Okay, I’m a fan of board games especially those that help develop the brain. Well, Monopoly’s quite a scary game to teach to kids. I’m not for teaching kids how to go for the big bucks right of the bat. Those you learn later on in life.

But one thing I think kids should learn is their command of the language. More often than not, I’ve seen kids who reach high school who could not even think of other adjectives besides good, bad, and cool.

Party and board games maybe boring in the advent of Playstations and Wiis but I’d still credit good old Scrabble for forcing me to open dictionaries and hit my books. I know there are a lot of games out there that still make it a point to educate one way or another (How many versions of Trivial Pursuit is there?) and I’d like to make my a few lists.

Here’s my list of Top 5 Games for Building Vocabulary not necessarily in order:

1. Scrabble – Your good old family board game. Doesn’t dad gets angry when you get that Triple Word Score?
2. Taboo – Quite challenging. I remember we used to play this even in college (inside the classroom as part of an introduction to materials for teaching English).
3. Boggle – The time pressure’s a good exercise.
4. Balderdash – Making sense of what seems to be nonsense.
5. Upwords – Scrabble with a twist.

You may find out more about boardgames and such at BoardGameGeeks.