Your child’s mind can be stimulated by playing brain games. Best Mind Games For Your Child In Current Era They are entertaining, enhance cognitive function, and even serve as a valuable means of reducing thoughtless and passive media intake. Here are ten brain games for kids to get you started if you’re trying to foster your child’s development, exercise cognitive skills, and establish a foundation for mental health.
A typical scenario in most households with small children is when your child has returned from school, eaten a delectable lunch, and then taken a nap. When your energetic young one gets up, the entire evening is still ahead of them, and they are already bored.
How Effective Are Brain Games? and What Are They?
Brain games are frequently created to improve and build particular cognitive abilities, such as focusing more attentively, processing information more quickly, and increasing attention. For your family, brain training can be a helpful tool. Whether you are only attempting to improve attention or academic performance or your child is dealing with executive function issues, language difficulties, learning disabilities, or ADHD.
Playing Brain-Training Games Has Many Benefits
Brain-training games are used by people of all ages to enhance cognitive performance and delay cognitive aging. They are supported by studies demonstrating that, when played over an extended period, brain-training games can improve cognition in several ways, including memory, response time, logic, and attention levels1.
Try these games and activities to boost your mental focus and fitness and to exercise your brain while having fun. Here are a few ideas and methods to keep young brains occupied while promoting cognitive growth. Playing mind games with your child will help stimulate their brain matter, which is something parents are constantly seeking methods to encourage.
It is abundantly evident from a well-known comment by the esteemed educationist Maria Montessori that encouraging youngsters to look around will help them “form themselves for the future.” As a result, we understand that engaging in activities that let kids use their senses helps them grow and develop logical and analytical reasoning that is more distinct.
The quality of a child’s early experiences, whether favorable or unfavorable, influences their brain growth. While every child has a unique personality from birth, external influences can also significantly impact how the brain develops. While genes are inherited, environmental effects affect cognitive development, according to our understanding of nature vs. nurture. Nowadays, it is believed that a combination of both nature and nurture contributes to intelligence.
Parents and educators should encourage nature and nurture aspects at home and school for the best possible brain development. A child’s brain grows more quickly between birth and five than at any other point in life. The connections necessary for many crucial higher-level skills, including motivation, self-control, problem-solving, and communication, are either developed during these early years or not at all.
Although memory is not fully formed until early childhood (birth through age 8), this period is crucial for acquiring and strengthening memory. Understanding how memory develops gives people a new perspective on organizing their life and looking for ways to improve their memory.Here are some of the best games and activities I have used to encourage and boost cognitive development at home and in school, drawing on my personal experience as a parent of a 14-year-old and a preschool teacher for the past ten years.
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Match Memory
A timeless pastime is matching picture cards. It depends on memory recall, and the person who can remember where each card is and has the most pairings wins. When my daughter was two years old, she was already familiar with ideas like animals and their young and animals and their homes, so we started playing memory games. The animal-themed cards would be placed upside-down on one side. On the opposite side, upside-down cards with images of animal houses, offspring, and food preferences would be placed. She had to match the appropriate pair while keeping in mind the card she chose during her turn and mine. What an enjoyable approach to improving memory and recall!
Later, this was expanded to include more ideas like positive behaviors, related items, etc. A memory match game is a simple game that may also be played in preschool.
What is lacking
Visual, auditory, and tactile memory recall Several household goods should be put on a tray (the more items, the more challenging the game, so for younger children, start with just 3-4 items and increase from there). You are requesting a close inspection of the objects on the tray from your child. Their collective names (the more you discuss the items, the more likely your child is to remember them, so you could ask them what color or shape each item is or what it is used for).Use a towel to cover the objects. When your child closes their eyes, have them or take something out from under the cover as they do so. Request that they open their eyes, remove the cloth, and explain what’s missing. Alternatively, request a list of the products from thermoform visual learners, this game stimulates visual memory. For those that learn better orally, it can be changed so that you name the words or objects instead of having them displayed. The student must focus on listening and remembering as many (in the same order to make it more challenging).Objects can be adapted for kinesthetic learners by being passed around in a circle (in each hand), felt before agreeing on a common name, and then recalling and listing all the objects.
Working on puzzles
Children’s engagement in assembling puzzle pieces to create the overall image is a beneficial mental exercise. Increase the difficulty progressively by starting with a 4-6 piece jigsaw for a nursing student and working your way up to an 8-10 and eventually a 10-12 piece problem. Don’t be shocked when your child solves a puzzle with 30 pieces or more one day.I have used puzzles of opposites, homonyms, objects that go together, etc., and picture puzzles to discover the proper pair and later as a memory match. What’s next, What’s missing, and What’s different puzzles give you room to consider. Additionally, teachers can create these puzzles and use them in class.
Sharing a Love of Board Games
We spent every afternoon playing board games while my daughter was between the ages of 4 and 6. I was continually looking for instructional games to add to her library. My all-time favorite board games include Candyland, Mastermind, Plot/Connect 4, Chinese Checkers, Guess Who, Monopoly, Kids on Stage, Color Track, Ludo, Scrabble, Cluedo, and many others. In addition to providing you with quality time with your child, these games help your child develop life skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking, logical thinking, creative thinking, analytical abilities, listening skills, etc. For instance, playing Connect Four pushes players to be proactive and watch out for opportunities to connect four discs. Additionally, it gives a chance to spot patterns. It starts the process of predicting how a different move will turn out. Children learn how to plan their moves while playing Chinese Checkers to advance their nine counters to the opposing side before the other players do. Guess who is a description-based elimination game. To be the first to identify the correct character, you must ask the right questions. This can also be utilized as a game in the classroom. Children must exercise good listening skills and teamwork. Students can use Mastermind in the classroom or lab to discuss scientific reasoning, develop logical thinking, and create successful experiments .Numerous board games, with variations including sight word tic tac toe, sight word snakes and ladders, CVC word ludo, etc., have been played in class. There are several advantages to playing board games! However, the top four advantages that come to mind are an increase in analytical thinking, the development and improvement of problem-solving skills, a sharpening of memory, and, most importantly, the acquisition of essential life lessons, such as the understanding that winning and losing are inherent parts of the game.
Moving Ahead Memory-enhancing games
- Spy and memory games like the names of flowers, birds, animals, and places are ideal for playing while I’m driving or walking through a park.
- Children are required to name anything that hasn’t already been called by anyone else. They must also reiterate the things mentioned earlier, adding to the list. Their knowledge and memory capacity grow as a result.
- Another available game is tic tac toe. Early strategy development and the use of reasoning are both aided by this.
- Around the time they turn six years old, you can introduce them to the Name, Place, Animal, and Thing game, a beloved childhood game for most of us.
- What’s the positive word? The personality in 20 Questions might keep their interest in later years.
Brain Games: Rewiring the Brain
- Memory and cognitive function are enhanced through brain games. Old-fashioned mind-stimulating games:
- Rubik’s cube, Rubik’s Race, Chess, Lego blocks, architecture, Tangram, and an electronic board game involving matching national flags are all examples of games.
- Stretching Our Thinking Through Word Games: Word games (as well as puzzles, board games, and similar activities) capture our attention, encourage us to form new connections, and help us think creatively.
- Riddles, Scrabble, Boggle, Hangman, and Taboo, are some word games you can play.
- These games stimulate the brain’s language and word-finding centers, making the brain work and move around.
Most of these are used at school as well to improve student learning.
Utilizing technology Online instructional games are abundant. Why not save a few memory and educational games relevant to the concepts? Technology cannot replace the instructor but may enhance teaching and learning. Kahoot is the quiz app I recommend. The play way method is taught to young children in preschool. It would be wonderful to incorporate brainteasers that stimulate thinking and make learning fun. You can combine these into the lesson plan. We play games like the clever-cube, the logic piccolo, and the Nonthinkers match frame in class. We provide games like the Insertable quiz, the Maze Chase, the Finding the Odd One Out, the Spot the Difference, and the Treasure/ Scavenger Hunt.
Final Words
There are countless games and activities. Maintaining the spark in young people’s minds is crucial. It all comes down to how creative one can be and how to share that creativity with others to help our children become more creative and intelligent.