Author: Noel

Categories
Schooling

9 Ways To Celebrate The 100th Day Of School

The 100th Day of School is a pretty big milestone for most kids. It shows that the year is over half-finished and most schools, when they’re in session, will have celebrations of their own, from costume parties to healthy snacks. If you homeschool or you are still doing e-learning, how can you celebrate at home? Here are some great ideas:

Go “Old” School

Much of the learning that kids do today focuses on staring at screens or using technology. To celebrate the 100th day of school, go old school! Have your kids get off of the computer for a few minutes. 

One of the reasons we like MindFinity so much is because it teaches families to play offscreen, educational activities. Our lessons require that parents spend a few short minutes learning to play the offline games every day, and then you and your child will be off and doing different activities that build inventive IQ. 

If this sounds interesting to you, click here to learn more. 

Have Kids Count Out 100 Of An Item

What does 100 Swedish Fish look like? How about 100 buttons? Have your kids count out 100 of a specific item and compare and contrast those items.

Create A Song About The 100 Days They’ve Had

For kids who are musically inclined, have them write a song about the 100 days of school so far. Some great backing music would be “My Shot” from Hamilton or “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift. They could easily write their own lyrics about learning multiplication, building volcanoes, and playing in the gym.

Hide 100 Of An Item

Want to get your kids moving? Hide 100 of a specific item somewhere around the house (and your yard) for your child to find. Hide some of these items in easy-to-find places and make some of them more difficult to find.

Throw A Party

Who doesn’t love a good party? It is a fun little treat to break up the day to day routine of life. Bake cupcakes, play music, and allow your kids to create 100-themed decorations.

Learn How To Count To 100 In Another Language

Another fun activity is to learn how to count to 100 in another language. There are plenty of YouTube videos out there about this, songs, and tools for just about any language. If your child is already learning one language, try to pick one they don’t know!

Put Together A 100 Piece Puzzle

This is a fun, easy task that will keep them busy (and quiet) for a few minutes. Depending on the age of your child, this could take five minutes or 25.

Exercises Throughout The Day

Pick a certain physical activity (toe touches, jumping jacks, situps, etc) and split it into a number that is appropriate for your child. For example, if your child is physically active, maybe break it into two sets of 50 repetitions of that specific move. For other kids, maybe 10 sets of 10 is a better idea. Whatever it is, get them to do 100 repetitions of the movement.

Write A 100-Word Story

Encourage your child to write a 100-word story. Not 99 words and no 101 – exactly 100 words. This will teach editing skills and help them to be more creative.

Use MindFinity To Help Them Enjoy Every Day Of Learning

MindFinity will have you dancing, drawing, singing, and more with your children all while learning these skills and building Inventive IQ. You can watch them progress systematically, and understand how they work through things that they may not understand to better support them when they have trouble in school.

MindFinity is a great tool for younger children (4 to 8 years old) and their families to have fun learning together for just a few minutes every day. For more information, reach out to our team today to get started. 

If you want your child to have fun in school and take advantage of all the opportunities they are given, MindFinity is a great place to start.

Categories
Parenting

Best Educational Apps For Kids

If you are trying to give your child an edge in school (and in life), you may want to supplement what they learn in school. One of the easiest ways to do that is to download some educational apps and let them play them when they are bored. There are a few different apps out there that you should consider.

But if you are looking for a bit more of an offline approach to learning, you may want to consider MindFinity. For just a few short minutes every day, you and your child will do activities offline to help build their Inventive IQ. To learn more, click here. 

MindFinity is more impactful than apps because your child isn’t just passively sitting and playing. They are doing activities in the real world, interacting with you and engaging in different types of learning.

Duolingo 

Duolingo is a great app to help your child learn a second (or third) language. There are plenty of options for the language that your child learns – from Spanish to languages that very few people speak. They learn in just fifteen minutes a day. The app works on their reading, speaking, and writing skills all at the same time.

YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids has more content than silly songs and people playing video games. It has a ton of educational content as well. You can create playlists for your kids to watch or set them loose knowing that they won’t come across content they shouldn’t. 

Crossword Puzzles

There are plenty of crossword puzzle apps that are geared toward children. These apps have easier clues that kids will be able to do on their own (with maybe a little bit of help from you). They will still need to know how to spell things and how the words fit together.

Science360

Science360 is a great app that was developed with the National Science Foundation. It is a great tablet-based app that helps breakdown science topics into easily digestible bits of information for children. All of the content is accurate, high-quality, and updated. Kids will be able to explore the world and see how we all fit together.

Think of this app as a more advanced Magic Schoolbus.

Epic!

Epic! Is a great app for kids who love to read. It is an app that has over 30,000 children’s books that they can read, listen to, and explore. There are even some activity books hidden in the library, so your kid will feel like they are getting screen time but they aren’t getting too much.

This app is really easy to use and there is always new content.

Stack the States 2

One of the places where the school system fails kids the most is in geography. This is a fun game that teaches your kids to recognize the shape of the states that make up the United States. It also teaches general information about the states. Kids then have to stack the states (like the name suggests) so that they don’t fall over, helping them to learn spatial skills.

Swift Playgrounds

Swift Playgrounds is a great app for kids to learn about coding languages. They can “create” their own playground and learn about coding through puzzles, targeted lessons, and absolutely gorgeous images. 

Use MindFinity To Help Your Child Learn

Interested in supplementing your child’s education? MindFinity works with you and your child to foster a love for learning through play. This proven method builds up polymath thinking skills by playing games that build Inventive IQ. It will help them not only in school, but throughout their lives.

MindFinity is a great tool for younger children and their families to have fun learning together for just a few minutes every day. For more information, reach out to our team today to get started. 

These are just a few of the activities that you can do with your family to encourage social-emotional learning. Once you start looking for opportunities to help your child grow in this way, you will easily be able to do it without making it feel like work. 

Categories
Parenting

Things To Do When Your Kids Are Bored – 7 New Suggestions

“I’m bored.” It is one of those sentences that parents dread hearing because there is only so much that we can suggest before we toss the phone or tablet in their direction and entertain them that way. By the time our kids are 8 or 9, we’ve gone through all of the “creative” solutions to the boredom. They know our tricks and we have to get smarter.

If you need ideas for fun, project-based learning activities, consider investing in MindFinity. We will have your child learning through different activities and projects. With MindFinity, you won’t have to plan out quite so many activities, as we do that work for you!

If this sounds interesting to you, click here to learn more. Here are some great ideas that you may not have considered:

Have Them Write Their Own Play or Musical

If your child is complaining about being bored, suggest they write their own play or musical. Play them the cast recording of a musical you approve of and use that as their inspiration. They will need to come up with words, movement, and transitions. If they get really into it, they might even make their own scenery and costumes!

Practice A New Sport

Introduce your child to a sport that they may not have heard about before – like curling, rugby or lacrosse – and have them practice it. Don’t have the right gear? Tell them to use their creativity to make their own!

Painting Rocks

All over the country, people are painting “kindness rocks” and hiding them in plain sight for other people to find. Grab some rocks from your yard, wash them off, and have your children paint whatever they want on them. Just make sure to only use paint and not to glue anything on them, just in case they end up staying in nature.

Once they are painted (and sealed!), take a walk and hide them in public areas where others will find them.

Create Stories

Want to get in on the fun? Walk around your house and find some random objects and have your kids work those objects into a story. The more random the objects are, the more creative your children will have to be.

Make Domino Lines

It’s an activity that has been lost to time, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring it back. Get some dominoes and see who can make the most intricate maze that they will then push over. This teaches your children about spatial awareness and can cure boredom for hours.

Make A Music Video

Does your child have a favorite song? If so, challenge them to create a music video to that song. They will have to come up with the storyline, get dressed, and shoot the video. You can even have them use video editing software if you have it.

Write A Letter

Is there someone in your child’s life that would love to receive a letter from them? A grandparent? A great aunt? If so, have your child write them even a short letter and create their own stationery for it. They can even design the outside of the letter!

Use MindFinity To Help Them Stay Active & Creative

Kids who are more creative rarely get bored (even though it does happen sometimes!)

MindFinity will have you dancing, drawing, singing, and more with your children all while learning these skills and building Inventive IQ. You can watch them progress systematically, and understand how they work through things that they may not understand to better support them when they have trouble in school.

MindFinity is a great tool for younger children and their families to have fun learning together for just a few minutes every day. For more information, reach out to our team today to get started. 

If you want your child to have fun in school and take advantage of all the opportunities they are given, MindFinity is a great place to start.

Categories
Parenting

So Your Kid Is A Visual Learner – Now What?

There are a few different types of learning styles, and some kids are what we call “visual learners.” This isn’t a good or a bad thing, it is just the way that our brains best process information and catalog it. The school system tries to teach to all of the different learning styles, and many lessons are visual, so your child is off to a good start there. 

Kids who are visual learners tend to be better served by the school system than others, but they may still need some extra support from you. As a parent, you may want to help them connect their natural learning style and strengthen some of their other learning styles. 

MindFinity helps you to teach your children and increase their Inventive IQs through various activities that strengthen all of their learning styles. Our games will have your children learning while dancing, singing, cooking, and more. They only take a few minutes every day, but they will quickly become your favorite time with your kids. To learn more, click here.

For now, let’s talk more about your visual learner.

What Is Visual Learning?

For visual learners, they learn best when they see things. This can look like many different things, including watching videos, seeing demonstrations, or simply watching someone “do” a math problem. These are the students who can watch their teacher do something and they can mimic it back to them – whether it is playing the guitar, solving long division, or performing an experiment.

How Do I Know If My Child Is A Visual Learner?

There are some pretty obvious cues that your child is a visual learner. These can include:

  • Drawing or mapping things out;
  • Taking notes using pictures or diagrams;
  • Learning better when they see a picture or a video;
  • Asking for someone to show them something;
  • Preferring assignments that involve coloring or something visual.

There are some other signs that might symbolize a visual learner:

  • They can draw pictures from memory;
  • They are usually very organized;
  • They have good spatial-awareness;
  • They enjoy drawing; 
  • They often use visual aids to help explain themselves;
  • They choose the more visual approach in projects.

How Can I Use This Information To Help My Child Succeed?

If this all sounds like your child, there are a few different things that you can do to help them succeed – and help them when they are struggling to learn a new topic. The first thing is that you can always show them how to do something. Walk them through the steps visually. You can also buy them highlighters and pens in different colors and allow them to take notes how they like to – even if that includes doodling. Color coding is a big part of learning for these kids.

To keep your child on track, write out to do lists and write down instructions, as this will help them to keep everything they need to do straight. 

If they are struggling with topics, these are the students who do much better when they have flashcards to memorize the information. They also do well with learning from YouTube videos, watching other students work, and getting written feedback instead of verbal feedback on what went wrong.

MindFinity Helps Kids Learn Through Gameplay

Our award-winning program helps your children expand their brains and learn polymath thinking skills while dancing, playing music, doing martial arts, and moving around! You get a new game each day of the week, which takes a few minutes a day. And you can expand on the games and have your child put their imagination to use. For visual learners, the games can help to quickly spot patterns and increase their Inventive IQs, which will help them to learn better throughout their entire school career.

Interested in learning more? To learn more about MindFinity and sign up for a free trial, click here.

Categories
Schooling

How To Help Kids Do Better In School

Is your child struggling in school? There are many reasons why children fall behind, and very few of them actually have to do with their intelligence levels. The main problem with the education system today is that it teaches to the lowest common denominator in the classroom. Teachers simply cannot teach to the strengths and levels of every student, which means that some students get left behind whereas others don’t get pushed enough. Children who seem bored may not be struggling, they aren’t getting pushed.

Get More Involved

As a parent, you need to get involved in your child’s education. You can’t just trust that the school system is going to take care of them and get them to learn what they need to learn. Some parents will create their own curriculums for their children that is separate from what they are learning in school.

You can also just talk to your child’s teacher and find out what is really going on in school. You have every right to ask for a syllabus and work on your own with your child so that their education is supplemented.

One way you can do this is by investing in MindFinity. MindFinity helps to increase Inventive IQ and spark a love for learning through play. 

Reward Kids For Good Work

Some parents think that high performance in school is expected and they should only “punish” their child if they don’t achieve those levels. That doesn’t always work for all kids. If your child gets a good grade on a project, performs well in a certain subject (especially one they’ve struggled with), or even put in some extra effort and don’t perform as well, reward them for their hard work. 

It doesn’t have to be something big – take them out to eat, spend some time with them, get them a new toy, or just praise them. They will want to keep doing good work to get those rewards – even if they aren’t physical.

Let Them Make Mistakes

Sometimes, your child will fail a test. They will have to stay inside at recess. They won’t make the team or get the lead in the play. You have to allow your child to fail and make mistakes. This is when they will do the learning they need. When they go into the real world, they will make mistakes and have to learn how to not only own up to them, but move on from them. 

We all have a natural inclination to protect our children from failure, but usually it is best to let them fail and then show them how to pick up the pieces.

Show Them That Learning Never Stops

As children get older, they think that learning is only a temporary thing. They don’t understand that they will continue to learn things until they are old and gray. Talk to your child about what you are learning – whether it is learning something new at work, learning a new language in your spare time, or picking up a hobby. Once a child (or a teenager) understands that learning is lifelong, they will want to become better at it. 

This also means that you need to show yourself struggling to learn things. Even if it is just failing to work a new phone app or taking care of a new plant.

MindFinity Helps Your Kids Do Better In School

If your child isn’t doing well in school, doesn’t like school, or just seems bored, you can help them. Sometimes it isn’t about just getting through school, sometimes you can help your child by teaching them new things or more than they are learning in school.

MindFinity can help you by introducing different activities each weekday that will have your child learning, and get your own creative gears moving. For a few minutes every day, you won’t have to plan out the lessons. Instead, they are delivered to your inbox and you can build from there.

For more information about MindFinity, please click here.