Children and those in their pre-teens love playing educational games. These games, whether online or offline, keep children engaged for hours. Even though the parents constantly complain that they spend too much time playing these games, parents should also understand that kids should play educational games because it helps them grow in several ways. When played online, these games are accompanied by images, which make the word and picture association complete in a child’s mind. If the game is interesting, it means learning is fun.
Why kids educational games are catching on?
Kids educational games help growing kids understand the basics principles of any learning in a fun way. This aids memory and they can recall it when needed. Often, classroom studies deny children the opportunity of having practical exposure when a particular subject is taught. By means of kids educational games, this need for practical exposure will also be fulfilled as children will learn new concepts in an informal manner, and one that aids recall.
Most educational games for kids make them think logically and develop analytical skills. Since logical and analytical skills are required for most branches of study, it’s best to use these games as foundation stones for teaching these skills early in life. Since kids find these games fun, teachers can introduce an element of seriousness into them by making kids educational games competitive.
Teachers and parents should take care to see that they don’t choose kids educational games that teach violence or anything that can be detrimental to a child’s mental growth. This is due to these games shall be misguiding the students as opposed to supporting them. By choosing games carefully, teachers and parents can introduce their children to a wealth of skills that no classroom session can teach.
For instance, in order to sharpen children’s memory, they should play memory games. One popular game tests a child’s powers of observation and recall by placing a number of diverse but everyday objects in a tray, such as a pen, belt, letter pad, badge, lock and key, mug, etc. Each child is given a minute to look at all the objects after which he must leave the room and write down as many as he can recall. This is fun for kids when one kid can recall more than the others.
Kids educational games also take the form of puzzles. This is good in a graded manner for little kids to high school students. At its most basic, little kids are given three-letter words, where one letter is missing. They must look at the picture next to the word and fill it up correctly. As the difficulty level increases, this can take a slightly more complex form where the child is given a passage with several blanks, which he must fill up in the context of the passage. Often, the word is spelt out as __ _ _ _ F_ _ for example. Older kids can do crossword puzzles, Sudoko or find words from a maze of letters.
Games that kids are natural at
As kids grow, they take to certain kinds of games naturally. For instance, the bookish kind will go for crosswords while the math-lover will look for math-oriented puzzles and games. Similarly, logic games are best for those kids who think things out logically. By playing logic games, kids can train their minds to think logically and in a step-by-step manner until they reach the conclusion they are supposed to. Such games teach kids to think straight by taking every detail into account. This will help them in adult life in their personal and professional lives.
Playing kids educational games give children a bouquet of benefits. For instance, by playing board games, toddlers can develop important motor skills. They learn to develop eye-hand coordination, visual focus and dexterity in their fingers.
They also learn to be socialized as games teach them obedience to a pre-set system of rules by which the game is played. So, they learn to cooperate with others and be peaceful and well mannered in their limited society. They also increase their attention spans by focusing on the game and become result-oriented when they score a point or win the game. This also increases their confidence and self-esteem.
Lastly, it makes them express themselves creatively when they play word games.
So, parents who don’t know much about the subtle power of kids educational games should find out as much as they can and invest in them as their kids grow to keep pace with their growing minds.
