According to researches, kids are the best learners. They can acquire things more easily through play. Instead of buying them expensive toys, buying them intelligent ones is a fair play. There are certain indoor as well as outdoor games that help in encouraging our children to play and have fun, thereby developing healthy connections and choices in life.
Outdoor Activities:
Game: Follow the Leader, for your toddler
How
to play the game
The children can line up and one child is designated as a leader whom the rest of the kids are to follow around. To begin with, an adult can lead so kids get the idea. The Leader begins moving around with actions that the rest of the players must mimic. Anything — including sit down or stand up, dance, jump — what the leader does, the others must follow. Those players who disobey, or lag behind the leader's motions are out of the game. The last person standing becomes the new Leader.
Objective:
Objective:
The children learn to observe closely, and use the power of mimicry.
Make it more fun:
Set the game to music. The leader can demonstrate dance moves that the followers must imitate.
Sand and Water Sensory Play:
This is an outdoor game and can keep your child engaged in their summer holidays. A bucket of water, a basin of sand and a few cups and scoops can keep your kid busy for hours. The child learns - to create castles, dumping, digging, scooping, mixing and pouring. While dong this activity, the child improves his or her fine motor skills and cognitive skills. This helps in development of the quality of persistence and patience. Dear parents, we are sure you would love to sit back and watch the play unfold as their creativity and imagination is sparked during sand play.
Hide and Seek:
This is a classic game probably played by all kids, their parents and grandparents. It’s a fun way to develop sense of mapping, direction, spatial skills and navigation. Researchers have observed that, this game, when played in the evening, helps to remove the phobia of darkness that some kids suffer from. Playing hide-and-seek gives a child an opportunity to develop their social skills as they play with others, learn team work, to deal with conflicts between participants, take turns, physical development like- exercise that helps them build stamina and enhance muscle development. The task of finding a perfect hiding place helps a child in improving their balance, agility, problem solving and coordination skills.
Indoor Games:
Blocks: are the most important toys for children that helps develop critical skills, thinking power, concentration level and patience. This also indirectly helps in language development and their reasoning power. Children discuss what they are building hence their language and vocabulary skills become better. There’s lot of technology around the child so, playing with blocks may become boring. But through block play a child gains a lot. Once the child develops interest in this, it will help them to be away from video games and television series. Some of the math skill acquired while block play is comparing, learning shapes, and counting. Using block play to learn certain science concepts like creating a house helps young designers manipulate space and come up with queries, for example: will this fit here? Will this fall down? Will this make the shape I want?
Puzzles:
Different
puzzles of their favorite characters helps in developing their sense of
appropriateness. Gives sharpness to their intelligence and keeps them busy for
hours.
Dress-Up Game:
This
game helps in developing imagination power, creative thinking and even impulse
control. Through this game, the child develops her own taste. The child learns
to organised complex thoughts. For example when the child dresses up as a
doctor, he thinks about what it is like being a doctor therefore understanding
and being aware of other peoples’ thoughts and feelings. This begins the
feeling of empathy in a child.
