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The Importance of Playing Games with Your Preschooler

Building skills while playing games

The Importance of Playing Games with Your Preschooler

Q-tip

Picture lotto is a terrific game for three-year-olds. After your child has mastered simple matching skills, invent some variations. Divide the cards evenly and take turns being the "caller." The caller turns one card over and announces what card she has: "I have a bird. Does anyone have a bird on their board?" This allows your preschooler to practice her new vocabulary.

Three is the perfect age to begin playing board games and card games with your child—especially if you like these kinds of games, too. Board and card games help teach your child about aspiration, success, and disappointment. She'll gain experience with both winning and losing—and learn that no matter what the result, next time she tries she'll begin again with a clean slate. Games also give you the opportunity to teach your preschooler about rules, about integrity and honesty, and about luck. Games also can help increase your child's ability to focus her attention. Playing board or card games also is a very social occasion. Game playing enables and encourages your preschooler to practice important social skills that she will need to play well with other children. Nearly all games, for example, involve taking turns, sharing dice or a spinner, waiting for your turn, patience, and learning how to be a good sport. (When you play games with your child, try to emphasize the fun of game as much as possible, rather than focusing on "who's winning.")

Besides helping to acquaint your child with "life lessons" and to practice valuable social skills, most good children's games also afford preschoolers the opportunity to sharpen certain academic skills. Most board games for preschoolers involve either counting or color matching, for instance. Similarly, most card games for preschoolers involve matching suits or numbers (Concentration, Go Fish, Old Maid, and Crazy Eights) or comparing numbers (War). Games like picture lotto can help expand your preschooler's vocabulary and give her practice at analyzing and matching pictures.

In introducing board and card games to your preschooler, choose the simplest ones first. If your child has to master a complicated set of rules before even playing the game, she—or you—will soon lose patience with it. Games that involve moving pieces around a board in a race to the finish, spinning a spinner or throwing dice, and counting up as high as six provide the perfect introduction to board games. Some classics include:

Similarly, when you deal the cards to your child, start with simple games that involve matching pictures rather than skipping straight to Contract Bridge or even Hearts.

Being a graceful loser

No Fair! I Never Win!

Should you let your preschooler win some games? That is, should you throw the game, take a dive, shave points, or lose on purpose?

Well, you might argue that intentionally losing a game patronizes your child. Rather than giving him a false sense of confidence, you should play as well as you can and let the chips fall where they may. If your child loses, so be it. After all, your preschooler needs to get to know both sides of competitive etiquette: how to lose gracefully as well as how to win without rubbing it in.

But then, you want your child to enjoy playing games. And if he loses all the time, chances are that rather than being motivated to try harder and win next time, he will lose interest in the game altogether. So if you want to maintain your preschooler's interest in games, he's going to have to win at least close to half the times he plays.

Of course, this still doesn't mean you necessarily have to throw a game. You can still take a hard line, refusing to take a dive to let your child win. But if you do, then you should probably confine your game-playing with him to games that are ruled strictly by luck or chance, games that involve little or no skill—in other words, games that your preschooler has an even chance to win. Most games for preschoolers—Chutes and Ladders, Hi-Ho Cherry-O, Candyland, and so on—are in fact ruled strictly by chance.

On the other hand, many card games appropriate for preschoolers-Concentration, Crazy Eights, even Go Fish—do involve at least an element of skill. In such games, you will (probably) be a superior player. If you still insist on playing your best and trying to win games that involve more skill and sophistication, then consider giving yourself some kind of a handicap. In Concentration, for instance, you might start your child out with six or eight pairs of cards before you lay out the rest on the floor. Trial and error will help you come up with an appropriate handicap: one that adds suspense (regarding who will win) to the game.

Q-tip

In certain games that seem to go on forever (War comes to mind), your child will probably not appreciate it if you just quit. In such cases, taking a dive may be the quickest and most painless way to end it.

Certainly your child needs to learn to lose gracefully. After all, other preschoolers are not likely to let him win when they play with him. So before he begins playing games with other children, your preschooler needs to understand that every child wants to win the game, but that only one can win.

But at the same time, the lessons of game playing should not revolve exclusively around losing gracefully. Winning a game, especially beating you (who are so much bigger and stronger and smarter, etc.), will give your preschooler great joy and an enormous boost of confidence. It also gives you an opportunity to model grace in defeat (if you can manage to do so).