Brain games for all ages

Best for Younger Kids:. Little kids will love racing all over Busytown with this board game. It's supposed to help develop critical skills like teamwork. Best for Older Kids:. Made for explorers at heart, this game tests your problem solving and strategic thinking skills.

It's perfect for older kids 10 and up. Best Fantasy:. A magical maze game made for fantasy lovers: The brand says it's curated to help sharpen your memory skills.

Best Strategy:. Players will have to engage heavy critical thinking and planning to succeed in Catan. Best Cooperative:. Because players are on the same team, it's a great option for siblings and cousins of various ages and learning levels.

Best Trivia:. Packed with trivia questions for all ages and generations, this is a game all members of the family can enjoy. Best Guessing:. Get your brain pumping with this creative, dinosaur-themed take on the classic Clue game. In This Article Expand. Our Picks. What to Look For. Why Trust The Spruce. What We Don't Like Pricey. The 9 Best Board Games of Board Game. View On Amazon. What We Don't Like Only three pawns per color. What We Don't Like Somewhat repetitive.

What We Don't Like Four-player maximum. Catan Review. The 8 Best Cooperative Games of All of Us Family Trivia Game. What We Don't Like Not ideal for younger kids. The 7 Best Trivia Games of View On Fantasticgames. What We Don't Like Five-player maximum. What We Don't Like Poor-quality drawing materials. Final Verdict The best family board game is Ticket to Ride view at Amazon , a fast-paced and competitive game that's easy to learn but also engaging for all ages.

The 8 Best Board Games for Kids in Related Topics. Article Sources. The Spruce uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. To up the difficulty, give your toddlers a time limit. Mazes are a big hit with the children. Mazes encourage logical reasoning and help improve fine motor skills. This is because kids come up with solutions to the winding pathways. The detailed benefits of mazes for kids are as follows. Mazes encourage logical reasoning, scanning and help improve fine motor skills as they draw the solution over the winding pathways.

Improv games are one of the most fun brain-boosting games out there. They offer several benefits, including. Here, each person in the room helps narrate a story but only one word at a time. Decide on a quirky story title or theme and begin the fun. You can simplify the story by narrating it one sentence at a time instead of one word at a time. Storytelling helps prompt a different brain development than listening to a story or reading a picture book.

Storytelling requires your child to pay attention as well as focus on something for a long period of time. Stories are also a great way for young children to express their feelings and emotions in a positive way. Another variation of this game is to pick a magazine page and ask your child to make a story out of all the elements on the page.

The more creative the prompts, the funnier the story. This game is simple and straightforward but is so much fun. This is one of the brainy games you can anywhere, be it in the car while waiting in line or simple if your kids are bored. Make them as silly as you can to ensure ultimate fun. Brain enhancing memory games help improve memory in a fun and entertaining way.

There are many kinds of memory games you can play at home with your kids. The simplest one is a matching activity for younger children. You may increase or decrease the number of elements to change the complexity of the game. Get the picture is another fun memory game to play at home. The participants of the game then take turns to add on elements. When player one says an object, the next player repeats that object and adds another one.

This continues till any player is unable to repeat all elements and thus, breaks the chain. A simple math game is excellent at helping children with their numeracy skills. Card games are an example of this. Math brain games help your children learn number identification, addition, subtraction, counting, greater than or lesser than and other basics of mathematics.

Sudoku is a number-placement puzzle that relies on short-term memory. To complete a Sudoku puzzle, you have to look ahead and follow paths of different outcomes. For example, if you put a 6 in this box, that one must be a 2 and the other one an 8, and so on. This kind of planning helps improve concentration and short-term memory. Furthermore, you can play Sudoku online or on paper. Look for a Sudoku in your newspaper or simply buy a book with a collection of puzzles.

Sudoku puzzles are available in different degrees of difficulty. Start with the easy ones to learn the rules and then move on to the had ones. Lumosity is one of the most well-known brain training and mental fitness program. Anyone can sign up for a free account and play three games every day. Alternatively, you can also choose a subscription service and play more games.

Furthermore, the app also offers walkthrough meditation and mindfulness. Crosswords are the classic brain game. Not only does it enhance verbal language but it also improves memory and general knowledge. You can do a crossword both online and offline. Like a Sudoko, you can solve the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, or you can purchase a book of crosswords specifically suited to your skill level or interests.

To play this game, you will need to download an app. Elevate offers 35 different brain training games, which have a strong educational component. Furthermore, you can customize your training to focus on the area you prefer.

The game also allows you to track your progress to see how your skills are improving. Scrabble and other word games are fantastic for people of all ages to boost both vocabulary and language skills.

The player may use word tools to help you make the most out of the game. That person opens to a random page, finds a word they don't know, and announces it to the group.

If nobody in the group knows the word, they can proceed. Each person writes the word on a slip of paper and makes up a definition for it, except for the person who found the word they write the actual definition. After writing, everyone turns in their definitions to the first person who proceeds to read all the definitions fake and real aloud to the group.

Everyone but the announcer gets one guess as to which definition is correct. After everyone has guessed, the announcer reveals the correct answer. If you guessed the correct definition, you get a point. If someone guessed your made up definition, you get a point for each time it was guessed. If nobody guesses the correct definition, the person who originally chose the word gets a point. Then the dictionary is passed to the next person and the process is repeated. Basically there's a card read aloud, like, 'Who would have the worst passenger rating on Uber?

Then the person who got the most votes gets to call out who they think voted for them. It promotes funny story telling, too. Choose a random list on Wikipedia, like countries by population. Either do the top 10 or top 20, and each person gets one or two guesses.

You get one point for number one on the list, two points for number two, etc. So you're aiming for the lower half of the list, or safe and pick a easy one at the top. Go through some lists and the one with most points wins. First, everyone writes a sentence with preferably vivid imagery. Next, everyone passes their paper, now with a sentence, to their right, and now everyone must draw a picture representing that sentence. Before passing the paper on, you fold over the sentence, leaving only the picture, with which the next person must describe using a sentence.

Repeat these steps until you get your paper back, and have fun charting the course of sentence and pictures! This is one of my personal favorite party games. Everyone seems to have a different name for it, but the rules are pretty much always the same. Each person writes down names on pieces of paper, and the names can be anyone — family members, celebrities, fictional characters, historical figures, just anyone that everyone in the group will know.

All of the papers go into the bowl, the group divides into two teams, and then everyone takes turns describing the name on each piece of paper to their team until the bowl is empty. Then, they all go back in the bowl, and in round two, everyone describes the names on the papers using just two words.