Author: Noel

Categories
Schooling

Teaching Mathematical Logic To Your Kids – 3 Key Things To Know

If you are struggling to teach your child mathematical logic, you aren’t alone. It is one of the most difficult subjects for kids to grasp and for parents to teach. Even veteran teachers struggle with it sometimes. It is such an important topic for kids to learn, so you need to do it. But how? 

At MindFinity, we help children learn the foundations of mathematical logic and polymath thinking skills. Our focus is on making connections and pattern recognition, which helps to form their basis of mathematical logic – click here to learn more.

Start With Pattern Recognition

From a very young age, children start to notice patterns. They are able to place colors together, put items in lines, and stack cups together based on sizes. Watch them play with toys and you will see that most of those toys have patterns built into them. The little plastic rings that they stack, their mobiles, and even their dolls will have patterns built right into them. Teaching pattern recognition isn’t the main goal of most of these toys, but it is still an important part of them.

MindFinity gives you countless ways to teach patterns with food, toys, movements, music, and more. 

Answer Their “Why” Questions

Kids ask, “Why?” all the time and it can sometimes get annoying. However, they are trying to form patterns in their mind, understand cause and effect, and figure out their place in the world. If your kid asks you a question, try to answer it as completely as you can.

If you are teaching math and your child asks you why the answer is what it is, try to help him think through the logic that is used to solve the problem. Eventually, the time will come when they have to justify their answers in class (and in life), so they need to know how to go about it.

Start Playing Games That Require Mathematical Reasoning

Games can help children learn while they are having fun and just being a kid. There are plenty of games out there that teach mathematical logic and reasoning without feeling like educational games. Think about Sorry!, Parcheesi, Yahtzee!, Phase 10, and other games that don’t just allow your child to passively sit and count. They need to think about what to do with numbers to win.

As your child gets older, you can play different games to teach deeper mathematical reasoning. Even something like Monopoly can help to teach reasoning skills.

Use MindFinity To Help Them Learn Mathematical Logic

Children who can spot patterns and quickly make connections, use analogies to help them understand greater than, less than, and can apply thinking algorithms, learn faster.  Those who build these specialized skills will likely enjoy school more than their peers. This is because when you teach through play, you are taking away a ton of the pressure that they feel. By taking just a few minutes every day to play MindFinity games with your child, you can make school easier for your child, and learning, faster. Not only that, but you will help them to use their imagination to become more adaptable to change, which can help them succeed long into the future!

MindFinity will have you dancing, drawing, singing, and more with your children all while learning these skills and building Inventive IQ. 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
Schooling

Why Letter Awareness Games Do Not Work For All Kids

Is your child have trouble with letter awareness games? They aren’t alone – more and more parents have been finding that their children aren’t learning letter sounds as well as they should. This is just one of the ways in which public school can often fail children – there are some cases where students don’t properly learn letter awareness well into high school.

If you want to encourage letter and pattern awareness in your child, a great way to do that is through MindFinity, which only requires a few minutes a day. For more information on MindFinity, please click here. 

Remote Learning and Large Class Sizes Prevent Teachers from Noticing When Someone Doesn’t Get It

In public schools, class size continues to increase and teachers are swamped. Worse yet is remote learning, where the students are just small windows on the screen. It is nearly impossible for most teachers to check in with every single student to see if they completely understand a subject before they move onto the next one. This allows some students to fall through the cracks, especially those who are afraid of speaking up or drawing attention to themselves.

It Is Easy To Fake Understanding

Even for those teachers who can check in with every student, kids are smarter than you think. They’ve developed ways to blend into the crowd and not draw attention to the fact that they don’t understand something. The worst part? The more they do this, the further behind they get, and the better they get at hiding their confusion.

In Group Settings, Kids Can’t Be Corrected

Sometimes, kids won’t even know that they are wrong. They will play the game with the rest of their classmates and say the wrong sounds for the wrong letters. With such a cacophony of voices, it goes unnoticed. Over time, it becomes hardwired in their brands that an “A” sounds like something completely wrong.

Dyslexia Goes Largely Unnoticed

Of all the different learning problems that kids face, dyslexia is one of the hardest to identify. There are some pretty early warning signs, but they can be written off as any number of problems. If you suspect that your child has dyslexia or another sort of learning disorder, it is best to reach out to a professional for help.

What Can You Do?

If you think that your child isn’t learning letter awareness, you may want to step in yourself and focus on one-on-one learning and help your child. Teach them the different sounds, play games one-on-one and generally just support them. Start by using letters individually and in words with only two or three letters. Gradually move onto the more complicated ones.

Your child will eventually start picking up on letter awareness, it is just a very hard topic for some kids. Keep the faith, work hard, and they will get there.

Interested In Learning More About MindFinity?

Join Mindfinity today, and see how playing daily games will transform your child’s mind into that of a multi-talented polymath thinker. Your membership includes: unlimited access to the videos from Opher’s Toronto Parent Workshop where he teaches you the methodology, and new educational activities to play each week in the Accelerated Daily Games Program.

Categories
Parenting

How To Treat Screen Addiction In Kids

Are your kids spending too much time on their screens? Do they spend hours staring at TikTok or watching YouTube videos? It happens to the best of us: we need to get something done on our own and we end up allowing our kids to spend just a little too much time on their screens. 

Getting too much screen time can cause kids to become too sedentary, hurt their sleep at night, and just not allow them to be creative. There are many great reasons why kids should spend some time on screens, but there is just as much reason to keep them on a pretty strict time limit.

Combine Screentime With Offscreen Time

One of the reasons we like MindFinity so much is because it combines online learning with offscreen action. 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. 

You should try to do this with all activities for your child. If they want to watch a YouTube video, make it an educational video that you can follow up with an activity where they can use what they just learned. If they are playing a game like Among Us, combine it with an activity like creating their own spacesuit or building their own coding set.

Set Timers & Limits

Most devices will allow you to set a time limit that will cause the Wi-Fi to turn off if your child spends too much time on their screens. You can set overall limits for the device or time limits on certain apps so that they don’t spend too much time on TikTok, but could instead spend time playing games that encourage learning.

Offer Choices When Applicable

You might have meant well buying your child an e-reader, but you could just be encouraging them to stay on their screens. If your child loves to read, consider getting them some physical books as well as an e-reader. They will be able to choose how they want to read, and sometimes they will choose physical books.

Encourage Your Child To Earn Screentime

Another great option is to have your child “earn” screentime. You can set the terms yourself, but offer a certain amount of time for getting their homework done, playing outside, cleaning their rooms, helping out around the house, and more. Give them some educational time on their screens that is free, but make them earn the time playing games or scrolling through their social media feeds.

Be The Example

Kids mimic the actions that they see, and that includes spending time on screens. Don’t sit on your phone all through dinner if you wouldn’t let your kids do the same. If you ask your kid to get off their phone, don’t sit and scroll Facebook. 

We all have screen addiction problems too, and should probably start finding new activities that we can all do as families.

Know That Some Screentime is Okay

You can’t completely pull the screens from your child. Not only will that cause more problems, but it can also be hard on you as well. Sometimes, it is easier to hand your child the phone and get your own work done, and that isn’t going to hurt them.

MindFinity Helps Kids Learn Through Games & Projects

Our award-winning program helps your children expand their brains and learn polymath thinking skills while dancing, singing, doing martial arts, and moving around! You get a new game for 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 and expand on projects that they are already doing. You’ll get some fun ideas as well!

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

Categories
Parenting

Indoor Activities For Kids Of All Ages

As the weather starts to turn colder and kids need to stay inside more, it is time for parents to come up with indoor activities for kids that keep them occupied for more than just a few seconds. It can be difficult to be creative enough to continually come up with new ideas for projects, games, and tasks. 

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! Even better, you’ll be able to expand on them and raise smarter kids! 

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

Here are some more great ideas for indoor activities for kids of all ages that will help them expand their brains, raise their Inventive IQs, and learn polymath thinking:

Marshmallow Buildings Teach Patterns & Shapes

This classic activity requires two supplies: toothpicks and marshmallows of various sizes. Have your children build bridges, skyscrapers, houses, churches, castles, or whatever else they can imagine using different shapes and reinforcements. See who can get their building taller or sturdier.

As they build, children will start to see what shapes make the building sturdier and figure out patterns that prevent the building from twisting and breaking down.

Potato Stamping For An Artistic Outlet

Have a kid that loves to do art projects? Potato stamps are an easy way to fill up some time. Your child will learn about relief prints and how the cuts they make won’t show up on the print, but they also can’t undo the cuts, so they will need to plan each cut before they make it.

To mix things up, provide different color paints, different cutting tools, and even different surfaces to stamp on – newspaper, fabric, construction paper, and even textured surfaces will result in different appearances.

Dance Parties Reign Supreme

We are always a proponent of dance parties because they help get energy out in a short amount of time and in a controlled way. Create a playlist of different types of music – don’t just pick Top 40 pop songs. Look to different genres, eras, cultures, and styles to introduce your kids to something they may never find on their own.

Paper Snowflakes

This one is a little messy, but it is a lot of fun for kids, and probably something you remember doing as a child as well. Get some printer papers (or construction paper) and safety scissors, and have your kids make a bunch of snowflakes. You may have to show them how to fold and cut the snowflakes, and some of the results may not be the best, but they will start to understand the pattern and get some great results.

When they are done, they can decorate them further with markers, crayons, or glitter and hang them around the house.

With all of these activities, there are steps you can take to supplement the work. Have your children read books about a musician, watch a YouTube video about printmaking, and catch some of their own snowflakes on black construction paper, if possible.

While these activities may seem simple, they are fun and can span over a few different age groups. You may even find yourself making a few paper snowflakes along the way.

MindFinity Helps Kids Learn Through Games & Projects

Our award-winning program helps your children expand their brains and learn polymath thinking skills while dancing, singing, doing martial arts, and moving around! You get a new game for 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 and expand on projects that they are already doing. You’ll get some fun ideas as well!

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

Categories
Parenting

9 Tips To Raise A Smart Kid

Want to raise a smart kid? We all do – no one really wants to have a kid that performs below average. In the past, raising a smart kid meant enrolling them in hard-to-get-into preschools and hiring private tutors, but being above average in school isn’t what will give them the edge anymore. 

Instead, there are some little things that you can do on a daily basis to raise kids that are precocious, inventive, and of course smart. Some of the small things you can do include:

Pay Attention When They Fall Behind

Children aren’t going to get every single thing they learn on the first day. They need a support system in place for when things get hard. 

If you think your child has fallen behind, it may benefit them to receive some extra help from you. MindFinity takes only a few minutes every day and can help you connect with your child and discover how they learn best, which can give them an edge in almost every subject.

Have Them Join A Sport

Children who participate in extracurricular activities have incentives to be “smarter” at least on paper. They are more likely to keep their GPAs higher once they get into middle school and high school because they want to be eligible to play those sports.

Set Expectations That Are High

As soon as your child starts going to school, you want to let them know that your expectations are high. They need to do their work to the best of their ability and everything should be checked. This doesn’t mean that mistakes cannot be made, but expect the best.

Teach Social Skills

Book smarts only go so far, they can’t replace social skills. Teach your child how to take responsibility for their actions, share, work on a team, and resolve problems. This will help them to be well rounded in their intelligence.

Ensure They Don’t Get Tracked Too Low

Once your child hits a certain grade in school, they will be put into a “track.” You want to ensure that they aren’t comfortable in their track unless they are in the highest track the school offers. Public schools typically offer three or four different tracks for students of different abilities. 

If your child is placed in a track that is too easy for them, or even at their level, they may get lazy and won’t excel.

Read A Lot

One of the best things that you can do with your child is read to them for at least 15 minutes every day. It doesn’t have to be Russian literature or Shakespeare. The love of reading is created at a young age and they will learn so much from books. 

Model What You Want To See

Your child will look to you for how to be and act within the world. If you want them to be smart, you need to be smart yourself. This means you read books, learn new things, watch interesting movies, and continually make lifelong education a part of your daily routine. 

Start Teaching Them Early

While it is important to allow your kid to be a kid, you can start teaching them the basics of reading and math at an early age. You can buy toys that will teach them the basics of pattern recognition, letter recognition, counting, and colors, which will give them a boost when they start school.

Do Not Be A Helicopter Parent

We live in a world where you need to be extra protective of your children, but try to let them go out on their own as much as possible. You want your child to develop resourcefulness and independence as well as intelligence.

Use MindFinity To Help Them Get Ahead (And Stay Ahead)

Children who can spot patterns and quickly make connections, use analogy and can apply thinking algorithms, learn faster.  

Those who build these specialized skills will likely enjoy school more than their peers. This is because when you teach through play, you are taking away a ton of the pressure that they feel. By taking just a few minutes every day to play MindFinity games with your child, you can make school easier for your child, and learning, faster.

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.