While it is true that when little, everything kids do can qualify as memorizing and understanding the world around them, we as parents have the unique opportunity to help this developmental process. Since small kids are all about fun and games, the easiest way to make them learn new things is by ditching the notion of learning altogether. Here are some ideas you can steal from alternative teaching methods so that your kid can better prepare for future cognitive challenges, without being aware that he/she is, in fact, being educated at that moment. And since these games will include you having to join in, you’ll forget you’re teaching your kid something too.
The Fishing Game
In order to play this game, you’ll need a magnetic wooden fishing game. This game is amazing for so many reasons. It can help your child become more observant and better with coordination. In order to make it even more fun, whenever he/she catches something with the fishing rod, you can make him/her say a sentence that includes the kind of animal that’s caught while doing something else. For example, after presenting the names of the different animals, you can say: Get me the starfish! Once your kid succeeds, you can say: Hop and tell me what you got! – He/she can then start hopping while saying: I got a starfish.
Whenever you make your child focus on two diametrically opposed things at once such as saying a full sentence with the name of an animal he/she has just learned while doing a physical activity such as hoping, you are helping the transfer of signals of the two brain hemispheres. And you don’t have to be learning only about animals that live in the water with this method. There are many magnetic wooden fishing game types that include insects or other types of animals.
The Musical Chair
This game will not only help you present different types of music to your child, but it will also get him/her moving and having to pay close attention to what is going on. In order to play this game with your child, all you need is a chair and your phone. Place the chair in the middle of the room and choose several songs you’ll play. Make sure they are from different genres of music. Tell your child something about the song and the genre before you begin and then start playing. Once the music starts, you and your kid should start dancing around the chair. If it’s just the two of you, have the phone in your hand and press stop whenever you feel like it.
The point of the game is to sit on the chair when the music stops. And since there is only one chair, the one who is fast enough is the winner and the one left standing the loser. When you press play, you should both start dancing around the chair again. If your partner can join in, or if you have more children, even better cause this game is even funnier when more people are included. Also, you can take turns regarding who presses play and stop, so that the game is fair for everyone.