There are plenty of board games out there that can help students learn and explore different topics. Boom Again is a good example of this — this baby boomer game is packed with trivia questions related to the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And while the game was made with baby boomers in mind, it can be a fun way for younger generations to explore the history and culture of those decades, especially if played alongside older relatives.

But providing a fun venue for learning isn’t the only way in which board games can be useful. Here are some of the other benefits that board games can provide for young students.

1 – Socialization

While most students start the process of learning about social norms and proper behavior with their families, school plays a massive role in helping socialize students. That’s because it gives students not only a chance to learn how to properly operate and behave within the context of a school setting, but it also gives them a chance to interact with various other kids of ages similar to theirs. This has always been valuable, but it’s becoming increasingly more important now that children are spending more and more of their early years staring at phone and tablet screens.

That is not to say that exploring the digital world doesn’t provide benefits, but it’s important to make sure these young students are also engaging in forms of entertainment that encourage them to work together and socialize with each other, as these early experiences spending time with other people will form the foundation of their social skills in the future. And board games provide a great opportunity for this type of social entertainment.

2 – Brain development

While the subject of brain development in young children is incredibly complicated, it’s safe to say that encouraging them to work their minds in a wide range of different situations has a positive effect overall. And while video games, books, movies, and sports all help improve the brains in different ways, board games can offer some unique challenges that students are unlikely to encounter anywhere else. Making them a prime source of brain-teasing puzzles and interesting opportunities for development.

3 – Connect with older generations

We are getting to a point where kids who grew up playing video games are now having children of their own. But for older parents and the grandparents of today’s children, it can still be hard to get into modern gaming. That’s where board games can be handy — the analog nature of this type of game can make them intuitive and accessible for people of all ages, providing young students with something fun they can do with their older relatives on family reunions.

4 – Creativity

One of the advantages of board games is that they are easy to modify. In a computer game, you are often limited by the rules set by the creators, but players can get together and agree on new rules for board games, and even create new boards and pieces to play with. It all encourages children to get creative and come up with their own ideas, which can be implemented with no coding skill required.