Make Your Child Smarter

Brain Building through Smart Play - Techniques and Tips

By Andrew Loh

All parents simply love to have children, who are extremely smart and intelligent with an ability to perform better in their personal and professional life. Till recently, we believed that there is not much that we can do to help our children develop their brains. Most of us were under a wrong impression that intelligence and smartness are inherited and it is almost impossible to enhance our children intelligence after the birth. However, recent monumental research studies on brain-based development in children suggest us that parents can do and perform a lot to help their children develop their brain based activities. The basic brain cells are very rudimentary and basic in a just born baby. However, most of the important brain connections and bridging between neurons occur during the first 10 years of your child's life.

Smart play is a new and modern term that helps your child develop basic brain based skills and talent that goes far behind the conventional type of intelligence that is restricted mainly to academic performance. Academic performance is an essential part of your child's life, but there are certain things that cannot be expressed through mundane scholastic abilities. There are the skills and intelligence that cannot be quantified or measured, just as we do in the case of classroom performance. These skills are absolutely essential for your child's success in life and they are almost invisible to your eyes. These smart play skills can just be felt and perceived.

Children love and adore creative and smart play. You children always like something that provides him or her hands-on type of learning process that makes them smarter, intelligent, inquisitive, probing and logistical. For example, your young baby will be amazed to see a swinging ball slowly swinging above her pr his eyes. The immediate reaction from her is to touch the swinging ball and probe what is there that is making it to swing. Once children touch the moving ball, they slowly begin to swat at the ball and make swing more. While older children are too curious to know why objects sink in water while others do not.

Active and smart play, both social and solitary, can help your child develop extraordinary skills that cannot be taught by regular academic processes. Symbolical thinking and abstract thought processes are two of the most important life skills that you must teach your child. These two are the complex skills that need lot of practice and perfection. These skills can emerge when you child play with different types of smart play things and games; dress-up cloths and props, building blocks, doll houses, building games, construction toys and accessories, farm toys and mechanical sets are some of the things that can help your baby develop a series of skills.

Here are some basic techniques and methods that will help your baby or child develop a series of brain functions:

• Look out for different toys, games, accessories and products like puzzles and board games that help your children develop basic skills like curiosity, inquisitiveness, interests and hobbies.

• Learning and understanding requires all of the body senses. You can buy different types of dolls, puppets, battery operated vehicles and construction/mechanical toys to stimulate and encourage exploration of language, touch, logistics and cognition. You can use these toys and playthings to create exciting stories and anecdotes. Get into child's play by playing with your children. Show them how to solve problems that arise, while playing board and puzzle games. Become an engineer to construct bridges, houses and farm villas.

• Buy lot of books and manuals that help your child to read, write and work on. You can read stories and rhymes aloud every night just before bedtime. An active conversation between you and your child will help instill the need to stay close together and actively participate in the learning process. Puppets can be a very useful tool to impart communication and language skills.

• Be interactive with your children. Ask probing questions about what your children are doing and about their experiences with smart toys. If there are any problems, sit down and explain about solutions and not problems; however, you can ask probing questions that lead to answers from them.

• Interactive and playful toys are extremely critical for your child's success. You will need to buy those smart toys that help them learn basic skills like learning, imagination, creativity and thinking skills. Encourage creativity by using playful and smart toys, especially by using brain and hands. Arts, painting and craft work will help your baby develop fine senses of creativity, artistry and imagination.

• Remember that toys are not just for your children! Toys are designed for you as well! Become a child and start playing with your children.

Your children's attention span, depth of concentration and will power, and level of enthusiasm or inquisitiveness are quite important and critical. The smart toys and playthings that you buy your children must focus on these important skills.

Smart play helps your children relate life experiences to reinforced learning and understanding. In fact, child brain development does not occur in isolation! One area of development will trigger and catalyze quick advancements in others. Smart play can help your child learn emotional, scholastic, logical, cognitive, thinking and social skills that can never be taught in a regular classroom.

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