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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Children have so much natural curiosity and energy, it seems an embarrassment for parents to set them in front of the tube as a regular activity. Playtime should preferably serve to forward a c h i l d ‘ s development across the board, but in true play and fun mode. 

Also, getting a child to play outside is vital to encourage physical fitness and help develop new skills. Plus staying active will help your child to burn off excess energy, stay in shape and sleep better at night. When it comes to age suitable outside activities for toddlers some of the best games to play are the classic childhood games, these games don’t have need of much equipment and can be updated simply to meet the needs of your kids.

Although it is true that most kids spend too much time in front of the TV, judicious use of the tube can work for you. The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet offer programs that improve a child’s knowledge in terms even young children can understand. Kids who see these kind of educational programs when quite young often continue to catch these programs on their own, well into their adolescence. So do not discount TV altogether. This strategy allows the kids to feel they are not denied of television time, while being a wonderful activity for children of any age.

As a sort of advice, parents must find some quality time spending with their child. Becoming a child with your child is an activity that kids love the most. So spend some time with your child, talk to him about his friends, his activities, his school and what he feels. Become a child with him and get involved in his activities. This will make your child get closer to you.

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Choosing the correct and best video games for your children is very significant. When selecting which video game to buy for your children, be sure to check the rating of the software. There are an incredible amount of choices for parents and kids to decide from when it comes time to buy a game. Unfortunately, although many of these video games out there have excellent benefits, some also offers more disadvantages rather than good stuffs.

In order to verify which among the video games for kids are good for your child or children, parents should check the ESRB rating.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a non-profit, self-regulatory body established in 1994 by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). ESRB assigns computer and video game content ratings, enforces industry-adopted advertising guidelines and helps ensure responsible online privacy practices for the interactive entertainment software industry.

There are seven different ratings that the Entertainment Software Ratings Board assigns to games that the parents should be familiar with:

EARLY CHILDHOOD

Titles rated EC (Early Childhood) have content that may be suitable for ages 3 and older. Contains no material that parents would find inappropriate.

EVERYONE

Titles rated E (Everyone) have content that may be suitable for ages 6 and older. Titles in this category may contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.

EVERYONE 10+

Titles rated E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) have content that may be suitable for ages 10 and older. Titles in this category may contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.

TEEN

Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language.

MATURE

Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

ADULTS ONLY

Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

RATING PENDING

Titles listed as RP (Rating Pending) have been submitted to the ESRB and are awaiting final rating. (This symbol appears only in advertising prior to a game’s release.)

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For many years, video games have occupied toy store shelves. Producing a variety of games that cover everything from racing to action to movies, game console manufacturers have tapped into a very productive industry. Although the popular phrase “too much of a good thing” does relate when it comes to video games, studies proved that a considerable portion of games can be beneficial to the brain.

Video games help to develop and tune up a long list of cognitive milestones. Playing these games help out in the growth of thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as reasoning and memory capabilities. Video games can also ignite a child’s interest in a particular subject, causing them to not only pick up information throughout the game, but to search for further details at a later date, such as games based on animals, nature, or real-life events.

Language in particular is one of the most important components of video games. During almost any picky game, the player must be aware of the instructions given and come to a decision how to proceed; this is even factual for young children’s games. Video games have the capability to teach kids various words in other languages, as well as cheering them to recognize the alphabet and numbers, or set in motion to take the first steps towards reading. Thus, playing video games often helps to improve the vocabulary of a child.

And aside from these benefits, there are other good things about video games:

1. Develops empathy.

2. Has positive effects on cognitive health

3. Video games are a lot better than television

4. Perk up the hand-eye coordination

5. A tonic cure for intense pain (for cancer stricken kids)

6. Helps for a better vision

7. Ease the common stress and aids in post-traumatic treatment

8. Distracts from snacking and overeating

9. A new way to socialize 

10. Furthers the imagination

These are just some of the remarkable benefits of videogames. With right timing and proper guidance from parents, surely video games can be a good thing for both the parents and the kids.

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The most basic and important aspect in understanding how video games can refurbish education is shifting the widely shared standpoint that games are just “mere entertainment.” More than a multi-billion dollar industry, more than a gripping toy for both children and adults, more than a means to computer literacy, video games are significant because they let people participate in a new and advanced realm. They let players think, talk, and act—they let players inhabit—roles otherwise far-off to them.

These rich virtual worlds are what make games such significant contexts for learning. In the world of virtual gaming, learning no longer means facing words and symbols separated from the things those words and symbols are about in the first place. The inverse square law of gravity is no longer something understood exclusively through an equation; students can gain virtual experience walking on worlds with lesser mass than the Earth, or plan manned space flights that entail understanding the changing effects of gravitational forces in different parts of the solar system. In virtual worlds, learners experience the concrete realities that words and

symbols describe. Through such experiences, athwart multiple contexts, learners can understand complex concepts without losing the connection between abstract ideas and the real problems they can be used to resolve. In other words, the virtual worlds of games are influential because they make it possible to develop situated understanding.

Although the typecast of the gamer is a lone teenager seated in front of a computer, game play is also a methodically social phenomenon. The best examples are massively multiplayer online games: games where thousands of players are concurrently online at any given time, participating in virtual worlds with their own economies, political systems, and cultures. But vigilant study shows that most games—from console action games to PC strategy games—have tough game playing communities. Whereas schools largely sequester students from one another and from the outside world, games bring players collectively, competitively and cooperatively, into the virtual world of the game and the social community of game players. In schools, students mostly work alone with school-sanctioned materials; avid gamers seek out news sites, read and write faqs, take part in discussion forums, and most notably, become serious consumers of information. Classroom work has less impact outside of the classroom; its only real audience is the teacher. 

Game players, in contrast, develop reputations in online communities, transforming audiences as writers through discussion forums, and occasionally even take up careers as professional gamers, traders of online commodities, or game modders and designers. The virtual worlds of games are powerful, in other words, because playing games means developing a set of effective social practices. Video games definitely can build social confidence.

In other words, by developing virtual worlds, games incorporate knowing and doing. But not just knowing and doing. Games bring mutually ways of knowing, ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of caring: the situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values that make someone an expert.

There is a lot being learned in video games. And this is true. But for some educators it is hard to see the educational potential in games because these virtual worlds are not about memorizing words, or definitions, or facts.

Video games are about a whole lot more.

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Many videogames for the children have huge positive potential in addition to their entertainment value.

Also, many studies proved that there has been considerable success when games are designed to address a specific problem or to teach a certain skill.

According to Dr. Mark Griffiths, most reported effects of videogames -particularly in the popular press – appear to centre upon the alleged negative consequences. These have included his own research into video game addiction, increased aggressiveness, and the various medical and psychosocial effects. However, there are many references to the positive benefits of videogames in the literature. Research dating right back to the early 1980s has consistently shown that playing computer games(irrespective of genre) produces reductions in reaction times, improved hand-eye co-ordination and raises players’ self-esteem.

Videogames help educate your child about aspiration, success, and disappointment. Children get experience with both winning and losing—and learn that no matter what the result. Games also give you the chance to teach your preschooler about rules, about integrity and honesty, and about luck. Games also can help increase your child’s ability to focus her attention.

Besides helping to accustom your child with “life lessons” and to practice valuable social skills, most good children’s videogames also afford preschoolers the opportunity to hone certain academic skills. Most videogames for preschoolers engage either counting or color matching, for instance.

What’s more, curiosity, fun and the nature of the challenge also appear to add to a game’s educational potential.

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