Your Brainwaves on Fun: Educational Family Game Favorites

You will no doubt be very familiar with the need to eat healthily in order to look after your body and stay in good shape, but it is also just as important to enjoy what you could describe as a balanced mind-diet. 

Family favorites like card games, are great for having some fun and friendly challenges against others, but they also serve a great purpose in keeping your brain sharp. 

Here is a look at some educational family games that tick most of the right boxes in terms of providing you with some good entertainment, as well as stimulating your brain and keeping that gray matter working hard. 

Seal of approval 

Mensa arguably exist in order to celebrate the achievements of a great mind and to encourage everyone to use what they have got and to test the boundaries of their brain power. 

The Mensa Mind Games competition challenges games manufacturers to put forward their ideas and to produce a game that judges will put to the test in order to find which ones may be worthy of their seal of approval. 

Previous winners include the highly-acclaimed Trivial Pursuits and as you might imagine, competition is stiff. The good news for consumers and avid game players of all ages, is that there are constantly new challenges to experience, featuring ideas for board and card games. 

Mensa have been reviewing new games for the past 20 years, and there is a good chance that you will have played some them, as they have become family favorites across the nation. 

Creative-thinking party game 

A past winner, Scattergories is described as a creative-thinking category-based game that first came to light back in 1988. 

Although the objective of the game is relatively simple, which is to score points by uniquely naming objects having only been given an initial letter as a reference point, it requires a good ability to think quickly, if you are going to emerge as the winner. 

You can also get a fast-paced card game version of Scattergories, for a rapid-fire test that ends when the deck is exhausted and the cards you hold are counted.

Great for problem-solving skills 

If you don’t like getting stuck in a traffic jam, perhaps if you hone your problem-solving skills by playing the popular Rush-Hour game, you might be able to negotiate a way out of the jam more easily in future. 

The point about this game is that it is designed to challenge beginners and experts in equal measure, so the better you get at solving the problems, the harder the puzzles become. 

Rush Hour is billed as an educational game as it aims to develop your problem-solving and critical-thinking skills as well as entertain you in equal measure.

Don’t forget the kids 

Introducing your children to educational games will not only entertain them but it will teach them some valuable skills as well.

Robot Turtles is a good example of the sort of modern game that reflects the modern childhood environment, as it is aimed at encouraging kids to learn and develop some early programming skills. 

Card games and board games alike, you can find plenty of ways to challenge your mind and develop some useful skills that could even make you hard to beat with enough practice. 

Rachael Hancock is a keen gamer, particularly of online games she can play on her phone or laptop. A Mom of two she encourages the little ones to play educational games so that they can learn whilst also having electronics time.

Rachael Hancock is a keen gamer, particularly of online games she can play on her phone or laptop. A Mom of two she encourages the little ones to play educational games so that they can learn whilst also having electronics time.