Tag: math games

Why Math Is Just As Important as Reading

Posted on | by KD Novelties

Learning Math for Kids

Many parents focus on skills like reading when it comes time for their kids to start preschool or kindergarten, but math is an important subject to keep in mind, too. Recent studies have shown that a child’s math skills upon entering kindergarten can be a prominent indicator of their future academic performance. Math can be incorporated into so many parts of daily life, and many games even rely on math in order to be played properly or well. Help boost your child’s math skills with some of these simple, but fun math activities every day.

Count Everyday Objects
Counting simple things like how many apple slices your child has for snack time or how many forks and knives are at the dinner table can help kids get into the habit of not just counting but can help them have a better abstract idea of how numbers work, as well. Start with small numbers, generally no more than five, and add a few more as your child improves – they may be ready for a challenge!

Lined Up In a Row
Let’s experiment – take some coins and line them up together on a table. Have your child count how many coins there are. Now, spread out the coins but otherwise leave them be. Then, ask your child how many coins there are again. Don’t be surprised if they have to count again, but once your child begins to automatically know the answer, you’ll know they’ve mastered number invariance.

Fun and Games
There are plenty of family friendly children’s games that involve counting, such as Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land. These sorts of games are great for acquainting kids with numbers. Not only will they have to roll the die and need to recognize the number they get, but they will then need to count how many spaces they move as a result. For more advanced players, card games like War that involve addition can be helpful with simple math problems as well.

Spotting Shapes
It is also important for kids to develop a basic understanding of geometry and special relations. Blocks and other such toys can help with this early on, but as they learn the names and appearances of shapes, you can also have them identify shapes around the house and anywhere else you go, too.

Math for Kids

A Map of Home
Creating a map of your house can be helpful for a lot of reasons. Not only can it help your child practice spatial language and develop a deeper understanding of spatial relations, but it can also help when it comes to plotting a course for escape in the event of an emergency like a fire.

Helping Hands
Having kids help out with dinner can help them learn to read and introduce them to new foods, but it can also help them learn all about measuring. While there are many forms of measurement, one of the easiest things you can do with kids is prepare dinner according to a cookbook. Have them help you measure out all of the spices and other ingredients so they can become familiar with numbers and measurements as well as with words and food.

Brain and Body: Engaging Indoor Activities for Kids

Posted on | by KD Novelties

 

As the weather prepares to switch gears, playing outside will become less and less of an option for kids when it comes to playtime. Keeping kids entertained indoors can be difficult, especially when they are more likely to reach for a mobile device to play a game or ask to watch TV or a movie. Parents can encourage kids to read, write, or be creative, but many of these activities are sedentary. While they may be enriching in other ways, kids still need to find ways to be active even when the weather doesn’t allow it. Here are some engaging indoor activities that get kids moving and keep them entertained.

Mastering Math and the Obstacle Course

Obstacle courses are always fun. They’re mainstays at themed birthday venues and they’re every kids favorite unit in gym class. You can create your own at-home obstacle course using string and household furniture. But to make it more engaging, you can also use – playing cards! Using playing cards or index cards with numbers or functions like plus signs and subtraction signs, will challenge kids to complete certain equations or create a path through the obstacle course that allow them to collect the cards they need to solve the problem. Kids can pretend they are super spies or secret hackers looking for the right code to unlock the secret at the end of the course, or at least earn themselves a snack.

Going Wild

Animal books are great gateways to learning and reading. Animals are diverse and many children like looking at the pictures or learning about where animals live, what they eat etc. You can learn all about animals, whether it be via a book or the internet, but you can also incorporate some stretching into the mix – challenge kids to mimic the animals they’re learning about. Stretching can help muscles but getting into these animal poses can also require some creativity and brain power as well. According to Integrated Learning Strategies Learning Corner, animal poses like a horse trot, worm crawl, or the crab walk, can be great for executive functioning within the brain, regulating emotions, and practicing gross and fine motor skills. Plus, they’re just fun to do!

 

Balloon Ping Pong

Ping-pong indoors can be dangerous, but not if you change up your game equipment. Swap out a ping-pong for a balloon and your ping-pong paddle for a paper plate attached to a popsicle stick. There are plenty of other games that can be made indoor-safe as long as you trade in the traditional tools, especially hard balls that could potentially break household items or hurt others, for soft, plush things instead like pillows, poufs, balloons and other materials. These may be simple, but sports-related activities get kids up and moving but they also help them hone their hand-eye coordination skills, build better interpersonal relationships, and encourage good sportsmanship.

Great Brain Games for Children

Posted on | by KD Novelties

Brain-training games have grown in popularity, especially with the rise of smartphones where thousands of apps and other games are made available on the go. Many games, especially those featured on sites like Facebook, are aimed towards Baby Boomers, claiming to reverse aging and prevent things like Alzheimer’s. While these sorts of claims are more difficult to prove, brain-training games have worked wonders for kids who are still actively learning, growing and developing, especially kids with learning and language disorders. Brain games can help kids build essential skills that help them process things like problem solving or help boost their memory.

Language Games

Language games may involve building essential skills for English but there are also fun, free apps out there that can help children learn to speak other languages, too.

For parents looking for native language boosting games in English, PBS.org has plenty of vocabulary games that can help children master the alphabet, learn new words, and practice their spelling. PBS also has plenty of reading games that focus more on word association, reading comprehension and writing aspects of language.

Language games can help kids develop key communication skills, reading comprehension skills, and it can boost their vocabulary (reading and speaking) significantly, too.

Math Games

Sites like mathplayground.com and coolmath-games.com feature traditional puzzle-solving games like Sudoku, chess, and more but they also have plenty of games that focus on specific areas of math like addition and subtraction, geometry, ratios and percent’s, and much more. Mathplayground.com has a grade-level feature so kids can play games that are appropriate to their age, grade, and skill-level and divide games into categories to make finding specific types of activities much easier. This is a great way to help kids struggling with a particular topic at school and can make studying much more

Memory Games

Parents may be familiar with apps like Lumosity, but this app actually gets a significant amount of revenue from kids as well as adults. Memory boosting games can be both challenging and fun, encouraging kids to develop skills that are useful in everyday situations as well as a myriad of different school subjects, too.

Puzzle Games

Parents may be more familiar with games like Tetris and Bejeweled Blitz (as well as other games like it) but these are great games to introduce to kids, too. Spatial reasoning is an often-overlooked skill and it can be applied to many situations and circumstances. These games encourage problem solving within a timeframe, which can be anxiety-inducing for some kids, but can also help children make better, more informed decisions on the fly, making moves based on educated guesses without overthinking.

There are many sites with plenty of resources, links and information on games for kids. Brain boosting games can be an essential tool for kids with learning disorders or children who may not benefit as much from a traditional school setting. Trying a different format for learning can be incredibly life changing, and fun, too.