Brain Exercises for Children
Most children will not mind if they are allowed to stay at home during the entire day, playing video games. However, this is not a healthy lifestyle and, therefore, every parent should prevent this. On the other hand, some children will be anxious to get out of the house at any time, engaging into series of physical activities whenever they can, tiring their bodies excessively. It goes without saying that this is not good as well. So, you need to help your child find a balance in his/her life, having enough of physical activity while, at the same time, sufficiently doing many brain exercises.
Brain Exercises for Children
Brain teasers are an excellent way of keeping children's minds busy. Basically, these are nothing more but riddles. However, riddles require a significant mental effort to be solved. Thus, whenever your child is having a birthday party, or his/her friends come over, you can keep them active by dividing them into two groups and reading them some interesting riddles, giving them the answers if they do not know them.
Alternatively, memory games are always a productive way to boost your child's brain activity. Basically, you can use cards placed face-down, where your child can reveal only a pair at a time, trying to find an equal match for each card. Also, you may expose the child to about 20 odd objects for a minute or so, asking him/her to memorize as many of these as possible, writing them on a sheet of paper afterwards. Both of these can be played with a group of children as well, being great for parties and similar events.
Pop quizzes are great for checking your child's memory, even though he/she may find these boring. Prepare sets of short and easy-to-answer questions, testing your child's memory regarding everyday things and events. You can ask about names of certain people like the postman, a distant relative, the neighbours etc. Then, have a system of marking the test, with a minimum of required points. Once the child does this test badly, he/she will try much harder the next time. Thus, without even knowing it, he/she will be boosting his/her brain activity.
As for reflexes and attention, you can throw a ball in your child's hands and see how he/she will react. It is better to do this when other children are visiting your home. Alternatively, you can blindfold the children and move around the group, clapping next to their ears. After each clap the children closest to the clap should raise their hands.
Other Games and Activities for Your Child's Brain
Word Searches/Crosswords
They make many books for kids that contain word searches and crosswords. These are great activities for children to exercise their brains by using the focus and thinking that they require. Crossword puzzles are also a great family activity, where one person can read off the clue and tell how many letters are involved and everyone else can guess.
Memory Exercises
Working with memory exercises can be one of the easiest brain exercises for children, since it can be done in the car while driving or almost anywhere else. Starting when they are young we naturally do these exercises by teaching them how to spell their names, and what their phone numbers and addresses are. We can expand on this by having them work on remembering poems, songs, and the names from family trees.
Memorizing helps children use their brain to focus and retain the information. It also is a very useful skill since a lot of education is based on memorizing, such as learning the number facts for math or learning a list of spelling words.
Obstacle Courses for the Brain
We all have heard of obstacle courses that require physical exercises, but we can also set up ones that include brain exercises for children. An obstacle course for the brain can combine both physical and brain exercises, or focus exclusively on the latter. You can make stations along a physical obstacle course where they can only proceed to the next station after they complete a mental task, such as a short crossword puzzle or word problem. You can also set is up where they have stations throughout the house where they have to complete a series of mental tasks all lined up along the floor or a table.
Write or Draw Left-Handed (Or Right-Handed)
A great way to exercise the brain is to use the non-dominant hand for writing or drawing. This can be fun to see who can tell what was written or drawn afterwards. Another option is to draw a picture where one-half is done with the dominant hand and then afterwards it is copied onto the other half by the non-dominant hand. These are brain exercises for children that encourage both sides of their brain to work together.
While brain exercises for children can be simple and fun the payoffs can be huge. By using these brain exercises the children are learning to exercise an important part of the body.
Sources:
steadyhealth.com
ezinearticles.com
Other links:
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