Children ages 10 to 14 can participate in entertaining and instructive activities with the help of board games. These games aid in the development of critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaborative abilities in addition to being entertaining.
Kids are ready for more challenging games that test their developing brains at this age. There are tons of ways to keep them engaged and learning at the same time, ranging from strategy-based games to ones that emphasize creativity and imagination.
This post will discuss some of the top board games for kids of that age, emphasizing their advantages and the reasons you should include them in your family game evenings.
| Game | Description |
| Catan | A strategy game where players collect resources and build settlements to gain points. |
| Ticket to Ride | Players collect train cards to claim railway routes and connect cities across the map. |
| Dixit | A creative game where players use abstract images to tell stories and guess each other"s cards. |
| Carcassonne | A tile-placement game where players build cities, roads, and fields for points. |
| 7 Wonders | A card drafting game where players develop civilizations by constructing buildings and wonders. |
For kids ages 10 to 14, board games are a great way to foster social interaction, creativity, and problem-solving abilities while having a great time. These games, which come in a range of themes and difficulty levels, are ideal for this age group because they foster teamwork and critical thinking in addition to being fun.
Benefits
Since teens and young adults have mostly shifted to playing in virtual worlds, young parents have become the primary purchasers of board games in the past ten years. Additionally, board games have a noticeable educational impact on younger children. It would be incorrect to believe that a teen cannot learn anything from a board game, though; instead, you should select something far more intricate and captivating. At this age, learning new things through educational games and different economic strategies that impart business skills are both interesting.
A lot of well-liked choices are based on logical and imaginative detective stories.
In addition, the benefit does not necessarily lie in obvious development, it is also in the improvement of mood, which is provided in the process of an interesting game among friends. The latter is especially important at the age of 10-14 years, because now is the stage when the child leaves childhood and becomes a teenager. On the one hand, the child is faced with new problems and experiences, which are much easier to overcome if there is a lot of positivity and pleasant communication in life. On the other hand, the child"s consciousness is now being rebuilt, at this moment it is determined whether he will fully learn to meet, communicate and behave in society or remain withdrawn and unsociable, and board games are an ideal platform to practice being the life of the party.
And lastly, playing a board game is an additional substitute for staring at a computer screen. Most people today can see the detrimental effects of an excessive obsession with digital technologies, but children are one demographic that is unlikely to fully understand this—if they become enmeshed in virtual worlds, they may never be able to fully return to "real" life.
Before it’s too late, board games, with their captivating stories, irrepressible spirit of rivalry, and enjoyable peer and like-minded social circles, can prevent a child from succumbing to a virtual world.
Varieties
- Psychological role-playing. The point of such games is to try on the role of a specific character and show your best side in a certain simulated difficult situation, making decisions that affect the final outcome. Most often, teenage stories are, one way or another, connected with criminal themes, and the most striking example is the famous "Mafia», which simulates a real city with the struggle of ordinary people against criminals. Other famous games of the same genre are "Gnomes-pests" and "Cluedo", as well as dozens of others.
- Educational. Some games are both interesting and useful for the mind. This is where all economic strategies should be included, for example, the legendary "Monopoly", the meaning of which is to build your own business empire and eliminate competitors. The gameplay teaches the basic rules of doing business, and to make it more interesting, there are dozens of varieties from the same opera with different entourage – the purchased enterprises can have a clear link to one country, city or type of activity. In order not to limit ourselves to economics, we will give another example – take at least the game "Evolution", which clearly presents the concept of Darwin"s theory. This also includes many different quizzes.
- Communicative. Such solutions are a great way not only to "kill" time, but also to get to know others better, or just have fun. Some of them ("Alias", "Danetki" or "Activity") are a regular word guessing game, but they differ significantly in rules – you can explain both with words and only with gestures and facial expressions, and guessers can sometimes help themselves with clarifying questions, and often just name the options that come to their mind. A great way to stir up a party is the game "Bluff Party", in which you need to guess whether a person is telling the truth or not.
- Games for dexterity, attention and reaction. But this is a 100% option for large and noisy companies. It develops the above-mentioned qualities, although, at first glance, such a game does not carry any meaning except entertainment. The task is to complete a simple task faster than others, for example, to shout a code word upon the occurrence of a particular situation. Popular games of this type include "Jenga", "Wild Jungle", "Uno" and so on.
- Logic. Games that develop logic are also popular among children aged 10-14, but they require a certain complex plot. Recognized hits in this genre are "Set" and "Carcassonne".
The most interesting games
Youngsters between the ages of 10 and 14 are already drawn to games with somewhat intricate storylines, so in many of them, they may play alongside adults. We’ll go over each of the games we’ve chosen in more detail; maybe this is something you and your kid would enjoy playing together. To ensure that there would be something interesting for everyone, the games were carefully chosen across a variety of genres.
- Monopoly. If you have always dreamed of becoming rich, then this game is just for you. You can play it in pairs, but it is better to increase the number of participants to at least 3-4, or even more. At the start, you receive a certain amount of capital, and by throwing a dice, you move around the playing field, where you can buy businesses (both abstractly, like a transport company, and with a specific real name, depending on the game modification). There are also unexpected things – you can suddenly win extra money, get fined, and even go to jail.
Establishing a monopoly in a particular sector of the economy allows you to grow your company and set prices for other participants, progressively bankrupting your rivals.
- Mafia. This game is for a really big company, at least 8 people play it, optimally up to 16. You are in a city where a small part of the population is an organized mafia, and the majority are civilians who are tired of rampant banditry. The latter are disorganized, supposedly unfamiliar, but declare war on the mafia, and the latter declares war in response. The trick of the game is that only the mafia knows each other by sight, while civilians act completely at random, trying to figure out the enemy in their ranks through discussion. In more complex versions, there are other characters endowed with special abilities. The board version is often criticized for the fact that, unlike the original, it is somewhat removed from the psychological discussion to identify the enemy. Usually it is recommended not to start playing this game before the age of 12-13.
- Activity. A boxed version of the famous game in which you need to show or draw a hidden word so that everyone else can guess it. Participants aged at least 11 years (for younger children the concepts from the set may be too difficult) are divided into teams, and then one player from each team takes turns drawing a card with a word, which he must show to his comrades within a minute.
The fact that the words are split up into more and less complex categories with varying point values adds to the game’s difficulty. The team with the most points wins.
- My Zoo. At first glance, this game for 2-4 people resembles Monopoly, but only in the genre of the economic game and the appearance of the field. In fact, here the sectors of the playing field are not enterprises, and not even animals, but only opportunities – to buy an animal or food for it (and without specifying on the cell what exactly is being bought – this will be on a separate card), as well as to take care of it. The idea is to buy animals and keep your zoo in good condition. The winner will be the one who creates the best zoo.
Children ages 10 to 14 can learn valuable skills through playing board games, which are entertaining and engaging. They give families a wonderful chance to connect and spend valuable time together while also assisting with communication, critical thinking, and teamwork.
There is a game for every interest among the many genres that are offered, ranging from strategy and puzzle games to creative and narrative games. These games promote learning in a laid-back and pleasurable way in addition to providing entertainment.
Playing board games with kids can be a great way to encourage interaction and face-to-face connection while also cutting down on screen time. These games can provide hours of entertainment and education, whether played alone or with friends.
