Printable Games for Kids

Children and fun games are synonymous. Games keep kids engaged and generally help in keeping them out of trouble. For most parents, keeping a child occupied indoors can be quite a difficult task. As kids a have short attention span, they get bored of the games they play very quickly. Buying new games regularly can be an expensive affair and becomes a source of squabbles, if one has more than one kid. Printable games are an excellent, inexpensive choice, that is not only educative, but will help in improving memory, concentration, and overall child development. They can be bought from the local shop or downloaded from the Internet. Following are some of the printable games available for children to play with.

Printable Games for Kids

Connect-the-Dots: Kids love the excitement of creating something they can recognize. The dots are usually numbered in a serial order, and connecting them brings out an image of different shapes and sizes. This game is also known as draw-by-numbers.

Complete-the-Pictures: In this game, one complete picture is printed and the other one is left incomplete (replica). This will test out the child's drawing and comprehensive skills. They would be required to complete the picture by drawing the few missing parts, and can use the complete picture as a reference.

Word Find: This game is like crosswords, where alphabets appear to be printed randomly, but have words, mostly four or five lettered words hidden in them. The words to be found are printed below the game or behind it.

Jigsaws: This is an interesting game, that requires a little help from an adult, especially if downloaded from the Internet. One would find an image of an object or animal printed on the paper, with lines earmarked for cutting them. Once the paper is cut as per the instructions given, it's piled up and handed over to the child to arrange it, in order to bring out the image.

Coloring: This is easy, and children can spend hours entertaining themselves with it. They can use crayons, sketches or water-paints to color the pictures on the paper.

Tic-Tac-Toe: This game can not only be played by children, but by the entire family too. This printed game has nine cells in it, and in order to win, one has have three similar looking patterns (usually a 0 or X), either placed in a straight line (horizontally or vertically), or diagonally.

Match-the-Object: This is a theme-based game. Two rows of objects (pictures), or object-words are printed opposite to each other. For eg. One image could be of raindrops, which should be matched to the randomly printed image or word of an umbrella.

Match-the-Number: This is similar to the above printed game. Two rows; one of objects (pictures), and another of numbers are printed opposite to each other. For eg. One image could be of five monkeys, which should be matched to the randomly printed number 5.

Maze: While giving this printable game to your child to play with, choose age-appropriate ones. A maze is printed on the paper, the kid has to find his/her way out of it to reach a particular destination or an object. Make sure the maze has plenty of twists and turns.

There are many more such printable games one can use to engage the child. These can be used when one is traveling, on a rainy day, or on a family-spending-time-together day. Most of these kids activities and crafts are educative and are a lot of fun to play.