Cooperative Board Games: What You Should Know
Cooperative board games are games that should not be absent in schools or at home. They have nothing to do with the traditional games of following rules and seeing who wins and who loses. Children learn through fun and best of all, they enjoy teamwork. Everyone wins or everyone loses.
The little ones learn to work as a team instead of doing it in a competitive way, where some go against each other to make them lose and some win and others get frustrated in the face of defeat. Cooperative board games have many advantages that you should know, so we want you to understand everything that it can offer to children and not so young.
In cooperative board games, competition exists, but it is different
In games there are no fights to see who wins or who loses. You don’t have to be the fastest or the smartest; you also don’t have to try to cheat to win. None of this is necessary, and thank goodness!
Although it is true that competitive board games are fun and also have advantages in the development of children, they have nothing to do with cooperative games.
In cooperative games you need to draw a joint strategy and think together, because it is not so that one wins and another loses, but so that everyone wins or everyone loses. So, both the satisfaction of winning or the frustration of having lost is shared with other people, so if you win, you share it humbly, and if you lose, you share those feelings of empathy.
Although the competition exists, it is totally different from the more traditional games. All players row together in the same boat and always in the same direction. The objective is common to all and it takes collective thinking and joint movements to reach the final objective of the game in question.
Teamwork is the basis of cooperative games
As you can see, teamwork is essential. It takes constant cooperation to win and this is the first and most important learning for the participants: everyone needs everyone.
In addition, children (and adults), when they work as a team, feel that they belong to a group, that is, the feeling of belonging to a group that works to achieve a common goal is awakened, and there is nothing more human than this in the interpersonal relationships.
You look at things from a different perspective than how they would look if you worked the game individually. In this case, empathy, compassion, commitment, solidarity, generosity are necessary. They are values that, in addition to knowing them (sometimes for the first time), are also enhanced.
But, if that weren’t enough, children will be able to think creatively without having to compete individually. They will realize that competition is not always individual and that there are many ways to do it and to achieve goals.
They will feel more motivation
Children tend to feel quite motivated by these types of games, especially when they have never played them before and are too used to winning or losing. Finding out that you don’t always win or lose and that that’s okay too can be a wonderful discovery for little ones.
On the other hand, they will also feel that motivation fills them because they will want to explore this new way of playing, with new dynamics and to realize that the best competition they can do in games and in life is with themselves.
It is the fastest way to adapt to the circumstances of life and, in the case of cooperative play, to adapt to the joint strategy and thus obtain a common goal.
Easy rules
Furthermore, in virtually all cooperative games the rules are easy to understand and children can actively participate from the first minute of play. They can be shared as a family or children can play while an adult supervises.
Ultimately, players feel better about cooperative play. They are an alternative that can complement the more traditional or classic games very well. Let the children choose which game they want to play at each moment. You will be pleasantly surprised!
