Read on to find out some of the best, and most fun educational games for toddlers.
Educational Games to Play With Your Child
Teaching your child a new skill or helping them learn what their mind and body can do can be tricky sometimes. However, one of the best ways to do it is to turn the activity into a game.
While many of these activities aren't necessarily games, there are ways to turn them into one. With that being said, get your child into their baby shoes UK, and whip out the arts and crafts box; here are some of the best educational games to play with your toddler.
Simon Says
Simon Says is one of the best and most accessible games to help your child understand sentences and process instructions. It also improves their listening skills and helps them respond quicker and more effectively to questions.
You can also take the game into other situations, such as tidying up their toys or rooms. This, in turn, teaches them about responsibility.
Matching Objects
Playing matching games teaches your child to recognize objects or patterns. You can do this in two ways; the first is to get them to match identical items, which helps logical reasoning and identification.
When this becomes too easy, use objects that pair in different ways. You can do this by collecting items such as a pair of socks and shoes, a t-shirt, and a pair of shorts; this takes logical thinking to the next level and requires them to look beyond what an object is or does.
Playing Pretend
Toddlers are at an age where they begin to recognize people, their mannerisms, and how they interact with the world and each other. Playing pretend lets them explore what they have seen and allows them to act in a way that is different from themselves.
If you also take on a character, you can teach them about social cues and interactions and allow them to see how others will react if they speak in a certain way or do something that is either acceptable or not.
Board Games
While you should keep the game simple, board games are famous for improving logic and creative thinking at the same time. Snakes and ladders teaches them numbers and math, while a game like Jenga teaches them about patience and thinking about their next move.
As mentioned, while you should keep the games simple, you can also teach your child more challenging games, such as Bingo or Checkers.
Number Fishing
Common core math is something that should be taught early on as the sooner your child grasps the simple aspects of it, the easier they will find it later on. Number fishing is an easy game that just requires a bath rub of paper fish with numbers on them and a homemade fishing rod.
You can ask your child to find and catch a fish with a particular number on it, or you can step the game up by asking them to find the answer to an equation.
Simple Crosswords
Spelling and word association are other skills that will benefit your child considerably further down the line when taught early enough. You can create your own crossword using online resources and add words that your child knows or new ones.
You can then create the clues and then let them figure it out. Not only does this help with spelling, but it also encourages your child to think outside of the box.
Seed/Plant Growing
Seed and plant growth is one of the most straightforward tasks you can do to help your child learn about nature and biology. You can either plant a seed or a sapling and then create a chart that tracks its growth and watering cycle.
You can make it fun by using colorful markers and stars to pinpoint highlights such as reaching a certain height or age or to mark off that the plant has been watered.
Painting
Painting is one of, if not the best, way to encourage creativity at any age. For your toddler, you can choose to do paint by numbers, which helps them identify numbers, colors and requires them to follow instructions.
You can also take it a step further by painting with them but only using one or two colors. This will let them explore what color and shading mean and, once again, allow them to think outside the box.
Obstacle Course
Physical stimulation is just as important as necessary as mental stimulation, and an obstacle course is one of the most fun ways to explore this. You can approach this in multiple ways, either making a course that encourages jumping, running, crawling, and climbing or making a mini race track for their bicycle or tricycle littered with obstacles they have to navigate around.
You can then step it up a notch by adding checkpoints where your child has to draw, build or fix something before they can continue.
LEGO/Blocks
There is a reason why LEGO is one of the most popular toys of all time. It facilitates the growth of creativity, logic, and problem-solving and allows children and people of all ages to create almost anything they can imagine.
You can buy sets that will help your child learn about instructions and follow them, or simply buy a few boxes of bricks and let them do what they want. Either way, LEGO will help your child to identify shapes and objects and let them use their imagination in a new and exciting way.
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