Category: Schooling

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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.

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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.

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 Schooling

Develop Pattern Recognition Skills

Patterns are fundamental in nature. They surround us, whether in books, sports, games, music, or otherwise. That’s why developing strong pattern recognition skills at a young age is crucial in preparing the mind to be more active and more powerful.
MindFinity focuses on the development of four key components of polymath thinking; pattern recognition, pattern design, analogy, and real-time composition.

At its core, pattern recognition is the process of training ourselves to spot trends. As we age and gain critical thinking skills, pattern recognition skills can help us to make decisions, and eventually our brains naturally recognize patterns and learn from them. This allows us to sort objects and situations in the mind and determine the next steps we should take.

For example, we use pattern recognition when we drive. We are aware of traffic patterns and how they play into the rules of the road. We know (or at least we should know) the first person who goes at a four-way stop, that yellow lights will always turn red, and how to use a roundabout. Even if we drive on roads that we have never been on before, we can still safely navigate by relying on our knowledge of traffic patterns.

Without these abilities, it would be impossible for us to get from place to place. Patterns allow us to get through life and understand the things that we encounter. We are able to make educated choices.

In the same way, our understanding of patterns can help us navigate unfamiliar territory. MindFinity’s method of knowledge transfer trains your child to take the patterns they learn in one field into new subjects in order to accelerate learning. By placing an emphasis on play and exploration, MindFinity’s games speed learning through analogy. How can swimming be like painting? How can Karate translate into music? This sort of knowledge transfer is just one of the skills that MindFinity’s games will help your child learn. Go to our Getting Started Facebook member community to learn more.

What Are Pattern Recognition Skills?

Pattern recognition is the ability to recognize emotional, intellectual, and physical patterns, and articulate how they connect. Of course, this is helpful in many different subject areas, particularly as children are learning.

Pattern recognition can be used to classify data, predict the future, problem solve, and more. Nearly everything we do on a daily basis revolves around patterns in some way, from the things we do when we wake up in the morning, to the way we get work done, to the ways we settle down at night.

Types of Pattern Recognition Skills

Throughout everything we do, there are patterns. There are different types of pattern recognition skills.

Patterns in Art: The ability to explain differences and similarities is at the heart of any practice of pattern recognition. Children will likely have the easiest time spotting patterns in art. At MindFinity, one of our earliest games asks kids to notice and begin to articulate the difference between a triangle and a square. We then ask our kids to fill the shapes with two colors, then redraw the shapes and swap the colors. This helps children understand visually how to recognize and design their own patterns. You can spot this one easily as they grow, because you will see them drawing lines or circles on paper.

Patterns In Math: Of course, most people think about the patterns we approach from a mathematical perspective. Solving mathematical problems, spending money, and determining budgets all require a nuanced capacity to recognize and explain patterns.

Patterns in Music: Music is composed of repeated patterns and those who recognize these patterns tend to be better at playing and composing music. This is because once we learn the components of music we can imitate the patterns we hear and teach ourselves to play.

Patterns in Language: At developmental ages, children learn language largely through imitation. In this way, children learn manners and the means by which to behave. While English is a difficult language to learn, there are patterns in it. Every language bears traceable patterns that help us to remember when and how to formulate ideas. These things can seem obvious to those that know the rules – when to add a feminine ending in Spanish, when to add an -es to make something plural in English, or when to put an accent over a letter in German – but for children who are acquiring language, it can be difficult to articulate these patterns. However, by reinforcing the skill of imitation and by giving children the tools to recognize patterns of grammar, they can take on new languages faster..

Patterns in Emotion: Children need to be able to learn what types of statements make people upset, what happens when they do something wrong, and how to protect themselves against emotions. For example, they need to learn that if they misbehave in the classroom during the day, they may face a punishment (some might not get to eat dessert that night). Or they may learn that if they are mean to a child on the playground other children might not want to play with them. Once they begin to recognize these patterns, they can navigate life while instructing themselves and become successful.

MindFinity prepares your child to utilize the recognize the patterns in each of these domains and to utilize them as polymath thinkers, able to competently use the strength of their artistic talents in math and vice versa. As automation and AI forever alter the world’s job market, the acquired skill of polymath thinking will prepare your child to become an innovator. Click here to get started playing games.

Why Is Pattern Recognition Important?

Pattern recognition skills build on your child’s thinking process and strengthens their ability to understand shapes, sequences, and systems. Having these skills means that young students can grow and focus their imagination into the development of innovative ways of thinking.

Pattern design, analogy, and real-time composition are all essential skills needed for polymath thinking too – all of which your child will acquire through our program as they move patterns from one discipline to another.

One of the reasons that computers have started to take jobs away from people is because computers are about to use pattern recognition to automate simple repeated tasks. However, computers can only imitate existing patterns, it is difficult for them to discover new one.

When it comes to spotting patterns in emotional responses, unique situations, and in newer areas, computers haven’t had the time or ability to collect data that allows them to predict. The jobs of the future will be for those who are able to utilize polymath thinking to creatively design new patterns.

Pattern recognition is so important for children because it helps with:

  • Recognizing and classifying concepts
  • Identifying solutions to problems
  • Developing autonomy in the thinking process
  • Working with Other People to find creative solutions.

How Does MindFinity Help With Pattern Recognition?

To develop pattern recognition skills, it is crucial to introduce new concepts a little at a time and then expand on them. The micro-games on MindFinity start out very simple, but become increasingly more complex. We start with patterns of two, and then three. Once we master the various permutations, and learn to move them more rapidly across disciplines, we then begin to combine them in more challenging ways.

Being able to recognize patterns, redesign them, and apply them to new fields is at the heart of this practice. In as little as five minutes, your child will be able to translate an arrangement of shapes into a musical sequence. After a few weeks, they’ll know how to translate this same sequence into karate, cooking, dancing and more. The best part is that this is all achieved through play.

MindFinity’s games are designed to make learning a joy by giving parents a methodology that only requires 5 minutes of play every day. MindFinity asks you and your family to access polymath thinking on a daily basis in order to prepare your child to cultivate multi-talent acquisition. This skill prepares the mind to see similarities across disciplines and recognize how the mathematical possibilities can lead to creativity. As your child develops his or her Inventive IQ, the ability to recognize similar patterns across a variety of disciplines becomes second nature. This ability will be vital as tomorrow’s job market increasingly gives way to automation and AI. Instead of worrying if your child is being prepared for the future, give them the tools to become the innovator of tomorrow.

MindFinity also connects you with a community of like-minded parents who are giving their children an edge in the future. Our member community serves as an invaluable resource to see how other families have adopted this award-winning methodology. Eventually, you’ll be able to create your own games and share them, seeing how other families are playing.

With short practices every day, your child can expand their way of thinking and grow into the creative problem solver they were meant to be.