7 Paper and Pencil Games to Enjoy with Your Family
It’s normal for children to get bored. This boredom gives way to creativity and ideas to get out of that state. However, if little ones are having a hard time coming up with something to do, then parents can help them by finding homemade activities that can be fun for everyone. What about using paper and pencil games? They’re sure to be very entertaining!
Normally, we play board games, watch movies, spend some time on the video game console… But paper and pencil games can help the whole family to enjoy fun times while also stimulating children’s reasoning skills.
Paper and pencil games for younger children
Now that you have much more time for boredom, you may find yourself running out of ideas. Therefore, these games can surely get us out of more than one predicament.
Of course, you need to keep in mind that you’ll have to choose and adapt these games according to the ages and abilities of your little ones.
Connect-the-dots
This game is a lot of fun and also helps to improve reasoning skills. Even if you’re not a skilled drawer, you’ll surely be able to make some simple connect-the-dot activities, like an orange, a fish, a teddy bear, etc.
You just need to create a drawing by making a series of numbered points. Then, when your child joins those points with a marker or crayon, the figure will appear.
Tip: You can first draw the figure very lightly with a pencil and then erase the outline once you’ve marked and numbered the dots.
Your children will have to join the numbered points with lines until they get the silhouette of the drawing. They’ll love this game because of the excitement of discovering which figure will appear behind these numbered dots.
The funny monster
This game, besides being easy, will display your children’s creativity. What you’ll do is take turns drawing with just a pencil and a sheet of paper.
The first player will draw the head of the monster. When they’re finished, they’ll fold the paper so that only the neck can be seen a little bit.
The next player will continue drawing the shoulders and trunk. Then, they’ll fold it again with only the very bottom showing, so that the next player can continue drawing more of the monster, and so on. You’ll continue until all the participants have had a turn to draw.
When everyone has finished, you’ll unfold the paper and your super monster will appear. The children will love it and you’ll have a great time laughing!
Guess what/who it is
One of the players will draw a character or anything that comes to mind and the others have to guess what it is.
Paper and pencil maze
On a sheet of paper, a parent will draw a maze and your children will have to find their way out. On one side, for example, you can draw a child, a rabbit or anything else you can think of and, at the other end, a ball, some carrots, etc. The mission is to find the exit by drawing a line from one end to the other.
Paper and pencil games for older children
Word searches
You can buy or download ready-made word searches for your children to make or create them yourselves. Then, draw a square on the sheet of paper and place words, vertically, horizontally and diagonally, filling in the other gaps with random letters.
Of course, make sure to neatly arrange the letters in rows and columns.
Hangman
Who hasn’t played this game before? One player has to draw as many dashes as there are letters in the word they want you to guess. If you want to make the game easier, you can fill in a few letters as clues.
The players who have to figure out the word have to take turns guessing different letters. If the letters appear in the word, great; if not, then the leader will fill in a body part for each mistake…
The head, the body, an arm, another arm, a leg, and so on. Once the human figure is complete, the guessers lose because they’ve run out of chances to guess the word.
Scattegories
This is a very fun game. At the top of the sheet, placed horizontally, you’ll create a row of different categories. For example, names, animals, cities, fruits, countries, colors, food, furniture, etc.
At the beginning of the game, one player chooses a letter and all players have to think of a word for each category that begins with that letter. When a player finishes filling all their categories, the game stops, even if the rest of the players aren’t finished. Then each player adds up their points.
Each correct answer is worth 10 points and, if several players wrote down the same word, then they get 5 points each. You can play as many rounds as you want, choosing a different letter for each round. The player with the most overall points wins.
As you can see, you can have fun at home with very few materials. These paper and pencil games, in addition to being entertaining, provide children with many benefits at the cognitive level through reasoning, strategy, logic, etc.
They’ll also help children develop manual dexterity, acquire vocabulary, and use their creativity. So, what are you waiting for to put them into practice?
