I love using games as a learning tool for children.  Parents of young children too often get caught up in curriculum and formalized teaching, but you can do just as much and more by playing with them.  And fortunately, it’s so easy to find ways to turn learning activities into games!

Our experience for seven children so far is that they’ve all learned to read without being officially taught.  While I don’t sit down to teach them to read, that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about literacy.  I read with my kids regularly, and I also look for fun ways for them to play with letters and words.  Kids can pick up letters and sounds in this way pretty easily without much effort on your part – ds7 began reading English on his own when he was six, though his focus in school was on learning Hebrew (and his Hebrew reading is impressively fast and accurate).  Once kids know the sounds letters make, they can start to decode words on their own.  There are games on the market that can make this easy, but it’s not really that hard to do on your own if you look for ways to make it fun.

I started off using some flashcards for ds4 to match up but then saw that it was a little above his ability – it would be perfect for ds5, though.  (I used a basic flashcard set that I had but you can make your own cards for this.)  The idea was to match each letter with a card that has a word and picture that started with that letter.  I lined the cards facing up, and he had to put the letter on top of the picture.  The amount of cards you use depends on your child’s age.  You can also use the cards as a matching game, turning all the cards face down and then making a match with the letter and the word that starts with that letter.    Ds5 loves matching games and you can use the basic format for a lot of variations.

Back to ds4.  He was doing the cards with me but it didn’t seem fun for him and if it’s not fun, it’s missing the point!  Then I remembered about these plastic ABC letters with flashcards that someone gave me last year – I used to have the game in the US but never used it! I adapted the activity for something better suited for ds4 and he enjoyed himself a lot.

Basically, I lined up the plastic letters on the floor, then arranged the cards in three piles – one pile had words with four letters, one had three letter words and the last one had two letter words.

On the back of each card is a word with an illustration.  I showed him how the plastic letters could be matched up with the word and sat next to him while he did the first couple of cards.  I showed him the different kinds of cards and let him choose which ones he wanted to use – he chose the picture cards.  After he got the hang of it, I went into the kitchen to make some lunch while he continued playing on his own.

When playing with kids, remember to keep it fun and keep it unpressured.  As soon as your child wants to stop, stop.  When they’re interested, they’re primed for learning. When they are ready to move on, there’s no academic gain in pushing them. This is one reason why kids in school learn so little relative to the time spent there – for much of their time, they aren’t motivated or engaged.  To adapt a well known saying: You can lead a child to the lesson but you can’t make them learn!

Fortunately, by using games instead of workbook style lessons, you can skyrocket the learning while getting around the resistance – this is particular valuable with kids who think learning is a chore.  This isn’t our issue – our kids routinely play learning games at their own initiative, even those that are overtly academic (eg Greek and Latin roots).  But part of that is how we present the games – as fun.  We aren’t trying to ‘sneak’ learning in.  We think learning is fun and games are fun, and there’s only a gain for everyone when children think of learning and fun as synonymous.

Avivah