Educational Value of Crossword puzzles

Crossword puzzles are perhaps one of the most popular and the highest played game ever in the history of brain teasers. People flock to the beauty of the game irrespective of their age due to experience the unending fun and excitement surrounding the game. In a Crossword puzzle, one has to fill a row or column of certain length in the grid formed by intersection of several rows and columns. The filling up words is facilitated by several clues included below the puzzle which makes the game even more interesting. The clues are generally phrases or definition of words pointing out to the required answer directly or indirectly. A Crossword puzzle is thus a perfect brain teaser which demands wit and knowledge while providing fun and entertainment.

If you are an ardent follower of Crossword puzzle, you may have come across a few questions in your mindat some point in your life regarding the need to play Crosswords and their effectiveness. Crosswords surely are an excellent method of exercising our brains. When we play puzzles like Crosswords, our brain continuously works in order to traverse through your memory bank and look for answers. This is not only beneficial for maintain healthy state of mind but also highly essential in taking proper care of the brain which is the power hub of all our activities. Unless the same is done, we may get affected by signs of dementia in early stages of our life which would be the result of the improper functioning and workout of the brain. Crosswords have several other benefits too. Summing up a few in your mind? Well one of those inevitable benefits includes the increasing thirst of knowledge promoted by solving crosswords. Crossword puzzles have gained huge popularity in a short span of time not only because of their simplicity but also because they have high educational importance. While they serve as an engaging time pass activity for elders, their importance surpasses the rest when considered for students. Let us see how.

As said above, the educational importance and value of crossword puzzle is inevitable. If you consider the skills required to develop and complete a crossword puzzle, it is quite apparent that crossword puzzles can be a great tool for both teachers and parents. Crossword puzzles came into existence around the early 20th century and although crossword puzzles started it journey as a pastime activity for teenagers and still continues to be one of the greatest pastime activities around the world both for adults and adolescents, crossword puzzles' ability to educate young pupil was soon picked up by teachers - transforming it into a handy educational tool. Crossword puzzles are now an essential part in most of the leading kid magazines as it helps young kids to sharpen their language skills, while the more matured teenagers love to solve crossword puzzles to enrich their vocabulary in an interactive and fun way. A survey revealed that crossword puzzles are so addictive and entertaining that millions of copies of magazines and books are sold everyday just for the sake of completing the crossword puzzle in them. And who don't love to spend their Sunday morning relaxing on a couch while scribing upon the crossword puzzle on the back of the newspaper?

The invent of the photocopy techniques helped the teachers in forming their own generated crossword puzzles to cover the topics in it that they were covering in their class - making the study process more interactive. And after the introduction of the internet and computer being a common place saga now, teachers were able to create crosswords puzzles at ease with various tools and programs available in the internet, like the Discovery Education Puzzlemaker which lets you create printable crossword puzzles for absolutely free. So it is of no doubt that crossword puzzles are being used greatly by educators around the world for making lessons for more friendly and study materials more engaging - but the real question is whether the crossword puzzles are really a good tool to spread education? Do they really help in grasping on to the basic facts much quickly than the dull traditional method of teaching? Let's find out by going through this list of beneficial skill areas showcasing the educational importance of crossword puzzles -

Helping In Building Ones Vocabulary Skills

Crossword puzzles can greatly help the frequent and addicted crossword puzzle solver by expanding their set of vocabulary. It is evident that a person who religiously solves crossword puzzles daily has an extensive knowledge of vocabulary than an average guy of his age. This is also because Crosswords emphasize on similar words often and so even if you are reluctant in memorizing the individual definition of words, rest assured that the frequent encounters would automatically instil the words into your mind, permanently.

Strengthening Spelling Skills

One of the most important aspects of crossword puzzles are not only you have to find out the demanded word but also the spelling of the word has to be right for you to be able to solve the puzzle. So it in turn develops your spelling skills greatly which proves to be quite beneficial in the long run. A person with good sense of grammar and vocabulary is always preferred to one having either or none.

Reading, Dictionary and Reasoning Skill Increase

Crosswords can be a great way to overcome the issues with reading a phrase for people with reading difficulty and word comprehension problems. The crossword puzzle taker has to read out the phrase, make out the meaning and search for synonyms in a dictionary, which increases his or her proficiency in finding a word out of the dictionary. Not only you have to find the a word out of the dictionary you have to find out the most appropriate one that fits the space provided for the word the most.

Along with all these crossword puzzle incorporated with a science or history lesson can help the students grasp the basic facts they need to remember in each chapter. So one can easily say that the educational value of crossword puzzles is truly great!