Preschoolers are often too rambunctious to sit and listen to lessons. To overcome their short attention span, parents and teachers alike can sneak learning in through game play. Parents and teachers have an assortment of enjoyable and educational games at their disposal for preschoolers. These activities both keep preschool tots entertained and allow them to expand their knowledge base.
Benefits of Game Play
Playing games is about more than just fun. For children, engaging in regular game play is an important part of the development process, reports the Parents website. Through game play, preschool children can increase their socialization skills, develop their abilities to work as a team, learn the basics of good sportsmanship and improve their problem-solving abilities. On top of all of these other benefits, games often teach children important academic skills.
ABC Games
Make the task of learning the alphabet fun with alphabet-themed games. Create an ABC sort for your kid to try. To make this game, collect pictures of objects that your child is familiar with and purchase magnetic letters. Place the magnetic letters on your refrigerator. Give your child the collected pictures one at a time, and ask him to bring you the letter that the object starts with. Praise him profusely for his success. Or let your kid have fun with letters with a shaving cream letter activity. Borrow Dad’s shaving cream and spray some on the table. Say a letter, and ask your tike to draw the letter in the cream. Set a goal before you begin, and give him a prize if he reaches this set goal.
Number-Centered Activities
Counting is a simple math skill that is vital to arithmetic success. Practice this skill with your preschooler by using counting games. Get one of your kid’s friends involved in the fun and play a counting duckies game. To play this game, gather an assortment of rubber duckies. Lay these duckies out in front of the players. Tell the players that you will say a number and that they must race to count out the correct number of duckies and bring them to you. Award a point each time a player succeeds in this task. At the conclusion of the game, give the player with the most points a special prize.
Dress-Up Challenges
Turn the common preschool task of playing dress up into a game with dress-up challenges. Use dress-up as an opportunity to practice colors with a color garment dress-up game. Gather an array of dress-up clothes, and lay them out in front of your child. Stand across the room, and call out a color. Ask the child to don a piece of clothing that is that color and run to you quickly. As your child throws on clothing, he will laugh and giggle his way through this fun game.
Learning to Lose
Along with learning academic lessons through game play, games teach your child that, sometimes, you don’t win. If your child makes a mistake in a single-player game, or loses a multi-player one, make it clear to him that, sometimes, you don’t win. Praise him for his effort and remind him that it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. Upon learning this simple lesson, your child will be better prepared to engage in other competitive pursuits in the future gracefully.
Photo Credit
- abc’s image by jaddingt from Fotolia.com
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