Keeping the brain active and engaged is essential for a child's overall growth and development. Just like physical exercise, regular brain exercise is vital for children to enhance their cognitive abilities, memory retention, and problem-solving skills. Fortunately, parents and teachers can do numerous fun and easy brain exercises with children to encourage brain development while having fun. In this article, we will explore 14 easy and fun brain exercises that parents and teachers can use to help children improve their brain function and enhance their learning experience.
Brain Exercises for Kids
Use the following 14 brain exercises for kids to give your child’s brain an impressive jumpstart to smartness:
1. Concentration Span Games
Considering a child's age, you can put random objects or toys in front of them and give them 30 seconds to memorise what they see. Then you can cover them up and ask the child to recollect all the objects they saw. Observe how much they remember. You can increase the number of toys as you track an improvement in your child’s memory. You can also reduce the time you give them to memorise the items for an extra challenge.
DHA Brain Health Gummies by Little Joys
Looking for a tasty and healthy way to support your child's brain development? Look no further than Little Joys DHA Brain Health Gummies! These gummies are packed with essential nutrients like DHA and choline, which boost memory✅, concentration✅, and overall brain health. ✅
With four delicious fruits and veggies and zero added sugar, they're a treat that both parents and kids can feel good about. So why wait? Give your child's brain the boost it needs!🔥
2. Puzzles
Puzzles are an amazing way to develop a kid's hand-eye coordination, cognitive and problem-solving skills, motor skills, logical thinking, and even spatial perception. There are various options for these brain exercise games for kids. As per your kid's age, you can make them solve jigsaw puzzles or crosswords or even Rubik’s cubes. Other puzzles could be Scrabble, Sudoku, Logic games, and Tangrams.
3. Memory Games
Memory games help improve concentration levels and retain the capacity of a child's brain. Additionally, it allows them to think quickly, enhances their cognitive and behavioural functionality, trains their visual memory, and even increases their attention span.
There are various memory games, but all such brain activities for kids are developed on some basic ideas. For example, in the game ‘Going to the market,’ a person calls out one object, then another person repeats that item, and then adds another article of their choice, and the game continues. The first person to break this chain exits from the game.
This game requires the child to listen carefully, retain what's previously said, and think and add a new item. Such brain exercises for kids are a fantastic way to help 4-plus-year-olds develop their brains.
4. Physical Games
Classic games such as hide and seek, scavenger hunts, playing ball, running, or racing help keep a kid's brain sharp. This is because these games require your child to follow instructions and be attentive to win the game. This improves their attention span, increases spatial awareness, and teaches them self-control.
Games like treasure hunts and maze hunts help promote logical reasoning abilities in children. Their fine motor skills and problem-solving skills also improve as such games push them to think out of the box to tackle a situation. Through these brain exercise games for kids, children also learn to adapt to failure. They know how to find an alternative to a failed strategy while playing.
5. Learning Another Language
Being multi or bilingual is considered beneficial for a child's brain development. Study shows learning new and unfamiliar languages helps in equally stimulating and developing both the right and left hemispheres of a child's brain. Multilingual or bilingual children are more likely to be better learners, as learning additional languages helps stimulate the prefrontal cortex of their brain, which is directly linked to improved memory.
Brain Health Kit By Little Joys
Looking for an all-in-one solution to support your child's brain development? Little Joys has got you covered with their Brain Health Kit! Enriched with DHA, an essential nutrient for brain development, this kit combines the goodness of DHA Brain Gummies and NutriMix Gummies. 🔥
With a delicious chocolate flavor✅ and gummy format✅, your kids will ask for more on their own - no more fussy pills❌or bitter syrups!❌ Give your child the brain-boosting nutrients they need in a fun and tasty way! 😋
6 Cross Crawls
This is another physical game that is highly beneficial for early brain development. This exercise helps your child release stress and effectively concentrate on academics. In this game, your child needs to move their left arm to touch the right leg and similarly switch sides. The gradual and slow lateral movement helps enhance the child’s mental and attention-based coordination.
7. Lazy Eights
This is an interesting mental exercise. Here, the kid must draw figure eight multiple times, either in an imaginary way in the air or on paper. This exercise stimulates the child's creative side and loosens the muscles of their wrists and arms. This is yet another physical exercise that helps with brain development. It has specific benefits in improving their reading speed, eye-muscle coordination, and peripheral vision.
This exercise works like a neuro-physical stimulator for the child's brain. It sounds fun and is easy for them to follow. But it has many significant effects on the process of your child's brain development!
8. Double Doodle
This bilateral drawing activity requires the child to draw two images with their hands. This also helps equally stimulate the right and left hemispheres of their brains. Many children become ambidextrous through this activity that enhances their intelligence.
This exercise particularly improves their ability to spell accurately, speeds up their calculation abilities, and improves their ability to recognise and write symbols. This is an amazing brain gym activity for kids.
9. The Elephant
This is also physical activity. Here, the child is required to stretch one of their hands and then place it near the ear of the same side. Then by rotating the other hand, they need to draw the symbol of infinity in the air at least three times. They have to repeat this by changing hands.
The movements of this brain gym exercise activate the kid’s body and mind balance and develop their brain to hear spoken words correctly. This exercise improves the kid’s short- and long-term memory, thinking capacity and attention span.
10. The Owl
This is another physical exercise that stimulates brain development. Instruct your kid to comfortably sit and then bring one of the hands to their opposite shoulder.
Then tell them to hold the hand steady and slightly pinch near the end of the other shoulder (biologically called the trapezius muscle). After this, the kid should turn their head towards the pinched shoulder and gradually take a deep and long breath. This stimulates blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain.
This exercise works like acupressure. Regulating blood flow through stimulating nerve endings is helpful in improving brain development.
DHA Brain Health Gummies by Little Joys
Looking for a tasty and healthy way to support your child's brain development? Look no further than Little Joys DHA Brain Health Gummies! These gummies are packed with essential nutrients like DHA and choline, which boost memory✅, concentration✅, and overall brain health. ✅
With four delicious fruits and veggies and zero added sugar, they're a treat that both parents and kids can feel good about. So why wait? Give your child's brain the boost it needs!🔥
11. The Active Arm
Yet another stretching exercise that helps your children improve their hand-eye coordination and tool-controlling abilities is the "Active Arm.” Here, the child needs to stretch one of the arms outward while keeping the other arm at a 90-degree angle to firmly hold the extended arm in a fixed position.
Easiest among brain exercises for kids, this strengthens the child's shoulders and upper chest, which is linked to improved brain function. We must remember that an active lifestyle leads to better brain development. Being active doesn't only mean running around, going to the gym or playing sports. You can do several simple stretching exercises from home comfortably to help improve children’s brain development.
12. The Gravitation Glider
This is a fun activity for kids that helps them improve their brain function. In this, while sitting straight on a bed or a chair, the child must stretch their legs. Then they need to cross their right leg over their left leg around the ankles. Then, by breathing slowly and deeply, they need to lean forward and stretch their arms to touch their feet.
This gravitational glider exercise stretches the child's hamstring and improves blood and oxygen flow to the brain, just like the Active Arm. Study shows the child's ability of self-expression, emotional stability and confidence are enhanced as a result of improved brain function.
13. Family Games Night
Playing games such as chess or checkers or simple card games like hearts, UNO, Go Fish, or speed can be very helpful for a child's brain development. Such games boost a kid's problem-solving, planning, and coordination skills. They learn how to work in a team and become more patient.
Board games like monopoly are also great for brain development. If your child is 5 years of age or older, games such as Jenga can play a vital role in improving attention, tolerance and concentration.
Another plus point is that playing cards or board games together as a family is fun and helps strengthen the bonds.
Brain Health Kit By Little Joys
Looking for an all-in-one solution to support your child's brain development? Little Joys has got you covered with their Brain Health Kit! Enriched with DHA, an essential nutrient for brain development, this kit combines the goodness of DHA Brain Gummies and NutriMix Gummies. 🔥
With a delicious chocolate flavor✅ and gummy format✅, your kids will ask for more on their own - no more fussy pills❌or bitter syrups!❌ Give your child the brain-boosting nutrients they need in a fun and tasty way! 😋
14. Daily Talk Time
Reading a book with your kids and asking questions about the story narrated is also a great brain-stimulating exercise. Discussing the events and the feelings around them (e.g., talking about how the characters felt and also about what the child was thinking or feeling) is a great way to help children with their emotional development.
As a parent, taking time out to encourage, teaching, and participate with your child in the above-mentioned brain activities for kids not only improves their brain function but also helps them in building positive relationships and reduces stress on the whole.
Click Here To Read Our Other Similar Blogs
References
- McGill University, August 29, 2013; Learning a new language alters brain development - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829124351.htm
- Ruchika Shaurya Prakash, Matt VanPatter, Michelle W Voss,, August 2010; Basal ganglia volume is associated with aerobic fitness in preadolescent children - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20693803/
