Let’s play board game together: How board games benefit child development and learning

Abstract

Play contributes and stimulates learning which helps children to experience their surrounding world and giving meaning to the world in a lifelong process. As research has seen, play influences children's learning as well as in children's development. Play represents significant developmental behaviors in itself and in relation to other developmental domains. Board games play is becoming popular in Malaysia. Parental belief and perception regarding play is important. The study aimed at exploring how Malaysian parents perceive board games play and learning with their children. Through semi-structured interviews, this study investigated 16 Chinese parents' perceptions on board games play and children's learning. These participants were recruited through preschools in Penang, Malaysia. This study found that parents appreciated play and board games play and associated board games play with developmental significance. Parents valued the quality family bonding time which board games could provide. To conclude, parents viewed at play and board games play positively but indicate that both were different from teaching materials. This finding suggested that parents or stakeholders who work with children, could consider using play and board games play as one of the learning methods.