It hasn't been simple for parents who have been working from home while keeping their children entertained and informed. Everyone is spending a little more time on their devices these days and as parents, you want your children to be more active and creative throughout the summer instead of sitting buried in a tablet.
So, if you're a parent concerned about how much time your children are spending staring at digital screens, know that there are plenty of new and imaginative ways to keep your children occupied. Together with HP Printables, a free web service offering thousands of worksheets, cards, colouring pages, puzzles and much more, we have collected some fun and educational games that will distract children from gadgets and encourage them to spend quality time with one another, while having fun.
3-6 years
If at the age of three a child recreates and plays very simple stories that was seen somewhere, then at the age of four the child turns on directorial thinking. The child takes various figures, builds turrets, houses, roads from them. In games, they create a whole new world. During this period, the imagination develops, and the skill is laid to solve problems, make decisions, take responsibility, and compose more detailed plots.
In order to support this, parents must create conditions in which the child will have a certain autonomy and the opportunity to play for some time on their own. If the conditions are created, their initiative and independence develop.
Themed games:
• Find Masha – Mazes help your child to work on their executive functioning skills, such as planning and brainstorming various strategies
• Find 6 differences – Spot the Difference activities help in developing visual perception. Your child can develop and have fun at the same time
• Puzzles – Solving puzzles is a great motor activity and helps in boosting a child's confidence
• Complete the picture – Match the halves to complete all the pictures help in enhancing kids' problem-solving skills
Colouring pages develop fine motor skills, learn to combine colours and use artistic tools (crayons, pencils, felt-tip pens, paints). Parents can print out a colouring book of their child's favourite characters to bring back colours from memory or make up their own. Colouring ready-made pictures is practiced both in kindergartens and in art therapy, so parents should not doubt their benefits even at an older age.
In fact, adults too, can enjoy colouring as a form of therapy after a long day of work as it’s proven to drive attention away from themselves, relax the brain and overall turns out to be a pleasurable experience.
Colouring:
• Colour the home with Masha and friends – Help your child identify colours and numbers. Colouring is an excellent way for children to express themselves, develop their motor skills and relax
• Help Hare trace the flower – Concentration is required to focus on a single activity for a period, so colouring activities can help to develop this further
7-10 years
After the age of seven, children begin to play abstract games with complex direction, which can be played entirely in their imagination. They build complex plots and play them for a very long time. Parents may feel that their children at this age are becoming less active or even lazy. This is not so: complex stories unfold in their imagination and new worlds are built. At this age, children are interested in creating something on their own and solving puzzles with complexity.
Therefore, instead of buying a new toy, parents can offer their child to make their own out of paper. It can be characters from your favourite cartoon, an animal, or a car. A homemade toy will be much more appreciated by a child, and it will be a great object for a role-playing game – this proves as an excellent exercise for perseverance and fine motor skills, which will keep the child busy for hours.
Crafts:
• Binary Code Bracelet – Improve your child's coordination skills and their focus in a fun and easy way with the crafts activity, where children get an opportunity to build something from scratch, which is both educational and fun
• Write a Crazy Summer Story – This worksheet is perfect for hours of backseat entertainment on long car rides and can inspire hilarity over and over again
• STEAM Matching Game – STEAM is everywhere, even at home. This game encourages kids to match the famous women in STEAM to their extraordinary accomplishments
11+ to young adults
At this age, children change their leading activity from playing to learning. They complicate the plots of their games and become interested in games with strict rules.
• Snowflake Sudoku – Sudoku, like any other mathematical game, stretches the brain and trains analytical thinking. Sudoku has simple rules: the player fills in a field, which consists of cells, with numbers from 1 to 9 so that in each row, in each column and in each cell, the number occurs only once. The more numbers are filled in advance, the easier it is for the player to substitute his own. The game can be gradually made more difficult by adding more fields
• OH-WAKE Crossword Puzzle – Research suggests that crosswords help memory, strengthen social bonds, improve vocabulary, and increase knowledge base
• Wildlife Word Games – Much of the success of this game comes from the combination of entertainment and immaterial gains it offers. The benefits of playing Word games range from learning support to increasing mental performance
Adults often lack imagination and ingenuity. But to spend an interesting evening with a child or to keep them occupied while you are catching up with a friend for coffee, you do not need to buy teaching aids or constantly bring home new toys.
On HP Printables, a platform with free colouring and educational games, the user has thousands of activities that will interest children of all ages. You can now opt to subscribe to the platform to get access to specially curated collections, latest updates in terms of content, information about promotions and exclusive printables straight to your inbox.
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Make learning an extremely enjoyable experience – both for yourself and your kids!
