Intelligence games are a fun way to stimulate children’s intelligence.
From traditional games to online options , adapted to different ages and designed to enhance different intelligences.
Keep reading to discover the best games created to stimulate and strengthen the intellectual skills of the little ones.
We will also tell you everything you need to know about intelligence tests. Is it possible to measure our cognitive abilities? From what ages can the intellectual development of a child be evaluated? How to know if a child is gifted?
Because at top10world we believe that learning and having fun should be synonymous. We tell you how it is possible to develop the logical thinking of children (and adults too!) through play.
games to think
Thinking skills are developed (like all other skills) through practice.
And what better way to practice than to do it through play.
Because yes, it is possible for a child to have fun while learning to think.
Thinking games are popular because they are challenging and creative. At home, school, online or traditional: fun is guaranteed.
brain games
Intelligence games enhance the mental skills of the little ones, visibly improving their academic performance.
Because the brain (despite popular belief) is not a muscle, but it must be exercised as such from childhood.
Just as children do physical education, mental gymnastics is also essential to develop new neural connections.
children’s intelligence games
A child’s intelligence can be activated through any activity that requires mental effort.
Read a book, write a story, argue an opinion or learn to play an instrument.
However, stimulating their intelligence through play is an option that is especially suitable for children.
In this way they will associate fun with learning from a very young age and this connection will help them enjoy working with their minds for the rest of their lives.
thinking games for kids
No child will ask you like this: “please, buy me a thinking game”.
We are sure!
But there are plenty of games designed to activate children’s minds without them even realizing it.
They will only think about what fun they are having. And they will love to test themselves, take on challenges and move forward.
You have a multitude of options: ingenuity, logic, questions, strategy. Whatever it is, integrating thinking games into a child’s education will always be an excellent decision.
brain teasers
Ingenuity games activate children’s neurons: riddles, puzzles , search-and-find books, mathematical challenges… the options are endless and must be adapted to the child’s age.
Of course, it is essential to raise the game at the right time. If the child is in a row, do not try to seat him at a table.
The secret of success is to look for quiet moments, for reflection.
In this sense, we recommend you take advantage of the moments of the journey to school (walking or by car) to start activating your mind in a playful way.
puzzle games
Who doesn’t like a riddle? These guessing games have been passed down orally for centuries. In fact, we are sure that if you ask your parents or grandparents they will be able to teach you a lot.
The key to these puzzles is that the solution does not depend on having a certain knowledge, but on finding hidden meanings through lateral thinking, intuition or logical development.
Try posing riddles to a child and you will see how his mind does not stop offering creative answers until he finds the solution.
Intelligence quiz games for kids
Asking clever questions that stimulate their intelligence is a quick and effective way to stimulate the child’s mind.
And it is that reaching the correct answer using the ability of logic helps children to improve their reasoning and deduction skills.
They will immediately grab their attention and force them to think creatively.
You will see how if you start a dynamic of intelligence questions with children, they will ask you more and more.
(😉 And, by the way, if you know the answers to these questions… Leave them in the comments of this post !)
games for ready
Gifted children often have a problem: they get very bored.
And it is that the pace of their peers is slow, their mental agility causes them to overtime and may even end up with problems of attention deficit.
For this reason, it is essential to provide these children with mental games to which they can resort autonomously. We especially recommend you to have books of questions, concentration or visual perception at home.
The hours will fly by.
Games to know my intelligence
Are there games to determine the intelligence of a child?
Of course, his skill and speed in solving mind games can give us clues.
But to determine the intelligence of a child, three actions are necessary: observe, interview the child and his family, and apply special tests.
Our advice is not to worry at all about measuring your child’s intelligence. The level tests and exercises of the school will be enough to determine if there is any consideration to take into account.
These intelligence tests for minors should only be carried out under special supervision by pedagogues.
intelligence games
There are many intelligence games to promote your child’s abilities in a fun way.
Remember, even if they do mental activities at school, it is important to reinforce their cognitive development at home as well.
Some of these intelligence games for children are:
- Match tiles.
- Building blocks.
- labyrinths.
- Ladies.
- puzzle
- Domino.
- Jenga.
- Tangram.
- Riddles.
- Hanoi towers.
high intelligence games
If what you are looking for are games for high-capacity children, our recommendation is classic and infallible: bet on chess.
Improves memory, creativity and imagination. It can be taken anywhere and you can share the game with it.
Of course, our advice is to limit the competitive aspect of the game. It is important to play down the importance of being a winner or a loser. The goal is not to be the new “Queen’s Gambit” but to have fun and improve cognitive abilities.
Games to stimulate intelligence
At an early age we can stimulate the intelligence of our children through scientific games.
These games are based on observing, gathering information and making predictions.
For example, group objects by categories, serialize them, or carry out home experiments observing changes in the state of food or water.
The important thing in this case is to guide them towards the correct answers by asking them questions that help them get on track, reconsider and motivate themselves.
board intelligence games
A fun option to stimulate the minds of the little ones as a family is board games.
These are our favorites, and we are sure that you will know them because they are board games that conquer hearts generation after generation:
- Scrabble: the best board game to enrich vocabulary; It has a junior version adapted for children from 6 years old.
- Rummikub: in this case what is developed is mathematical logical thinking through the creation of numerical sequences.
- Cluedo: the favorite of detectives. It is one of the best-selling board games in history. Thanks to it we can improve our deduction capacity.
- Dixit: a game to turn images into stories, perfect for fostering creativity and lateral thinking.
intelligence games online
Although some parents are reluctant to allow their children to spend time in front of the screen, the truth is that there are many educational online games suitable for any age.
We advise you to visit the ranking of the most downloaded games in the App Store of your device and bet on renowned educational game developers such as Toca Boca, OhNoo Studio or Avokiddo.
In any case, in the balance lies success. Combine online gaming with real-life gaming and limit daily screen time.
Acquiring digital skills will be essential for your child’s development, but there is no rush and in the early years it is important that they develop psychomotor manual skills.
Logic games for kids
To develop logic, an excellent playful option is puzzles .
And maybe you haven’t thought about all the puzzle options available for kids:
- Traditional, like the photographic puzzles of pieces.
- In cube format, like the mythical Rubik’s cube.
- To encourage creativity, like Tangram.
In fact, puzzles are one of the best-selling logic games in the world, thanks to the fact that they can be played from 12 months, up to 100 years (and beyond).
They develop fine motor skills, logic and a much needed skill to train among the little ones: patience.
Logic and intelligence games
The main value of these games is that they act as training for subsequent tasks of greater difficulty for the child. For example, learning to solve equations, multiplication tables or fractions.
They are usually based on basic mathematical concepts, with exercises such as observing sets of numbers, ordering them, knowing how to continue series or finding correspondences.
It sounds boring? Well think about this: some mathematical logic games are parcheesi, three in a row or the classic goose.
Without realizing it, the child will learn to add (counting points on the dice), detect sets or make mathematical predictions.
Games of skill
In this case, we suggest games that combine the acquisition of mental and physical skills.
For example, 3D modeling, design or construction games.
With these games the child stimulates his creative abilities while he better understands the space around him and trains his mind to use the body intelligently (and vice versa).
Memory and intelligence games
Developing memory skills from a very early age is a key factor for a child’s future school performance.
And it is that a good memory is essential to promote learning and social skills.
In memory games for children there is a clear winner: matching cards.
It is a game with a very simple mechanics consisting of placing several illustrated cards face down and uncovering them one by one until memorizing and finding the pairs.
Memory games to find pairs can be played from a very young age (from 3 years old), but it is important that the first few times the game is guided by an adult who helps the child understand the dynamics without pressure. This way the little one will acquire the necessary confidence to continue playing alone later on.
Strategy and Intelligence games
Strategy games for children provide many benefits to activate their intelligence, since they allow them to activate both hemispheres of the brain at the same time.
They also help them know how to weigh options, make decisions and accept their consequences. Therefore, they are great for improving their ability to resolve conflicts as adults.
Some of the most popular strategy games are:
- Sink the float.
- Liar.
- Labyrinth.
- Blocks.
- Ladies.
- Catan.
fun intelligence games
If what you are looking for are fun game options that stimulate the intelligence of the little ones, we encourage you to trust some very entertaining classics that never fail.
For example, “The Treasure Hunt”.
Try hiding an object in a corner of the house (or the park) and provide the child with clues to help him find it.
It is important not to develop the game using the “cold-warm-hot” method, but to pose mental puzzles of gradual difficulty.
In this way, the game will be more fun for the child, and at the same time we will stimulate their logical, mnemonic and concentration capacity.
Difficult intelligence games
At ages closer to adolescence, we must gradually increase the difficulty of intelligence games.
We recommend you start the pre-adolescent in the world of Sudokus. Practicing the ancient game of completing a certain number of empty cells with sequences of numbers, he will develop his spatial and mathematical intelligence.
There are Sudoku puzzles of all levels. Its difficulty depends on the number of cells that make up the board and how many digits are already placed when the game starts.
The ideal is for the little ones to start with 3 or 4-digit Sudoku puzzles and gradually increase the difficulty, until they reach adult-level Sudoku puzzles.
Multiple intelligence games
In 1983 psychologist Howard Gardner formulated the Theory of Multiple Intelligences and revolutionized the world of pedagogy.
His proposal stated that intelligence is not unique and absolute, but is made up of various types of intelligence, independent (at least partially) of each other.
These multiple intelligences games are:
- Logical-mathematical intelligence.
- Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.
- individual intelligence.
- Interpersonal intelligence.
- naturalistic intelligence.
- emotional intelligence
Read on to discover some games for kids designed to develop some of these multiple intelligences.
Develop spatial intelligence
Spatial intelligence is one that allows the child to observe objects from different perspectives.
Developing this type of intelligence will allow the child to excel in future professions such as piloting, architecture or engineering.
Some games that activate spatial intelligence:
- Cube Puzzles . _
- Clay.
- Building Blocks .
- Assembly games.
- Escape Rooms .
visual intelligence games
Visual intelligence measures a child’s ability to observe, identify, and differentiate details about the colors and shapes of objects.
It is similar to spatial intelligence, but without taking dimensions into account and focusing more on attention to detail, memory and reproducibility.
Visual intelligence is typical of great painters, designers or photographers.
Some games to enhance visual intelligence are:
- Draw.
- Collage .
- Trace.
- Pictionary.
- Mastermind.
- Lynx.
- Seek and find books.
Math intelligence games
Mathematical intelligence is an essential skill for children to relate to their environment normally and understand complex abstract concepts in the future.
In this case, games are a fantastic option to make an association between math and fun from an early age.
In this way, we will avoid that in their educational development “ the mates choke ”.
Some mathematical intelligence games for children are:
- Domino
- abacuses
- Jenga
- Balances
- rummi
- Scientific Games
- Hourglasses _
- Cubes of Equivalences
intelligence Linguistic games
Words are powerful and a child needs to boost their linguistic intelligence to communicate effectively with their environment.
This type of intelligence encompasses both the oral and written skills of the child and is one of the intelligences that are most influenced by the growth environment.
By stimulating the linguistic intelligence of the little ones, we will create future writers, lawyers or politicians.
These are our game recommendations to improve a child’s linguistic intelligence:
- puppets
- Conversation Dice
- I see I see.
- Mastermind.
- Who I am?
- Riddles.
- Tongue twister.
- Storytelling.
- Forbidden words.
- rhymes.
Intelligence games for elementary school children
Numerous scientific investigations have discovered that in this first section of school age, children have an amazing intellectual potential.
And not only that. Also very curious and learning ability.
The perfect combination, don’t you think? Adults should take advantage of the moment to stimulate their minds.
It is also important to adapt the games and challenges to the different stages of primary school, since from 6 years old to 12 years old their needs, abilities and tastes will vary completely.
Intelligence games for 6 year olds
There are hundreds of intelligence games designed to conquer the hearts of children between 6 and 8 years old.
Puzzles , matching pictures, card games or mazes.
But beyond toys, activities such as making up stories, recounting memories or classifying objects will be tremendously fun for them and will serve to train their brain.
It is also committed to traditional role-playing games: shopping, cooking, visiting the dentist, becoming a veterinarian or an astronaut will help them stimulate their verbal and visual intelligence and imagination while they enjoy unforgettable moments.
Intelligence games for 9 year olds
It’s time to take a step further and get (just a little bit) more serious.
Riddle and puzzle books are an excellent option for children to exercise their intelligence autonomously, daily and at their own pace.
Board games like Dixit, where they must associate enigmatic phrases with evocative images, are also a safe bet.
Other classic games like Cluedo or Carcassonne are other options that never fail.
It is also a good time to start chess. No game will help them so much to stimulate their memory, concentration and imagination.
In fact, it has been shown that regular practice can raise the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of your players.
And it is that chess helps the child to form a scientific thought, since it challenges him to formulate and test one hypothesis after another, constantly:
What would happen if…?
It is one of the best reflections that a child can integrate into their way of thinking to learn to make good decisions as an adult.
Mind games for adults
And speaking of adults… in this article we have talked about intelligence games for children. But we believe that it is always a good age to exercise the mind.
And also to continue playing.
Stimulating the brain in childhood is essential to develop all the intellectual potential at the age of greatest potential.
But continuing to exercise the brain in adulthood is essential in order not to lose the skills acquired.
Like any other organ in the body, we must also take care of our brain to keep it in shape.
intelligence games for adults
Many children’s intelligence games that we have already talked about , are also valid to stimulate the mind of adults:
- Sudoku.
- Chess.
- Domino.
- Scrabble.
- puzzle .
They are just some examples.
You can also share board games or strategy video games with your children.
Hobbies of any kind (crossword puzzles, word searches, find differences) are other fun options to exercise your neurons.
Or just… write a diary.
Inteligence test
If you are interested in finding out about games that help you or your children to improve your intellectual abilities, surely you are asking yourself an initial question.
But… How do I measure my intelligence? Is it possible to calculate how smart I am?
Well, we have the answer, and it is: yes, you can test your cognitive abilities.
But you should know some things before you measure it.
The first thing is that intelligence and knowledge are not synonyms.
Knowledge is all data that you learn by studying or through experience.
While intelligence is an inherent capacity of the human being that allows you to solve problems, reason, argue, understand, argue or think abstractly.
And like any ability, intelligence can be developed through training. That’s why brain games are really effective.
general intelligence test
We can divide intelligence tests into two large groups: those that measure general intelligence and those that assess specific aptitudes.
General intelligence tests are usually written tests with several answers to choose from.
Problems with increasing difficulty are posed, with challenges on series of numbers, words or figures.
These tests serve to measure a person’s general ability to solve abstract-type challenges, which is considered a standard indicator of intellectual efficiency.
Intelligence test IQ and Intellectual Quotient
To determine the level of intelligence there is a universal unit of measurement: the Intellectual Coefficient (IQ).
The Intellectual Coefficient is a scale that evaluates the cognitive abilities of a person in relation to their age group.
It is the result of the compilation of some standardized tests designed throughout the 20th century.
There is a curious phenomenon, and that is that, during the last century, the average IQ scores of many populations have grown continuously.
However, it seems that in the last twenty years an inverse effect is taking place in some advanced countries such as Sweden, Australia, France or Great Britain.
Test on types of intelligence
And it is that people are the result of a mixture of specific capacities. It is that mix of multiple intelligences that makes us unique.
There are several tests specifically designed to find out what kind of intelligence a person stands out for.
Because to succeed professionally it is important to know what our natural strengths are, in order to develop them and make the most of them.
Free professional intelligence test
You can find many free professional intelligence tests on the internet.
Most are designed to find out in which intellectual area you stand out, in order to guide your studies and professional career.
For example, an engineer will need to be specially trained in spatial intelligence, and a good teacher must be proficient in language skills.
Choosing a profession that suits your affinities and abilities is a key factor in feeling fulfilled as an adult.
For this reason, in schools this type of professional intelligence test is usually done before adolescents are ready to choose training paths.
free intelligence test
On the internet you will find many free intelligence tests to measure your general IQ or detect your predominant diverse intelligence.
If you are going to take the IQ test, you should know that an index between 90 and 110 IQ ( intelligence quotient ) is considered the average of the population.
But no matter how high IQ you get, remember: general intelligence is not a predictor of how successful a person will be in life.
People are much more than a number. We are all good at something, we must find it and train it.
spatial intelligence test
A spatial intelligence test determines a person’s ability to think in two dimensions and three dimensions.
Some of the specific abilities that it measures are capturing details, recognizing figures, orienting oneself or calculating areas.
It is an essential intelligence for athletes, architects, pilots or designers.
Spatial intelligence tests usually include questions about which objects fit together or carry out translations of shapes between simple and 3D planes.
Emotional intelligence test
Emotional intelligence refers to our ability to understand other people’s feelings, motivations, and fears. But also of oneself.
And our ability to use that emotional information to guide our behavior in ways that help us achieve our goals.
The term became popular after 1995, following the publication of Daniel Goleman’s book titled in this way.
Today, emotional intelligence is considered an essential factor when carrying out personnel selection processes, since it has been shown that very intelligent people can fail at work if they do not have these intrapersonal skills.
The tests to measure emotional intelligence carry out an indicative measurement by asking questions about your self-knowledge, self-control, empathy and social skills.
Reliable intelligence test
Current intelligence tests are well-proven tests, which are based on different theories and theoretical frameworks about human intelligence.
We can say yes, they are reliable. But be careful with the method of realization.
Any test that you carry out through the internet or simply on your own, you should take it as an estimate.
The only questionnaires that have real validity are those carried out and analyzed by a professional psychologist who is an expert in the field.
Especially in the case of intelligence tests for children, it is essential that these tests are completed with the exhaustive observation of a professional psychologist, who must also hold a personal interview with the child.
