Board games stimulate participation, prioritize the enjoyment of the process over the results, contribute to physical, cognitive and social development, and promote the understanding of sports rules and regulations. These are some of the advantages of board games highlighted by world experts such as the Spanish José Luis Linaza, professor of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid and member of the Children’s Game Observatory.
In board games, the pre-sports game is played so that the child mentally solves what he does physically when he plays. For this reason, board games, like sports games, promote psychological health. The board helps to link different components of the intellectual universe such as motor intelligence, spatial notions, tactical-strategic capacities or play processes.
Board games also promote: concentration, cognitive development, association skills and mental agility, acceptance of the rules, problem solving, social skills, participation, perseverance, team play and autonomy . Linaza, recommends that the game has to be developed «among the children themselves and that the adult only intervenes to create the necessary play context». Something that we must bear in mind when our children are playing is that the game must take place between equals, that is, between the children themselves so that they strive, lose and learn to win, learn from children of their age and from the elders, and that there are rules that must be respected so as not to be left out of the game. And with parents this does not happen because they know that it is not a child and they usually let themselves win.
Another benefit of board games that Linaza points out is that they avoid child discrimination: “Although with sports games we acquire physical skills that we can use in the long run, board games offer the same opportunities to all players regardless of their skill level which avoids child discrimination. They are useful because they are a miniature model of competing and applying skills ”. In addition, these games also provide greater understanding and greater tactical efficiency, which allows the child to be directed to a greater participation in motor games.
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