. Playing such memory games with your kids will improve their memory retaining ability and at the same time will be a pandemonium of laughter, complaints of cheating and giggles.
9. Monopoly
Monopoly is a business themed board game popular across
the world for its unique theme of real estate and the economic concept of monopoly-market domination by a single entity. It was developed in the early 1930s in the United States. Players have to move around the game board trading in real estate, the goal being to drive opponents into bankruptcy and emerge as a monopolist. Monopoly has simple rules and can be easily played by kids. It will improve their understanding of real life economic situations and will encourage the budding investor in every kid. Since it is ambition driven and involves dealing with play cash, it manages to imbibe some financial concepts in kids. It is a game which will manage to keep the kids entertained along with educating them in some ways.
10. Hide and Seek
No list of games is complete without ‘Hide and Seek’ which is the most popular and well known children’s game all over the world and can be played anywhere. It involves searching for the most concealing places and avoiding getting caught by the seeker. Whispers and giggles break out from the oddest of hiding places and it can be really crazy when it evolves into a tagging game after all players have been found out. So what are you waiting for? Let the games begin.
