Kids love video games, but most such games have little or no educational value and many even glorify violence. So it’s no surprise that parents often put severe limits on the types of games their kids can play and how often and long they can play them.
That’s not to say that all video games are bad. Many educational toy makers and children’s book publishers have used the popularity of video games to their advantage and created educational computer games. Kids find these fun and entertaining and adults like them because they teach kids new things and reinforce what they are learning in school.
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While observing a student teacher in a first grade music class recently, I was struck by the phenomenon of students chanting a poem and then asking if they could add a melody to the poem. When the teacher asked comprehension questions about the poem prior to adding the melody, student responses were general. When the same questions were asked after adding a melody to the poem and singing it, student responses were more specific. They often sang their responses. Adding the melody to the words seemed to help ingrain in their memories the meaning of the poem. Perhaps it was the simultaneous action of the right and left sides of the brain which helped the students to recall additional information from the poem after a melody was added.
This observation reminded me of my own music teaching at the elementary level and the frequency with which I would add melodies to poems, chants, and stories to help students remember key educational themes. Many times, classroom teachers would tell me that because students sang songs about the fifty states, math concepts, historical facts, rhyming words, etc., their students were more successful in remembering and recalling this information. The students seemed to more readily grasp and retain information when learned through the enjoyable medium of music.
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In a world of technological wonders, it’s easy to forget the simpler childhood games and challenges of yesterday. Too often, children equate a challenge to mastering the next level of a video game. We’ve forgotten about those challenges that require no electricity. One of those fun games are kids jigsaw puzzles. Most of us can remember the sense of satisfaction and the pride felt from our own childhoods when that last piece of the puzzle was put into place. We felt as though we’d accomplished a major goal; and indeed, we had. Here are a few tips for those wishing to buy puzzles for the classroom or home.
Kids jigsaw puzzles offer many benefits of helping kids to grow and develop their skills and talents. Here are a few of the ways they help kids:
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