Doing this will make your child intelligent and smart
When it comes to a child’s mental and physical development, the approach has to be holistic rather than particularly focused one. But the most important and critical is the cognitive development for a child’s growth as it is something that goes on to describe how a child’s intellect is built. It includes skills such as thinking, learning, and problem-solving, at the same time development of child’s language and social skills.
While it is not possible to always push a child to learn new skills, there are certain fun activities that apart from keeping them engaged encourage learning new ideas and skills.
Stacking Blocks Best suited for two-four –year-olds, building blocks are the most basic brain games for kids and are in fact the most common form of play. By exposing the child to blocks of different colours and sizes it stimulates their imagination enhancing recognition, creativity, and spatial awareness. Start with basic colour and shape, slowly upgrading to abstract building blocks. Help them create patterns as it will help build the child’s observing capability, coordination and balance.
Sing-a-Long and practicing noises While pictures and shapes are good, music and sound too are a great source of developing cognitive thinking in children. By making the child sing-along with you will incorporate word recognition and memory skills. Not only will the toddler enjoy the activity of singing and dancing, but it will also be pressure-free. At the same time, practicing sound animal sound recognition with them will be entertaining too. This will enhance their memory and recognition skills, at the same time teach them about different animal sounds to enable the child to relate to objects to the sounds in everyday life.
Puzzles Best for children between two-eight-year-old, puzzles have a great learning curve as it helps develop a child’s spatial perception, coordination, problem-solving, cognitive skills, and fine motor skills. And since they have to pick and chose the correct fit for each block, it most importantly teaches them patience. So keep encouraging them to continue searching for the right piece in case they get impatient.
Obstacle Courses Using simple household supplies, create creative obstacles, and ask them to jump, skip, run, or hop them. You can also build a few questions around each obstacle. This helps enhance the child’s gross motor, visual perception, motor planning, coordination, problem-solving, critical thinking, and language skills. You can use pillows, chairs, tables, cushions, sofa, tables, storage boxes, string, paper, balls, or hula hoops. You can ask them to walk on, crawl under, crawl through, jump, throw, hop, or solve a riddle.
Other activities to engage in include pretend games, nature scavenger hunt, one-word story creating or storytelling, the options are just endless.
