Gather with friends and family on Wednesday, December 29 for games at the Grand Marais Library. Try electronic games or board games— new research shows they both improve attention and cognitive skills!
The holiday presents have all been opened and the turkey leftovers are gone. You have skied and sledded and built a giant snowman, but your house is still full of restless relatives and children on vacation. What do you do now? The Grand Marais Public Library has a great community option for you on Wednesday evening, Dec. 29. Come to the library between 7 and 9 p.m. and play games!
Bring your family and friends and enjoy a game of chess or checkers, cards, Scrabble or Risk. Or you can challenge someone to test their nerve and skill with actionpacked family-friendly electronic games for the Xbox 360 or Wii gaming systems. Children’s librarian Patsy Ingebrigtsen says, “We encourage you to use the library’s games or bring your own. Our computers will be available for online games and we will provide coffee, cocoa and treats. See you there!”
Electronic gaming at public libraries has mushroomed in the last few years because, aside from providing a fun way to attract students to the library and expose them to books and information, playing games provides a way to sharpen problem solving skills and requires players to think their way out of puzzles and snares. Daphe Bavelier is a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. She studies young people playing action video games. Having now conducted more than 20 studies on the topic, Bavelier says, “It turns out that action video games are far from mindless.”
Her studies show that video gamers show improved skills in vision, attention and certain aspects of cognition. And these skills are not just gaming skills, but real-world skills. They perform better than non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and multitasking, says Bavelier.
So whether you prefer traditional board games or electronic games, come to the Grand Marais Public Library on Dec. 29 and give your brain and your funny bone a workout!
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