Fun Child Games

Running a business at any age involves learning and consistently honing vital skill sets. Kids make great business owners and, yes, they should be encouraged to seek out opportunities. To help them actually succeed, not just now but in the future, kids need the hands-on tools to do it correctly from the start. But wait, this is not just the recommended practice to become successful at business. Playing Math games can help build a business tycoon too.

In a recent study conducted by Forbes.com, it is stated that math plays a big role to becoming successful at business. According to Duncan Greenberg, “A significant percentage of billionaires had parents with a high aptitude for math. The ability to crunch numbers is crucial to becoming a billionaire, and mathematical prowess is hereditary. Some of the most common professions among the parents of American billionaires (for whom we could find the information) were engineer, accountant and small-business owner.

One math game that seems to be dominating the rest in terms of popularity now in the millennium is the so called Sudoku that is a Japanese numbers puzzle. It appears to be harmless at first but it is not. It is composed of a simple grid of nine squares that contains smaller squares for a total of 81 squares all in all. The mother squares are the nine large squares and belong to the “regions” or one of the three grids of the puzzles. In each of the eighty one squares, it contained the numbers between one and nine. The aim of the game is to fill in the missing numbers of the cells so that each row, column, and square, will be filled with numbers from 1 to 9 with no instance of repetition.

The Sudoku game is just one of the many Math games that are popular today. As early as toddler years, kids must be advised to play these kinds of games. Kids will not just enjoy these games but it can hone them as well to become successful business leaders in the future.

The first four years of a child are vital to brain development. During this time, the brain triples in weight and establishes billions of nerve connections. At the age of three, kids have twice as many nerve connections than a lot of adults. This is the reason why toddlers are very curious and inquisitive.

Their brains absorb thousands of information all at once, constructing novel connections and associations, and making sense out of all the new and unfamiliar sights and sounds that flood their senses. This is also the grounds why toddler toys are designed the way that they are: colorful, bright, loud, with many different textures, shapes, sizes, and are made of different materials. These are all designed to stimulate and develop a child’s mind.

Today, there are some really great games and toys on the market for toddlers that are highly educational. I think these are fantastic for your child. Just always keep in mind that you want your toddler to have FUN while learning. You want them to always associate learning as FUN. If toddler educational toys can encourage your toddler to become interested in letters and Math skills, then they will carry that interest with them throughout the rest of their school years. It is about starting good habits to last a lifetime.

Moreover, information technology today is playing a vital role in making learning easier for toddlers. The term “infotainment” is perhaps more appropriate. Drastic changes have come forth in the learning process, wherein the grasping power of the child is enhanced many times over, since learning is also fun. A toddler learns his basics, like letters and counting, in an interactive way. There are other games just for entertainment, which harness a child’s energy and sharpen his reflexes for thinking and reacting.

Mathematics and counting are a serious part of educational learning for toddlers and preschoolers. Even before kindergarten, your child should be taught beginning concepts in algebra, geometry, measurement, statistics and logic. Over time, they will learn how to answer problems by applying their knowledge of math to new situations. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Helping Your Child Learn series, they should be learning to believe of themselves as mathematicians–able to reason mathematically and to communicate mathematical ideas by talking and writing.

So, if our children will have a kick start by learning these concepts before they get to school, how do we teach math to our kids from an early age?

Here is a checklist of the basic concepts used by curriculum developers nationwide, along with suggested activities that you can do together with your child:

1. Number Sense: Knowing Value

Your child begins to develop number sense when she or he counts from one to 10 or higher. They should begin to recognize the written numerals 0 through 9, recognize the idea of position or sequence (such as being first or third) and link numbers to the real world. One fun doing you can do is to sing counting rhymes and songs with your child. Remember “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe”?

2. Computation: Knowing Quantity

Basically, this means your child should be acquainted with that the quantity of objects change by adding or taking them away. You can have fun with hide and seek games with objects around the house, or a set of objects, like plastic easter eggs, and have your child count out loud as she or he finds each item.

3. Measurement: Knowing Relative Size and Order

It is significant for kids to learn how to measure both objects and concepts (for example, the concept of time like morning and tomorrow.) You can demonstrate them how to measure objects with irregular measures like their hands, a length of string, blocks, and more. You can help your child to be aware of qualitative differences in measurement (big, heavy, long) and to order items from smallest to biggest or shortest to tallest.

4. Geometry: Knowing Shape, Position and Location

Help your child to identify and name shapes, illustrate position and location (a GPS navigation system is not required!) I was tickled pink the first time I heard the joy in son’s voice when he correctly named an octagon! Go over simple concepts like up, down, big, small, inside, outside). Sort objects by shape, color, size and help them appreciate that geometric shapes can be used to form other shapes (an example of this is the way slices of pie can form a whole circle).

5. Data Analysis: Evaluating Difference

Help your child with data analysis by thinking about real-world situations. For example, persuade your child to identify her or his favorite color, not just name a color. Help them to count how many pets are in the store by type–how many dogs, how many fish in the tank, and so forth. You can also take part in guessing games while on walks, such as asking them how many steps it will take to get from your front door to the edge of the sidewalk. Also help them to know that pictures and graphs can represent real information.

6. Algebra: Understanding Relationships and Patterns

At the most basic level, you can help your child to go over simple patterns, like boy-girl, boy-girl or go for a walk and play games where you and your child take two big steps, then two small steps, or three jumps forward and three jumps backward.

The Bottom Line is that it’s easy to put your child on a lifelong path of learning with a few easy steps.

It is difficult to catch up the newspaper or listen to the radio without hearing about the significance of recycling, conserving energy, and employing measures to save fuel. From Presidential debates to the nightly newscast, everyone is chatting about the need to “go green.” Although many parents thrash about with the proper way to teach children about the environment, experts agree that a good blend of creative and concrete methods for exposing children to environmental awareness is most useful.

Today, kids living in urban areas, or even suburbs, are often disconnected from nature. There are quite a lot of fun activities you can do with kids while you reconnect with nature and our environment. Here are a few environmental education activities for kids:

Adopt a Tree

While taking a walk or hiking, have your child pick out a favorite tree in a park or forest and ‘adopt’ it. Essentially, your child will take on the role of being the tree’s caretaker. Do bark rubbings with crayons and paper; leaf collection and pressing in the fall; and look for flowers and fruit in the summer. Each year, take pictures of you child standing beside the tree. You can even bring along a measuring tape to track the tree’s growth. Kids can also research the tree on the internet: where the tree is commonly found, usual life span, height, etc (Browning, 2009).

Clean Up the Earth

A good way to teach our children about taking care of our planet, and get some exercise at the same time, is to take bags with you when you go for a walk. While doing so, “clean up” along the way. You can pick up stray bottles, newspapers and discarded food containers. You can organize an “Environment Club” in the neighborhood or through your child’s school. Make it a contest to see who can get the most items. Choose different paths on different days to clean up a wide area. Use the time to talk to your children about recycling and reducing waste.  (Kids can wear rubber gloves or bring a pointed stick if they don’t want to touch any garbage (Browning, 2009).

Talk about Conservation

The first step to any good plan is a solid explanation of why conservation helps people and the planet. Many parents skip this step because they don’t think that kids will understand. Some parents are concerned of the effects of their children not feeling secure about their environment; however, there are some very good children’s books and coloring books about helping the environment that will give simple, non-threatening details (Grinshpan, 2009).

Group Planning

By involving your children in your plans to recycle, reuse, and “go green,” everything from planting a garden to turning off electricity can become a family activity. With input from every member of the family, children get buy in for the method and ownership of the results. As an extra step, assigning children to certain tasks as part of their chores or their responsibilities to the earth might help to elevate participation in “going green.” (Grinshpan, 2009).

By taking the opportunity to give children an understanding of the importance of the environment and steps that they can take to help save energy, recycle, and create a green environment, parents get the chance to build consciousness and awareness of surroundings in children of all ages. Environmental education for kids is more important than ever. Teaching your kids to care for the planet will bring you closer together and will give them life skills they can pass on to others.