Great Games to Play that Stimulate Thinking and Language
It’s that time of year again…holiday parties, festive decorations, and businesses competing for your money in an seemingly endless flurry of ads and discounts. I love this season despite a few hectic moments. I get to be with my family and sit down together to share meals and play games. If you are still considering gift ideas for your friends, colleagues or family, or perhaps you need ideas for games to play at the holiday party, I’d like to help you out by recommending some fun games that promote speech, language and cognitive skills. And these games are fun for both adults and children!
Dabble
The point of this game to arrange letters in words quickly. This is a great game for developing vocabulary and spelling. From the perspective of a professional, this game will help you see possibilities in wordsmithing your professional emails, presentations, comments, etc. By the way, there is a mobile ap for this game, too.
Bananagrams
Similarly, Bananagrams is an anagram game that requires fast thinking. You also create words from you pile of letters and build your own crossword grids. Speed matters a lot, as well as, correct spelling!
Blurt
This is a word racing game and if you ever have had to think quickly on your feet to respond to a comment or question at work, this game will help you develop fast responding and have rapid recall.
Apples-to-Apples is a game of building analogies and comparisons of people, places, things and events. Seeing connections is a valuable skill in the office anytime you have to do problem solving and decision making.
Headbanz is a game of asking questions to get clues about a word that you and the other game participants are wearing on their heads. I personally have only played the children’s version but I discovered that an adult version exists. Asking clarifying questions to find solutions is a helpful skill when considering all of the possible outcomes of a problem!
If these don’t hold your interest, check out my 2014 list of recommended games. (Click here for my blog post.) They are still available and they are still fun and worthy of attention! Enjoy these games while you improve your memory and cognitive skills, speed up response time, and reduce stress!
What are some games that you have played and would like to recommend?