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Which games are your favorites? Are you a fan of board games, card games, or video games? Do you like to spend your spare time buying properties in Monopoly or video-skateboarding your way to fame with Tony Hawk? Everyone knows that games are fun, but you may not realize that they have other benefits as well.
Experts tell us that games can help us learn valuable life skills. Playing a team game teaches players how to cooperate among themselves. Game players learn social skills as well—taking turns, negotiating, and offering constructive advice are all part of the game. Did you know that by playing games you could improve your listening and communication skills? That's because you have to be aware of what the other players are doing and be able to let them know what you are doing to try to win the game. Experts say that some video games help young people improve their hand—eye coordination because kids learn to watch the screen while they quickly react with their fingers.
Some games teach us math, almost by accident! When you are keeping score for a game, you use your addition skills to tally up points. Counting your money is an important math skill needed to win at board games like Life and Monopoly. Games like Clue help you sharpen your logical thinking and deductive reasoning. Playing cards is a great way to learn about math without even trying. People who play solitaire know that there are 52 cards in a standard deck and that each deck has four suits. You can use division to figure out that there are 13 cards in each suit (52 ÷ 4 = 13). Even the youngest student who plays the Old Maid card game knows that there is a chance that he or she will get the Old Maid when the cards are dealt. Games can help us practice computation and learn about probability when we try to figure out the likelihood of getting a certain roll on a number cube or a certain card we need to win. Most importantly, games teach us one of life's most important lessons: how to handle winning and losing.
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