Sunday, May 22, 2011

Preschool Games

 I've been reading this book again:



One of the things I like about it is that it talks about child development, and about what skills the different games and activities we do as parents can help develop.  The book divides games into four large categories: Cognitive, Motor, Social, and Language.  Each large category has about 3 smaller categories, and each smaller category has 12 games.

Some of the "games" in this book are well-known, like the Hokey Pokey, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Where Is Thumbkin.  Others are simple activities that can be made with household items.

Last time I borrowed it, about a year ago, I made up the cards for the games, but I had a very hard time figuring out how to organize them.  We tried picking up one of those coupon folders, but it didn't work out for us.  Apparently all of those cards have now been lost.

So this time I've got a large envelope for all of the game cards.  Four business-letter envelopes, each labelled with one of the broad categories, and about 15 smaller envelopes, to hold the cards for each smaller category.  The cards are regular 3x5 index cards.

Sometimes as a parent I feel like we get into a rut, of doing the same old things.  I remember when my parents tried to ask me questions about my day, it always felt awkward.  So it is nice to have a variety of ways of interacting.  This morning we played the money-sorting game.  I thought it was great to go through it twice, but DS kept wanting to play "Again!" for at least two more after that.

I also found the games to be compatible with my understanding of Montessori philosophy.  The book encourages letting the child choose which game to play, and following the child's cues for when to stop.  These games are meant to be fun, and a child won't want to play if it goes on too long.

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