Timeless Hobbies for Kids to Explore
As you go about your day, you have so many ways to encourage your children’s learning through play, from setting the table and jumping rope to counting glass beads. My son played Mancala when we went to the Renaissance Festival in Bonner Springs. It’s played by two players, each placing an equal number of glass beads in each of the pits on the game board. On a turn, a player removes all the beads in one pit and deposits them one at a time in the following pits, including one pit at each end of the board where the beads are “captured” by the player who controls that particular pit. At the end of the game, the player who captures the most beads wins.
My son actually beat the guy selling the games! He then gave him a certificate saying he beat the Mancala Man!
Another fun game is Texas Hold’em poker. We played that a lot, and my children got pretty good at it. It’s a simple game that encourages math skills and patience. You can find the rules online. It encourages math skills and patience.
Another fun activity that builds math, coding, dexterity and mental agility? Tried-and-true Legos. Children spend hours building mazes and following directions. Many architects began their journey as little children sitting on the floor putting blocks and Legos together. This activity also limits screen time and builds confidence.
Sidewalk chalk is another simple activity that can be transformed into a learning game without your kiddos realizing it. Have them draw squares, then add letters to each one. (Numbers work, too.) As kids hop along the squares, help them learn to spell: the words dog, cat, fun, happy and more. Some artists draw incredible scenes with chalk, and your children can do the same. There is no wrong way to draw a flower or a sun or a dinosaur! The children in our neighborhood once drew pictures on each square of the sidewalk on our block. It took them all day, but they learned teamwork and that Popsicles are great on a hot summer day.
Playing sports, of course, gives children life lessons like nothing else. Baseball, football, soccer, swimming—all require counting, planning and listening. Working together is a valuable lesson everyone needs to learn, and when a coach explains a play, and all players must do their part, they learn to lean on each other. Memory skills come into play here, too, with coaches’ sending home playbooks to study and go over. When my son played football, the coach gave each player the loop from a chain. They wore it on their belt buckle or put it on their keychain. He was teaching them that all the loops make a strong chain. At the end of the school year, he had each player add his loop to a chain, showing they all were bound by time. My son is in his twenties now and still has the loop the coach gave each boy upon high school graduation. The intangible knowledge this coach put in each of the boys’ hearts is a forever part of their personalities.
Playing sports also hones important cognitive skills: focus, visual attention, visual tracking and fast decision-making. For instance, research shows that the most elite quarterbacks move their eyes more quickly to the most open receiver. Their visual attention allows them to quickly decide to throw the ball or keep it and run. They also hold their focus and attention on their target longer, using their visual tracking skills to give their brains more time to make the right decision.
Play from the past can be valuable, too. My father had an electric train his father gave him, and my sisters and I loved when he put it together and the metal cars rolled around that track. The added plus was when our dad talked about the history of trains and how he carried that big box with the tracks and cars around for years.
Building and designing train sets can actually teach children valuable lifelong problem-solving skills. A child must piece the tracks together in a way that allows the trains to run smoothly, he must learn to avoid obstacles to the tracks, such as an area rug or a chair leg, and he must assemble the tracks in such a way that the tracks connect at a certain point. These skills are essential when a child is confronted with problems in life. He needs to have patience, foresight, ability to use trial-and-error and planning skills in order to succeed in school and in a future career.
Playing with trains and reading about trains also sparks a child’s creativity and imagination. There are endless ways to assemble train tracks, connect trains together, build cities around the tracks, reenact what the child has seen on a television show or read in a book, and create a new world each time the child drags out the box of trains, tracks and accessories.
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Who knew knitting was so beneficial? Our grandparents knew, and many young people are taking up the hobby now to relax. My daughter even made me a scarf during her senior year of high school. Children learn mathematical skills from counting stitches and rows, adding stitches and working math of gauge. With any knit, kids strengthen skills of multiplying, adding, measuring and more. They’ll enjoy math without even knowing!
Problem solving is another skill crafters pick up, as knitting requires following instructions, reading and troubleshooting. Making and correcting mistakes in knitting help children discover how a problem occurred and then how to fix it. This breaks the need for perfection. When you learn from an early age that it is about the journey not the destination, you become a happier adult. When your child creates an imperfect product and still loves it because she made it, her confidence level goes through the roof! Hand-eye coordination is required to knit, as is creativity as knitters choose what type of fiber and color and the type of garment they want to make.
Best of all, knitters learn patience. We all know the excitement we feel when finishing a project, and sharing this experience with your kids will result in a sense of patience—and a sense of achievement.
An avid outdoors girl, Judy Goppert lives in Lee’s Summit. She enjoys drawing on her personal experiences to write about the nuances of everything wonderful about life.
Sources: MathPlayground.com, GoodHousekeeping.com, PattyLyons.com