What are the best brain-boosting games you can do with your kids?
Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash
Birds fly, frogs jump, and kids play. But there is much more to playing than just a fun pastime. Albert Einstein himself said that play is the highest form of research.
It has been proven that play improved the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development of children. Kids are discovering the world around them by playing and learning skills they need for study, relationships, and even work.
Of course, some games are better than others for developing certain skills. If your main focus is developing their cognitive abilities, you can choose from a variety of brain-boosting games you can play together. Here are just a few examples.
Jigsaw puzzles
Jigsaw puzzles are a great brain-boosting game that you can do with your kids. These puzzles require children to use their critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and memory retention. Furthermore, putting together jigsaw puzzles will also enhance your child’s imaginative thinking and help them excel in a variety of different fields. If your kid is new to puzzles, and you want to get him interested by introducing new puzzles once in a while, click here for jigsaw puzzle clearance or follow game store newsletters for any sales, to get more options with better prices. It’s always a good idea to opt for more affordable puzzles while keeping the assortment large as your child’s interests and skills change with time.
Storytelling
Children are naturally creative. They like to listen to stories and retell their experiences. They are also very imaginative. Encourage their imagination by writing a story together. Start with the main character. Come up with an adventure. Ask them if the story has a lesson of some sort. For some additional magic, come up with illustrations for the “chapters” and draw them together. This way, you’ll activate different parts of the brain and make it more fun, even.
Word games
Playing with words is always fun. Scrambled words turn up in various games, from scrabble to different apps. To make it even more interesting, you can make your own word puzzles and then motivate your kids to guess the solutions. An unscrambling tool can help you with that. Just need to enter a string of letters in the input box, and it will break it down into letters and show you world lists. You can use it to play all kinds of guessing and unscrambling games that will help your kids improve their logical thinking as well as their vocabulary.
Board games
Board games have always been a fun way for a family to spend time together. They can stimulate and engage children’s brains and benefit their development. This is happening mainly because they involve strategies and memorizing the moves and tactics. You can start playing these games while the children are very young, depending on the game. For example, checkers are an easy concept to grasp for children around the age of five. When they’re a bit older, you can even start with chess.
Scavenger hunt
Scavenger hunts are perfect for little detectives. It enables you to be creative while creating tasks and riddles while allowing the kids to use their creative thinking and problem-solving skills. It is a suitable game for kids five years and older, depending on the tasks. If you want to encourage them to think collectively and build social relationships, divide them into groups.
Verbal Venn connections
These are used to visualize logical links between various groups of elements. They work by giving the kids two distinct objects or categories. Then they are tasked with listing the commonalities between them. Finally, they can prepare a Venn diagram and apply that knowledge. It may sound complicated, but children around the age of six can master it easily.
Guess that sound
Music and sounds, in general, help kids develop their vocabulary, movement, balance, and creativity. It also brings people together. There are different ways to play these types of games. One would be to gather some noisy objects from the house, put them into a box, and tell the kids to guess the object by the sound it makes. You can also use musical instruments, YouTube videos, etc. Make the game a bit more complicated by encouraging them to guess the music notes.
Spot the difference
This activity consists of presenting two seemingly the same pictures but with some specific differences that can be spotted by looking deeply at the details of both pictures. The benefits are strengthening their concentration and improving their attention to detail. Prepping these activities is not difficult. You can find free printable options online. They are great for kids aged three and upward.
Solving mazes
In their essence, maze games are problem-solving games. They test children’s ability to see and remember the path. Kids get to learn through trial and error. Kids at the age of five can solve the simpler mazes. Along with their cognitive abilities, they will develop motor skills and eye-hand coordination by committing to pen and paper.
Memory cards
This one is a tried-and-tested game to improve the kids’ memory. The goal is to uncover similar or the same cards on a grid, with a maximum of two being revealed simultaneously. Only when the cards are the same or similar the picture sides are shown permanently. The task is to remember the correct location of the flashcards. Overall, the game improves not only memory but also focus and attention to detail.
In closing
These are just some of the brain-boosting activities you can play together with your little ones. Further exploration will lead you to other options, such as sudoku, color code, Blue Block (mobile game), puzzles, word hunt, etc. The most important things you can do are to try to keep them engaged and have fun with them.