The game of Scrabble is a family favorite that can be played by young or old. This article will explore why Scrabble is such a great game for children and the kind of skills you pass on to your children when you play Scrabble with them.
There are few games that teach children as many important life skills as Scrabble. First, there is the obvious development of vocabulary skills, spelling, and word usage. Regular Scrabble play with an adult builds vocabulary beyond what a child experiences in the classroom, on television, or in the books she reads. If an adult can prompt a child’s use of words using Scrabble in this way, and encourage the child to use a dictionary to find the definitions of words she hasn’t found before, the child’s vocabulary will develop much faster.
This type of gamification of the learning process develops a healthy understanding of words and allows a child to find the definitions of words on their own. Encouraging this will allow a child to explore new word concepts on her own and develop muscle memory to recognize common patterns in words, as well as recognize unfamiliar patterns such as misspellings.
Second, Scrabble encourages basic number skills in terms of counting word scores, calculating triple word scores, double words, triple letters, and double letters. This level of math is a good practical example of how numbers are used in the real world and, together with the competitive atmosphere of Scrabble, encourages the child to keep score correctly.
Scrabble also develops a healthy competitive streak while encouraging patience and turn-taking. Scrabble requires concentration to create word combinations from the available tiles on the player’s shelf, and sometimes it can take time and a lot of patience to find a Scrabble word. Encouraging a child to take their time to create the best possible word builds problem-solving skills in other areas of their life. Playing with multiple kids requires them to wait patiently for each other to finish, a very useful feature.
Finally, the ‘challenge’ aspect of Scrabble in which a player can challenge a word as being misspelled or not from the Scrabble dictionary allows a child to test the limits of authority, building their confidence. This is a safe environment for a child to challenge an adult and develop the ability to recognize when it is appropriate to fight back. Scrabble remains a family favorite for these reasons and for the simple fact that it’s fun.