Next week is American Crossword Puzzles Week. If you haven’t yet introduced your children to the joy of crossword puzzles, it might be a good time to start! Here are just some of the benefits of doing crossword puzzles:

• They’re fun—they provide intellectual stimulation in a game-like activity
• They utilize multiple skills, including vocabulary, spelling, and reasoning
• Crossword puzzles can help build new vocabulary words—as well as skills in using the dictionary and thesaurus
• Deductive reasoning and making choices are skills required to do crossword puzzles
• Multiple learning styles can be engaged in completing crossword puzzles
• Crossword puzzles keep the brain active and the mind and mood light

If you’d like to start doing crossword puzzles as a family—or to simply introduce them to your children—here are a few ideas.

Buy a crossword subscription. You can get crossword puzzle books in the mail each month. There are even options for choosing the kind of puzzles you’d like—easy, hard, themed, etc. You can make a game out of it each year by increasing the difficulty of the puzzles as your child gets better at doing them (if he or she is comfortable with doing so). As a bonus, he or she will get to look forward to receiving a monthly “magazine.”

Play puzzles online. There are many crossword puzzle sites on the web that you can play. USA Today has a daily puzzle, as do Boatload Puzzles and the LA Times. The New York Times lists puzzles by theme.

Get a Scrabble Junior set. These are an excellent way to learn more about words, vocabulary, and spelling—as well as using the crossword format. Older children may even wish to play regular Scrabble.

Make your own puzzle. This site has a very simple form to fill out, allowing you to create your own crossword clues and answers. It’s a perfect way to introduce crossword puzzles to younger children, as you can make personal clues and answers, such as “Our cat’s name” or “Daddy’s favorite color.” (If you’re interested in doing the same thing with other puzzles, this site has dozens of nifty templates.)

Invest in a good dictionary and thesaurus. Collegiate ones are great. Yes, you can show your children how to use the online versions, but the portable ones will always be readily available—and help teach excellent research skills.