Monday, January 28, 2013

Creative activities for small kids



Keeping a preschooler occupied creatively is a big task. Children between the ages of 2-5 are most dynamic, active and sharp. They find it difficult to sit idle and parents find it difficult to keep pace with the high voltage play. Parents can play together only till a point and then want the child to play on his own as they get tired and have a lot of other chores to do as well. But the moment they want to leave, the child makes a huge drama because his energy is still bubbling inside and his need to play is not yet satiated. It’s very important to satiate this need else it may get expressed negatively in the form of hyperactivity, aggression, fighting, irritability etc. Children are also known for their boredom that comes with repetition of a game. So all in all, it becomes quite a monumental responsibility to think of new plays and games.

So here comes a list of some very interesting and educational activities that can be played by the child, with someone or by himself:

To do together:

  1. Read or look at books, children encyclopaedias and photo albums together.
  2. Collect pebbles, leaves, flowers when you take your child to park or beach. Talk about the various shapes, textures, colors of each thing and their role in nature. Create a scrap book and stick flowers and leaves in that. Color the pebbles and use them as decorative pieces. Your child will learn a lot about environment through this activity and will be thrilled to show off his collection to guests.
  3. Take a bowl of beans and have him stick them on a picture to make an art-work. This is a good activity for visual motor coordination and concentration.
  4. Give him an inch-tape and teach him how to measure small distances, like from table to chair or from fridge to the cupboard. It teaches him about comparative distances (far/near) and numbers.
  5. If you have a weighing scale at home, teach him how to weigh objects. Then give him objects of his choice and let him weigh them. This is a great way to teach comparative weights (light/heavy) and numbers.
  6. Evergreen role-plays like doctor-patient, shopkeeper-customer, and passenger-bus driver are a good way to teach social skills. If you do role play of child-parent where you become the child and he becomes the parent, you might be amazed to find out his perceptions and ideas on parenting.
  7. Play rough games like pillow fighting, tug of war using old dupattas, bedsheets etc. It discharges that ‘extra’ energy that would otherwise not let the child sit for a minute.
  8. Make obstacle course in the corridor using small cartoons, small boxes, and plastic bottles and ask him to run and jump. Time him and maintain a record sheet. He would love to break his own records.
  9. Hide and seek the toy, Simon says and Pin the tail are some indoor games that a child is bound to enjoy, besides the traditional ones like snakes and ladders, ludo, knots and crosses etc.
  10. Hide and seek, tag, ocean-island and chain-run are some of the old fashioned but highly entertaining outdoor games that you can play with your child indoors too. You can use a small plastic ball, a plastic bat and a sideways inverted box to play golf too.
  11. All children love coloring. And they love it even more when it’s done innovatively. Like vegetable dabbing, balloon dabbing, thumb printing etc. make a display board and stick his paintings on that.
  12. Give him Atta-dough and ask him to roll out chapatti for you, while you cook vegetables. If he does it neatly, cook that chapatti for him. It will surely do wonders to his self-esteem if he can serve that chapatti to other family members.
  13. Take small cans and put small items like coins, paper clips, sand, and marbles in the cans, making two cans of each kind. Let the child shake any two cans and see if the sound that comes is same. It enhances auditory memory and auditory recognition skills.
  14. Take cotton balls and put different scents on them like perfume, toothpaste, peppermint, coconut oil etc. Blindfold him and ask him to smell them and recognize the odour. It enhances olfactory recognition skills.
  15. Put some objects in a box. Blindfold your child, tell him the name of one object and ask him to take it out from the box. It enhances the sense of texture, shape, 3-dimensional feel and visual memory skills.
  16. Use alphabet stencils and sketch pens and have him trace letters to make a sign board, like ‘welcome’ for the main door, or ‘cold’ for the refrigerator or ‘hot’ for the microwave.

To do alone:

  1. Give him a coloring book, crayons and plenty of time to color as much as he wants. You can give him wooden puzzles or construction toys to play with too.
  2. Give him a small box and some wool strings. Ask him to wrap the box with the strings in a way that box cannot be seen.
  3. Give him a sheet of plain paper and a pencil to scribble on it. Ask him to ‘write’ a letter to his grandparents. Let him have freedom to scribble the way he wants. Make sure to post it to his grandparents later.
  4. Cover the dining table with a big bedsheet and put some of his toys, favorite finger foods and a pillow inside. Tell him it’s his house and he can play inside for the next, say, 30 minutes.
  5. Give him a bowl with mixed beans and legumes like chick pea, green moong, red rajma, white rajma etc. Give him 5-6 small bowls and ask him to sort the beans out. Instead of mixed beans, you can use mixed stationary items, cutlery items too.
  6. Play dough, home made or readymade! Kids can spend hours making colourful stuffs and it’s very good for their visual motor coordination, creativity and concentration.
  7. Use home made musical instruments like guitar (rubber bands tied on a plastic box), drums (kitchen utensils) and other ready made instruments like ghatam, whistle, musical toys etc. Dress him like a rock star and let him have fun with his musical talents.
  8. Give him child-safe scissors and old newspapers. When children are allowed to do tearing, cutting like this, their destructivity gets channelized and you get less experiments done with your office files, bedsheets, curtains etc.
  9. Let him play scavenger hunt. Give him a list of things by drawing the objects. Give him a basket/bucket and tell him to collect these objects from around the house.
  10. If weather and health permit, give him soap and water and the desired object, like doll, ball, a utensil etc, that needs to be cleaned. Children love to clean and you can surely make use of this!





Monday, January 21, 2013

learning by doing

the traditional method of teaching children involves blackboard. this traditional method uses 2 basic sensory modalities, namely vision and auditory. children see what the teacher is writing and listen what she is saying.

now studies show that to cope with the pace of education, the traditional method of teaching has to be replaced by something that involves more sensory modalities of a child, so that he is more involved, more oriented and more focused.

so education psychologists have been trying to encourage the multisensory methods to be reinforced in classrooms. the modern methods like smart boards, educational toys, videos, etc engage more sensory modalities of a child. the modern multisensory method is also referred to as VAKT method. VAKT means:

V= visual (the child sees)
A= auditory (the child hears)
K= kinesthetic (the child does and manipulates)
T= tactile (the child touches and feels)

VAKT methods are extensively used for remediation by special educators and occupational therapists. children suffering from learning disabilities show tremendous improvement when they start learning by doing.

so why not teachers? if teachers start using VAKT methods, many children at risk of dyslexia can also be taken care of easily in a group.

when children are allowed to learn by doing, they learn better. they understand better. they remember better. these methods can be used for small and big children both.

some examples of VAKT to teach small kids:
  1. to teach colors: asking the child to lace all red balls in one row and all yellow balls in another, instead of showing the two colors from a book.
  2. to teach shapes: asking the child to roll out play-dough and cut out circles and squares, instead of showing the two shapes from a book.
  3. to teach alphabets: asking the child to trace fingers on sand paper letters or asking him to make long noodles with play-dough and then form alphabets with them, instead of only tracing and writing on paper.
  4. to teach addition: asking the child to take out 2 apples from the fridge and keep in a basket, then asking to take 1 more apple out, and then asking to tell you how many apples are there in the basket instead of doing 2+1 in a worksheet by drawing lines
  5. to teach subtraction: asking the child how many apples are left in the fridge now
  6. to teach measurement: giving measuring tape to the child and asking him to find out how far the fridge is from dining chair, instead of teaching 1metre=100 cm
this is just a very small list of few VAKT activities to give you a feel of how to move on from typical books/blackboards to using various objects around for a deeper sense of learning.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Activities to improve memory



1.    Digit span: the child is given few random numbers at the count of 1 number per second. The child is asked to repeat the numbers. The span is the length of numbers he can repeat without making mistakes.
2.    Word span: the child is given few random words at the count of 1 word per second. The child is asked to repeat the words. The span is the number of words he can repeat without making mistakes. The recall can be of 3 types- immediate, delay without distraction, distracted delay.
3.    Reading short stories: after reading the stories, the child can be asked few questions for comprehension. he can also be asked to recall and repeat the story in his words.
4.    Repetition of sentences: the child is told sentences and he has to repeat them. again, the repetitions can be immediate or delayed.
5.    Word pair recall (both familiar and unfamiliar pairs: familiar can be cow-milk, unfamiliar can be paper-water). First the whole list of pairs is told to the child and then 1 word of the pair is given and the child has to give the other word of that pair.
6.    Word game (first person says one word, second person says the first word and gives another word , first person says the first two words and gives another word, and so on).
7.    Object memory (few objects are shown to child and later asked what was shown).
8.    Visual mapping. (Objects in the room are shown to the child. Child looks at them and repeats the names. Then the child is asked to recall the names of the objects by keeping his eyes closed).
9.    Remembering visual details from TV ads.
10.           Route mapping (the child recalls the details of the route from place x to place y, like the number of right and left turns, landmarks, etc).
11.           Blind folding (an object is given in child’s hands who is blindfolded. It is then mixed with other objects in a box and the child is asked to find out the object from it).
12. Grid copy: a grid is shown to the child with few lines drawn. the child has a blank grid, where he can draw the lines at same dots without looking. the complexity of grid depends on the age of the child.
13. Sorting: a card with 10 pictures is shown to the child for few seconds. another card with 20 pictures(in this card the 10 pictures of previous card are also there) is shown and the child has to find out which are the 10 pictures he has seen in the previous card and which are the new pictures.


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Activities to improve sequential skills

some children find it difficult to follow multiple instructions or understand spellings, as their skill of following sequence is not adequately developed. in some cases it may require occupational therapy, while in many, it may simply need a positive trigger from your side. here is a list of few activities that you may do with your child to enhance his/her sequential skills:

1.      Picture pattern (set of alternating pictures given, child has to guess which picture comes in the end. Eg. Circle-square-circle-square-circle-____________)

2.      Number  pattern (set of alternating numbers  given, child has to guess which number comes in the end. Eg 1-4-1-4-1-4-_________)

3.      Alphabet  pattern (set of alternating alphabet  given, child has to guess which alphabet comes in the end. Eg. A-P-A-P-A-_____)

4.      Sequencing pictures (what comes first, what comes next. for example get up, brush teeth, eat breakfast)

5.      Sequencing numbers (ascending order, descending order)

6.      Sequencing alphabets (ascending order, descending order)

7.      Unscramble 3 letter words to make meaningful ones (TAC, NAV, ABD, DAL, etc)

8.      Auditory word memory (you say 2 words in an alternating manner for 5-6 times and stop at any one word. Child has to say the other word )

9.      Digit span (you say 4-5 numbers at the beat of 1 number per second. Once you finish, child has to repeat. Eg. You say 4, 7, 2, 9. Ask the child to repeat)

10.  Unscramble story (oral exercise)- you say 3 sentences in a jumbled manners. Child has to rearrange the sentences in such a way that they say a story (eg. I brush my teeth, I eat my breakfast, I get up)
11. action-reaction pictures (pictures of dirty clothes-washing machine-clean clothes or pictures of clean canvas-paints-painting can be put in a certain way only)

12. life cycle picture cards (egg-chick- hen or baby-child-man or egg-tadpole-frog etc)

13. join the dots (especially the numbers or alphabets) to make pictures