Learning Kids Games

Our advice is to let the children take ownership of the games ideas, games and toys. Involve them in the entire process of planning, making and enjoying the games. Let them have fun, let them learn from them, and let them bond with you and with other children.

Child-games for Developing Child-skills

Original ideas for child-games you can make at reasonable cost. Homemade child-games for preschoolers and children of elementary school age. Educational toys you don't have to spend money on.

Kids' party-games for fun and learning.

Game ideas to play and celebrate.
Party-games ideas for all occasions. Kids' games for parties, especially birthday parties. Cost-effective ideas which are indispensable for party-games.

Party-Games ideas To Play and Learn

Parties and party-games are an exciting part of a child's growing up. No question. But your view is that these parties, while it is fun for the child, you must also be a meaningful experience.
While certain cost are unavoidable, particularly for birthday parties, what's really important is what the children learn.

(If you are interested in parties from an organizational viewpoint, read the party-checklist.)

To foster a learning experience for your child, it's esential to pay more attention to the party-games themselves.

(a) LOCATION. You have to always tried, whenever possible, to hold parties in your home. The advantage, besides the cost, is the flexibility of using both inside and outside games and activities. You can even drive the children to nearby parks and pools.

The drawback is that it limits the number of children you can invite. An average home would be comfortable with only about ten children, I suspect.

(b) PARTY THEME. Having a theme to the child's party is a great way to focus on the games and activities. Some of the themes we have used are: sports, forts, nature, environment, food and costumes.

Other themes that come to mind are: alphabet and animals, for the preschoolers; for the older kids, cooking, space and music.

The theme your child chooses will dictate the games that you plan. Some themes are very easy, like sports and cooking. Others need a little more consideration, like environment and space.

(c) GIFTS. When your child is invited to parties, there are two options you have for party gifts. A great learning experience is to have your child make a gift. For some original and successful ideas we have tried, go for home-made gifts.

The other option is to buy.

Math-games for fundamental math skills development.

A selection of original ideas for math-games that are fun. Free games ideas aimed specifically at the math development of preschool and elementary school-age children.

Math-Games Ideas for Fundamental Skills

Math-games ideas were unimaginative, to say the least.
What a struggle! Frustration time!

There were limited to all those worksheets, and flashcards and math tables!

The children sat still and did them - maybe for three minutes, and off they went! We desperately hoped that, by the time their attention span grew to fifteen minutes, it wasn't too late.

And those math books were not cheap!

Even the internet math-games ideas are mostly an extension of flashcards and worksheets. It's very difficult to find something to keep the young ones focussed.

THE SMALL BUSINESS

ANother good maths game is playing shopkeeper. Collect any items around the house big and small, place them all on kids tables and chairs, using cardboard box cut some tags to price the items and stick the tags on the items for your shop, out of a small cardboard box design a cash register.

What an opportunity! To teach math! What a great math-games idea! encouraged your kids enterprise by bringing down all the real coinsyou can find. So bring down a whole lot of pennies (which tend to gather dust in the home). These pennies can be a great teaching tool.

Start by you the parent being their customer. An item that cost 10 centsyou can buy with a quarter. They would have to give you back the correct change. An item that cost 15 cents give them two dimes. And so forth. What a great game idea!

You can get your entire family involved as customers. Yop can even discuss on expanding the business. How much investment would be required? You get into big numbers, but what the children learned were the fundamentals of numbers and arithmetic.

Try it! Encourage this, or a similar game.

MAGNETIC NUMBERS

This is a variation on the Magnetic Letters under Child-games. Simply exchange letters for numbers, and zap!

Materials needed: peel & stick card magnets or magnetic tape.

Go to any small business outlet. The Business Depot and Office Place come to mind. Ask for the card magnets or magnetic tape that have one side magnetic and the other adhesive. They should come in different sizes. If they don't, get the business-card size ones and cut them into squares using a sharp knife or scissors.

Get enough for all the numbers from 0 to 9. make sure you have two of each, sometimes even three, made the game much easier and later more useful.

Cut paper to the exact size of the magnetic squares. Write the numbers in attractive colours, one number for each square.

Paste the numbers to the adhesive side of the magnetic squares.

There you have it!

You can teach your child math in the kitchen by using your refrigerator doors. The kitchen becomes a classroom!

If your refrigerator is already too cluttered up, use a sizeable tin can or a metal box. Your child will love the sound too.

The level of difficulty for this math-games idea can be adjusted to suit children of ages 3 to 7.

Original construction-games ideas that foster imagination and creativity.

Some original ideas for construction-games to benefit your child. These ideas focus upon imagination and creativity by allowing the child to actualize ideas through the use of his/her hands.

Construction-games For Creativity

By construction-games, I mean making games and toys , not out of wood, but out of much more manageable materials like paper, cardboard, posterboard, and cloth.

Use material that the children can easily deal with.

Similarly, by construction toys, I do not mean those that require fitting wooden pieces together. Again, for the same reasons, the ideas are constructing things out of above-mentioned materials.

These games require certain aptitude on the part of the child. If you are interested in finding out about your child's learning style, go to SmarterKids, scroll down and click on "Learning Styles Survey". It'll take about three or four minutes to do, and it may or may not reinforce your knowledge about your child's talents.

THE SHOPPING MALL

This construction-game It can a full week to make, and the enjoyment can last several months.

The object was to build a complete miniaturized mall.

The size to choose is two posterboards taped together. It could be much bigger. Theoretically, the mall could cover the child's room. It would take longer to make obviously, but I could see it being very exciting.

Planning this construction-game was very important. The children can start by naming all the stores that they were familiar with.

Once they agreed on the stores for their mall, they proceeded to design the mall by placing the stores in their desired locations. They had also to take into consideration the size and location of the parking lot and the various entrances from the roads.

The design of this construction-game had to take into account the fact that the roofs had to open up so that the children could see the interior of the stores. This affected the size and the number of stores in the mall.

Once the design and the layout of the mall was complete, the fun part began. One of your children can be in charge of the parking lot. Draw lines for the parking spaces, just big enough to fit many toy-cars your child can find. Included the four roads that surrounded the mall and the corresponding entrances. At times, the four roads later became a racing circuit.

Your daughter can be concerned about the interior of the stores. The stores themselves were made like cubicles, just as they are in real malls, with the top opening up to give her access to the inside.

Her favourite stores included Zellers and ToysRUs. These are big stores and modifications had to be made on them to fit our mall. ToysRUs, of course, usually does not appear in malls, so just make exceptions.

We used posterboards to construct the stores, the stiffest we could find. The walls of the mall and stores were flared at the bottom for taping to the floor.

Your children can do some meticulous work designing the storefronts and the store-interiors which had product displays and cut-out figures for customers and employees.

Some stores were more successful than others. As you can imagine, larger ones were easier to work with than the smaller stores.

What was exciting was the number of new ideas that kept dawning on the children as this construction-game progressed. Some ideas were do-able, others were not, but they learned a great deal trying them out.

Child-games Ideas for Effective Child Growth

Here you will find ideas for child-games that we have tried and found successful as we raised our three children.

Although, like all parents, we have bought games and toys for our children, the most memorable and joyful time was when we made our own child-games and toys with them.

Children don't really care what games and toys look like, but they do want them to stir their imagination, creativity and passion.

Here, therefore, we have some carefully selected ideas for you to try.

If you can find your child's passion at any one time, getting him/her to play and learn is a piece of cake.

Your child cares about doing things with you. Make sure she is involved in every step of planning, making and enjoying the child-games and toys.

Travel World History

We found that this child-games idea we made up was perfect for a winter afternoon or evening when one of our children invited a handful of friends over.

Materials needed: poster, cut-out pictures, glue, dice, encyclopaedia.

Get a poster the size of a board-game. It should be an attractive picture of a landscape or a country.

Cut out pictures that have to do with different countries of the world. For example, Statue of Liberty for the United States, Eiffel Tower for France, Kyoto Temple for Japan, etc..

Don't be shy to represent some less well-known countries. It'll be more fun.

Paste all these cut-outs onto different areas of the poster. Draw or paste a segmented roadway(walkway, ladders, etc.) from one picture to the other. Start at one corner (Start); this could be your country. Decide upon a destination (Finish). Place it at the opposite corner.

There should be an encyclopaedia of geography or history nearby for reference as the children play.

This game is meant for up to four players.

Everyone begins at "Start". Using the dice, each player tries to progress along the road to the "End". In order to successfully land or stay on a picture, the player must annouce one important fact or information about that country. If she/he cannot, and another player can, she must return to "Start".

Whoever gets to "End" first, wins. That's it: child-game-idea #1!

This child-game is appropriate for children from age 6 to 12.

For this game, the poster is the most important item. Selecting the right poster will set the right mood for the entire journey.

You might be able to find just the right one at National Museum of American Illustration

Landscape

We always gave our children full access to household materials that were not in use. This child-games idea was initiated to encourage imaginative and creative play.
Materials needed: large table, cushions, old blankets of different colors (greens and blues are best), toys of related theme.

This games-idea started as we suggested to the children that they make a landscape. We didn't use the word "landscape". I think I said, "country scene".

That was it. That was the only challenge. They had to make something.

Well, they embraced the idea immediately. Children love to construct a miniature scene that depicts something they have a passion for.

They eagerly rummaged through the closets and the basement and pulled out old blankets and cushions.

Fortunately, we also had a ping-pong table that we hardly used. They made the landscape on that. (If you don't have a large table, no problem. It can be done on the floor. Just as good.)

By putting cushions under the blankets (greens and blues), they made a scene that consisted of hills, valleys and rivers. With cardboard pieces, they added mountains to the scenery.

Most of the thinking and all of the execution for this child-games idea came from the children. We were simply there to give advice when asked.

More importantly, it was what they did with this creation that was noteworthy.

Your daughter, can use it to re-enact and to enhance the magic-land from the movie, "Mary Poppins", or even her favorite movie.

If she is into piano and ballet. She can use all her ballet figurines, toy figures of all shapes and sizes from her room. She can immense enjoyment recreating her own episodes of the movie.

Your sons if his treatment of the scenery was quite different, if he likes tocollect plastic soldiers (of the Toy Story type). He also had many miniature tanks and planes.

You can imagine what the landscape became under his creative imagination. A battle-field where two opposing forces manoeuvred for strategic advantage.

( learn not to be frightened by your boys' interest in things military. It will soon became evident to you that it's all fantasy for them. If both your sons have deep interest in the military, later they turned into the gentlest and the nicest boys.)

Experiences like this taught us quickly that the best child-games activities are simple and easy to make. It's true that children love store-bought gifts, but almost always they are satisfied with simple things.

It's not the sophistication they look for in their games; rather, they embrace anything that triggers their imagination and passion.

Like all parents, we have bought toys and child-games for our children, but we were always careful about where we got them. One of our favorite places at the moment for price and variety is KBkids.com

Learn some Kids Games for Summer.