Life Skills Activities For Kids: Teaching Your Child With Toys And Games

By Jean Isaacs

Without exception, children love toys – you need only to ‘unleash’ them in a toy store to realize that. Although skill-building toys have been around for years, today’s parents now understand that toys and games also help children develop skills that are necessary in the game of life.

Skills Toys Teach

Communicative Skills – These are all about understanding others and the ability to use language – including gestures and body language.

Cognitive Skills – These concern thinking, learning, reasoning, comprehension, memory and problem solving.

Gross Motor Skills – These involve basic movement using the large muscles – sitting, standing, moving about and maintaining balance.

Fine Motor Skills – These encompass manual dexterity while eating, using a pencil or crayon, managing cutlery, etc.

Social Skills – These include the domains of interaction, building/strengthening relationships, cooperation, responding appropriately to others’ feelings and developing self-control.

Checklist For Buying Toys For Your Child

• Is it age-appropriate? (Look for the age label)
• Is it user-friendly?
• Does it address the skill you want your child to develop (e.g. maths/vocabulary)?
• Will the toy hold the interest of your child long enough to be useful? (Repeated usage strengthens skills)
• Is it upgradeable? (Toys with scalable skill levels have longevity)
• Is it fun to play with (apart from being instructional)?
• Does it stimulate creativity?
• Does it have a guarantee (very important with expensive electronic games)?
• Is it safe to use? (Does it have sharp edges or small loose parts that can harm tiny tots)?

Age-Appropriate Toys

Infants

The brighter the toy, the better! Sensory skills need to be activated. Do remember that babies, besides looking at, touching, feeling and throwing, put everything into their mouths.

• Unbreakable toys that can be washed are perfect – so are soft toys.
• Mobiles are best for the baby in a crib – the color and movement keeps the baby’s eyes focused.
• Rattles and toys that squeak offer auditory stimulation.
• As they begin to crawl or walk, ‘push-and-pull’ toys are excellent.

Toddlers

During this period, kids love to run, jump and climb, exercising their motor skills. It is useful to vary the toys’ textures and provide for visual, auditory and tactile fun.

• A rocking horse or a tricycle can aid coordination skills.
• A ball they can basket is also a good idea.
• Little girls can develop coordination and dexterity by dressing dolls.
• This is a good time to introduce plasticine, crayons, chalk, broad brushes and paint for creative development.
• Use stacking rings to teach color, size and sequencing. Let your child go beyond making towers with stacking cups – let him fill them with sand or water to help him gauge size and volume.
• Shoveling sand on the beach helps muscle development, while building sand castles stimulates imagination and creativity.

Pre-schoolers

At this stage, kids get more imaginative and toys take on different roles. Toys that can be used together with other children are important, since children at this age need to lean to share, cooperate and wait their turn.

They may fight and try to throw their power around. This is normal while learning the social skill of differentiating between acceptable and non-acceptable behavior.

• Better muscle control sees them graduating to bicycles.
• Their curiosity and imagination are stirred by animal toys, cars and trains.
• As their motor and cognitive skills improve, they handle building blocks better and more creatively. Apart from being fun to assemble and knock down, building blocks also teach basic maths.
• A colorful abacus is ideal for teaching color and patterns.
• Simple jig-saw puzzles encourage logical thinking.
• Puppets, toy musical instruments and character toys like Superman stimulate imagination and role-playing.
• Magnetized games (such as magnetic fishing sets) help in developing hand-eye coordination and patience.
• Snakes and Ladders and similar board games help kids learn their numbers under pleasant circumstances.

From five upwards

The child’s attention span increases. He is better equipped to take on new projects, solve problems and even resolve differences on his own.

• Animal card games aid animal recognition, improve concentration, teach strategy and the concept of awaiting their turn.
• Uno, Lexicon, Alphabet Soup and Scategories are good buys. Besides encouraging language skills, they also boost out-of-the-box thinking skills.
• Graded Meccano sets, Lego blocks and Mechanix develop fine motor skills, critical thinking and creativity. From building a tower with blocks, the child graduates to more complex structures, developing better spatial skills.
• Games like darts and nine pins help hand-eye coordination and also refine motor skills.
• Jigsaw puzzles are challenging, and completing one is immensely satisfying. They help concentration, refine motor skills and hone cognitive skills. The colorful picture can trigger off story telling sessions, which in turn boost language skills.
• Monopoly, checkers and chess are popular with pre-teens. These sharpen their cognitive and strategy skills and encourage critical thinking.

Jigsaw Puzzles help concentration, refine motor skills and hone cognitive skills

Video Games

Video games prepare the computer savvy generation for the progressively high-tech life of the future. Popular characters like Scooby Doo teach children shapes, colors and the alphabet phonetically.

The Reader Rabbit series for elementary schoolers and the graded series ClueFinders (centered round a set of preteen detectives) offer hours of pleasurable skill learning. The benefits:

• Quick thinking
• Finger dexterity
• Hand-eye coordination
• Problem-solving skills
• Interactivity
• Visual skills
• Concentration
• Strategy
• Creativity (some allow for changes to be made)

Board Games And Puzzles

Besides being a great deal of fun, these develop:

• Numeric ability(Uno, SuDoku)
• Language skills (spelling proficiency, vocabulary enrichment (Scrabble, Upwords, Taboo)
• Social skills (patience while they await their turns, cooperation, understanding and language through verbal interaction)
• Critical thinking (as they come up against a challenge
• Strategy, concentration and problem-solving as they sift through moves (Chinese Checkers, chess, jigsaw puzzles, the Rubik Cube, The Kaleidoscope Classic.)
• Financial skills (Monopoly/Trade where, besides managing money, children learn what is a good investment and when to invest.)
• Creative and ‘stretch thinking’ (developed while adapting rules to make a game more challenging – EnKounter, blocks).
• Logical deduction and memory (games like Cluedo)
• Symmetry and balance (Lego blocks, Meccano sets etc.

Outdoor Games

Any outdoor activity boosts general well-being. Simple games like hide and seek and tag can teach communication and relationship skills as well as emotion management.

• Leadership qualities
• Camaraderie
• Cooperation and trust
• Helpfulness (supporting other team members)
• Tolerance
• Adaptability (changing strategies to win)
• Better understanding, mutual respect for team mates/opposition
• Organizational abilities
• Rule adherence
• Discipline
• Courage
• Goal orientation
• Determination, perseverance and self-motivation
• Competitiveness

As we can see, toys and games can teach valuable lessons for life – including making the right choices, getting on top of a situation and reaching goals.

Probably one of the most important skills a child learns is that winning and losing are part of life, and that neither should be taken too seriously. In short, toys and games help children come to terms with themselves and the world, enabling them to become better human beings.

© Jean Isaacs

This article may be reproduced with the complete author bio and a live link back to http://www.lovingyourchild.com

Additional resources:

Inspired Children: Life Skills Curriculum for Kids – Weekly step-by-step guide to teaching essential life skills to children aged 4-14 yrs in just 15 minutes at a time. Topics include: self esteem, communication, nutrition, exercise, cleanliness. Perfect for Parents, Teachers, Grandparents.
TenMarks Summer Math Program – Lessons and personalized programs that cover all the core math skills and concepts your child will need in school. The only online math program that helps students refresh, learn, and master math concepts – in their own time, at their own pace. Each child receives a personalized curriculum to help them master the concepts quickly.
Robot Reader Reading Games and Phonics Games – Let your child discover the wonder and joy of reading. Robot Reader gives children the core skills they need to be confident, successful readers. Improve kids reading skills with these reading games and phonics games for school or homeschool education.