Do you remember how you simply could not wait all week to pull out a board game on family night, and gather around the table to share a few laughs and make a lot of memories? Boy, times sure have changed, haven’t they? Chances are good that if you find a nanny that was not born in the past decade, they will remember the classic games too! Today, everything is on video game or computer, but it does not mean that your kids won’t enjoy board games. Maybe your kids say that they don’t want board games because they don’t realize how fun they are. Why not pick up a few and have game night, or ask your nanny to play with them when you’re stuck at work? Besides, board games actually teach some very valuable lessons.
Monopoly
Monopoly is one of the all-time most loved and hated games ever; you love it when you are the one with all the properties and you land on Free Parking, but you hate it when you are the one going bankrupt after a 5-hour battle. Love it or hate it, Monopoly teaches a few valuable lessons, including:
- Addition, subtraction and multiplication
- Money management
- Seizing the moment
- You need emergency money to fall back on
- Assets are important
- Small steps are often the most important ones
The Game of Life
This game pretty much teaches that unexpected situations are always going to come up in life, but you have to push through them. It also shows you how much harder life is once you start accumulating babies, no matter how cute those little pink and blue plastic pegs are in your car.
Chutes and Ladders
This was a popular favorite with most kids for a very long time. It was created 69 years ago, and has taught a lot of people some very powerful lessons whether they realized it or not. It instills basic math skills and teaches that even when you have a setback, it can be exciting to pick yourself up and climb the ladders of life again.
Scrabble
Could there possibly be a better way to teach kids how to spell than playing a game of Scrabble? Of course, they will not be satisfied for long with only creating mediocre words, they will want to learn longer words with the letters that earn the higher score.
Trivial Pursuit
There are actually a few editions of Trivial Pursuit available that are appropriate for kids that many parents don’t even know about. This is unfortunate because it really is a brilliant game to play to sharpen the mind and work on recall skills. A few include:
- Trivial Pursuit for Kids
- Trivial Pursuit Family Edition
- Trivial Pursuit Ultimate Disney Edition
- Trivial Pursuit Nightmare Before Xmas
Sequence for Kids
This is the best game to buy to help your child improve their memory and concentration. Plus, since you need to have four matches in a row to win, it also teaches the important of creating a strategy and being flexible enough to create a new one if things don’t go your way.
Pay Day
Learning to budget your money is a very valuable lesson to learn, and this game does a superb job of teaching it. This simple board game teaches how to budget for a 31-day month, and it throws in a few speed bumps along the way that life is so good for doing. Hopefully you find a nanny that can help teach your children about finances, whether they are counting their allowance to see if they can afford a new doll, or just counting their piggy bank to make sure no one has robbed them.
Consider adding a nanny into your family mix! Find a great babysitter by visiting nanny.net.