Online Education And Games: A Blessing In Disguise

Many parents today are agitated because their children spend a lot of time watching TV, playing video games or gaming online. They may be right to a certain extent, but, including some portion of time for children to play online educational and fun games can make a lot of difference in helping the child to build his personality. With some monitoring and guidance, parents can turn these games into a platform for learning with practical application of knowledge.

There are around 217 million online game players worldwide. So what exactly have these games got to offer, which is beneficial to children? There is no dearth of choices for the games that one wants for any age group ranging from toddlers to adults. These are of different dimensions like mathematics, vocabulary, science fiction, adventure, puzzles, crosswords, 3D, action, classics, cooking, fashion, art, brainteasers, racing, sports and the list never ends. There are several online gaming communities which are densely populated with people of all age groups.

Research shows that playing online games can help to boost memory, handle emotions, better cognitive skills and inculcate attributes in children like problem-solving, improves thinking abilities, vocabulary, coordination of thoughts and actions, confidence and stimulus, developing social skills, enhances creativity, multi-tasking, speed, team spirit and can also help in identifying areas of interest, which in turn can help to build a career and choose the right profession in later years.

In today's scenario, where education has become a business rather than a value creating industry, there are many non-profit organisations which have involved themselves with e-learning, to help fill in the gaps left by these institutions. The best part is, online games and e-learning sites are usually free and don't have any charges attached to access them. Due to this, it makes it possible for parents and children to access these on a routine basis, and insert these into the daily schedule for their kids.

An interesting fact is that, the right kind of online games, if identified correctly, have the potential of helping children cope with chronic illnesses. It has been found that parents can use their creativity and open doors to recovery in those cases which involve having to battle with cancer cells or managing dyslexia.

Of course, there is a notion that, spending a lot of time online will hamper reading habits, curb imagination and limit children to think and learn only within the limits of what is depicted or portrayed. It all depends on perception of individuals. The fact is that, some amount of time spent online productively can go a long way in helping to strengthen the academic base of children as well as sharpen their skills to face real life situations as well, which are replicated in games.

Brain Challenge Game Review

Brain Challenge is an online PC game and has the exercise our mind needs, regardless of kids or adults. It really challenges us to think on our feet and act fast. My mind is a bit rusty in the sense that I haven't been doing much math, or use my memory a lot nowadays. I have always been dependent on calculators even for simple maths. Any calculation needed, I'm the quickest to take out my hand phone for the calculator function. Hmm...so much so that my brain is in a very lazy mode. Well...time to exercise a bit.

Brain Challenge has mental exercises that test skills in five different categories - Logic, Math, Memory, Visual and Focus. A majority of your time will be spent training for a Daily Test, which when completed boosts your brain use percentage-an overall completion marker (from 0%-100%) that represents how much of your brainpower you use.

Each subject has its own set of four different puzzling mini-games to play. Initially, you only have the first tier of games available to train with, but the more you play, the more you unlock. If you're the type who goes for self-improvement, you'll enjoy loading up the game every day, taking the battery of tests and tracking your long-term improvement.

Multi player play, online and offline, lets you draw from a hand of cards to take your turn at one of the title's mini-games. Testing your mental ability with mates is possibly the most enjoyable part of Brain Challenge, as once everything is said and done a good laugh and the odd expletive may well have been spoken.

Brain Challenge does what it says and it gets the brain cracking. Good workout and there's definitely an audience for this sort of thing out there.

Your Homeschooled Child's Learning Style

One of the disadvantages of education through public schools is that they are not adequately able to cater to the individual learning styles of the students. The teachers have the responsibility of teaching a lot of information to a reasonably large group, and there just isn't the time to teach it in every different way. Unfortunately that means, while some students will continue to thrive in this environment, others, who may be just as "intelligent", will flounder. Is this the teacher's fault? In most cases, no. Are the less successful students just being lazy? Possibly but, in many cases, it may well be because the information is not being presented in the most efficient way for those students to grasp the concepts. Just as we are all individuals, so are our learning styles.

As a homeschooling parent, especially those who are homeschooling more than one child, you have probably already noticed one of your children may learn and comprehend things in a different way to another of your children.

You might be asking yourself, what types of learning styles are there? Do a quick search on the internet or through some educational philosophy texts and you will quickly discover that one way that learning styles are categorised are as visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Some authors also include logical learners.

How useful you find these categories will depend on your personal belief systems, but I personally think it is much more helpful just to be mindful that different methods of learning will suit different people in different circumstances. While I shall be using these three categories for the purpose of this article, it is useful to note that it is rare for an individual to slot neatly and completely into one category of learning. Most of us learn in a variety of ways, even if one of these ways is the strongest. I also often find that the more senses you can utilise in the learning process, the more efficient and effective the learning is.

Learning involves effectively processing information. Taking note of how your children best take in, interpret and recall that information will enable you to focus on their strengths, rather than their weaknesses. When students are given every chance to succeed, you may be surprised just how successful they may actively become!

So, what is the difference between these categorised learning styles?

Auditory learners learn through listening... They learn best through discussions, talking things through and listening to what others have to say. Auditory learners are able to interpret the underlying meanings of speech through listening to tone of voice, pitch, speed and other nuances. Written information may have little meaning until it is heard. Auditory learners spell words accurately and easily as they can identify the different sounds.

Visual learners learn through seeing... These learners need to see their teacher's body language and facial expression to fully understand content. In a larger environment they tend to prefer to sitting at the front avoid visual obstructions (e.g. people's heads). Sometimes daydreamers, visual learners may think best in pictures and learn best from visual displays of information including diagrams, illustrated text books and videos. Older children who are visual learners may find taking detailed notes helps them absorb the information.

Kinaesthetic learners are tactile and learn through moving, doing and touching... They learn best through a hands-on approach, actively exploring the physical world around them. They may find it hard to sit still for long periods and may become distracted by their need for activity and exploration. When explaining something, they will want to show you, rather than tell you.

Logical learners learn through thought, by questioning ideas and exploring patterns and relationships... They enjoy puzzles and seeing how things work. Capable of highly abstract forms of logical thinking at early age, the logical learner constantly questions and wonders about the world around them. They like routine and consistency in their homeschooling day.

Examples of educational activities that work best for each learning preference can be found in the eBook Getting Started in Homeschooling.

Once you have found the best ways that your homeschooled child learns new information, you will be able to incorporate these methods into their learning material and focus on their strengths to develop them. Don't allow your routine to stagnate, though, as your childrens' learning processes may change as they grow and develop. Locking them into a single style may not be in their best interests.

Remember, as homeschoolers you have the freedom to explore different educational mediums that are difficult to offer in a school situation. It is up to you to use this freedom to your, and your child's, advantage.

Christmas School Activities Bring the Festive Season Into the Classroom

Introduce a few Christmas school activities into your program and the children in your class will think you are wonderful. What they won't realize is that they are actually still doing school work with educational content. There are many different educational Christmas activities that can be used in the classroom.

Christmas Writing Activities

There are many different Christmas school activities that involve writing. Some of these will get kids tapping into their creative side and even get them using higher order thinking skills.

Acrostic Poem

One simple Christmas writing activity is to have the children create an acrostic poem. These poems are usually created by writing a word vertically down the page and then children create a poem using each of the letters to start a line of the poem. Children could create poems using the following words, Christmas, Reindeer, Santa, Ornaments or Christmas Tree.

What I Don't Like About Christmas

Another writing activity is to get children to think differently about Christmas. Ask the children to list five things that they don't like about Christmas. This is quite an interesting activity that really makes the kids think of Christmas from a different perspective.

A Perfect Christmas Day

Children could also write a diary of an ideal Christmas day. Ask them to describe where they would be, who they would be with and what they would be doing.

Christmas Math Activities are also ideal for practicing math skills in a fun and festive way.

Christmas Tree Jumble

A simple Christmas math activity is to draw several Christmas trees on the board and then put the numbers from an addition, subtraction, multiplication or division operation jumbled up in each tree. The pattern for the operation is then written under the tree.

If the numbers 2, 4, 6 and 7 are in the tree, the pattern? X? =??, would be added under the tree. Children then have to unjumble the numbers in the structure to create a true measure of the model equation. In this example, it might be 6 x 7 = 42

Decorate the tree

For this game, two players or two teams complete the first to decorate a Christmas tree with ten decorations. A Christmas tree is drawn for each player or team. The two players or teams at first, to respond to an equation. You could also use basic subtraction, multiplication and division facts for the game, or more complex calculationsinvolving decimal numbers or percentages. The first player to answer correctly gets to draw a decoration on the tree. The first player or team with ten decorations on their tree is the winner.

There are many other Christmas school activities that can be used to entertain and educate kids in the lead up to Christmas. Children can make crafts, solve Christmas puzzles and play Christmas word games also. These are all valuable Christmas school activities that the kids will enjoy without them even realizing that they are still learning.

Einstein's Number Trick: Fun for All

There are many interesting number tricks, and, if you've followed my articles, I've written quite a few about such interesting numerical wizardry. When we attach the name Einstein to a number trick, however, the idea takes on an entirely different dimension, both literally and figuratively. If you are interested in some fun with numbers, try out the trick below on some friends and family, and by all means teach it to your kids, if you have any.

The Einstein Number Trick is as follows: take a piece of paper and write down the number 1089, fold the paper in half, and give it to the other person, without revealing what you have written. Tell the person to pick any three-digit number, making sure that the first and last digit differ by at least 2. Tell this person to reverse the digits and to subtract the smaller number from the larger number. Then have this person take the result of the subtraction, and add it to the result with the numbers in reverse. Then ask this someone to compare the final result with the number you wrote on the piece of paper at the start.

Let's run through this with an example. Suppose your friend picks 523. This number is acceptable since 5 and 3, the first and last digits, differ by 2. Now reverse this to get 325 and subtract this from 523. Now 523-325 = 198. Reverse 198 to get 891 and add to 198 to get 1089!

Pretty cool, no? I bet you can impress quite a few people with this one, especially when you tell them that it was one of Einstein's favorite math puzzles. The reason this trick works is a topic for another article--unless of course you care to begin working the proof out yourself. It's not really all that difficult and I can show it in a few lines. However, for the moment, I'd rather you have tons of fun playing this one on your friends at the next party. And you know what: nobody gets hurt with games like these. Enjoy!

Help, My Child is Into Dinosaurs! (Part 1)

Dinosaurs are a major, extinct group of land-living reptiles that flourished on Earth from the mid Triassic until their demise at the end of the Cretaceous some sixty-five million years ago. To a palaeontologist, even one who specialises in vertebrate fossils (the fossilised remains of animals with backbones), Dinosauria, the correct term for this particular Order of reptiles, are perhaps only a passing interest. There are many more fossils of prehistoric creatures to study. However, for children, some of whom are as young as three years of age, dinosaurs can be a source of endless fascination. In our experience, children from three years of age and upwards, both boys and girls can obsess on dinosaurs, this can cause some problems for the grown ups who are responsible for them.

Dinosaur Names - How to Pronounce Them

Firstly, there are all those long and complicated names to get to grips with. As soon as children are able to read, some of them will migrate towards the myriad of dinosaur books that are out there. They seem to pick up the names very easily and for the majority of parents keeping up with them can be a real problem. Pronunciation can be difficult, the names of these animals are usually derived from the Greek or Latin, although some of the more recent discoveries have not followed the scientific doctrine which is to formally name creatures using these ancient languages. For example, a number of recent Chinese dinosaurs have been named using the local Chinese dialect. When these are interpreted into other tongues the problems of pronunciation can be exacerbated. As a parent or guardian of such a dino-enthusiast, you may be asked to help pronounce the names of the dinosaurs. In essence, most children's dinosaur books do not provide the full scientific name for you to contend with, usually you just have the genus (the first part of a scientific description) to cope with. For example, Triceratops (try-sera-tops), this is actually the name of the genera. A genus (plural genera) refers to a collection of closely related species, then you have a second part of the formal scientific name, this is the specific or trivial name and refers to the actual species. At present, most scientists agree that there are two species of Triceratops in the Triceratops genus, one of these, the largest of the species and the one usually featured in children's picture books is Triceratops horridus. Note how when the full scientific name of an organism is written it is put in italics when typed. When writing freehand, the full name is usually underlined. Such academic niceties are all very well, but this does not help you with the pronunciation. However, assistance is at hand. Firstly, most children's books do not go into this detail, they merely use the generic name (the genus), so you can safely consider that in fact you have only got 50% of the name to pronounce anyway, in essence you only have half the pronunciation job to contend with.

There are one or two exceptions to this rule, and you can come across the formal scientific name of some dinosaurs, even in the most basic of dinosaur books. Take the most famous dinosaur of all - Tyrannosaurus rex. This fearsome, carnivore from the Late Cretaceous is perhaps the best known of all extinct animals. It is a real superstar of the fossil record. T. rex is often featured in television programmes and films so this particular extinct meat-eater has a very high profile and young children, especially the boys seem to be really keen on the carnivorous dinosaurs, often the bigger and nastier the better. In books, this particular dinosaur is usually written as its full scientific name. However, Tyrannosaurus represents the name of the genus to which this particular dinosaur belongs, a group of large, fearsome late Cretaceous predators that were closely related to each other. The specific or trivial name, the second part of the scientific name, identifies the individual species. So in this case Tyrannosaurus rex (tie-ran-oh-sore-us rex), is the complete scientific name for a particular species.

Big Dinosaurs with Long Names

When faced with an eager young child keen to show you some information on dinosaurs or to tell you about their latest dinosaur model there is no need to panic. Some good news for the parents, guardians and grandparents out there - usually the child will offer up the name of the dinosaur themselves and if you listen carefully you can simply repeat the name the child comes up with and this will usually extricate you from what could be a tricky situation.

However, sometimes you will be asked about a particular animal or model by your child and unfortunately, this could mean that you may be forced to try a pronunciation. Don't give up, there is usually an explanation of the name and a phonetic pronunciation guide to be found on the page of the picture book. If a book is not to hand, get your child to fetch their dinosaur books and you can play a game of looking for the name of the particular animal together. This little exercise will teach the child that books can be a source of reference information, they will also get used to looking up information themselves and such a prompt from a parent or guardian to "go fetch their dinosaur books" will encourage them with their reading and word association.

Look for an Index or Glossary of Names

Once you have a book, try looking at the back, there is usually a glossary of helpful terms including a guide as to how to pronounce some of the more common dinosaur names. In many children's dinosaur books there are pronunciation guides published. Authors recognise that the names of the creatures from the Age of Reptiles are tricky to pronounce. In order to help young readers, (and their parents) you will often find an alphabetical list of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals featured in the book with a phonetic pronunciation guide.

The important thing to do, is to have a go at finding the correct name, this will encourage your child to take an interest in books and to appreciate them. Helping in this way, encouraging them to learn more about dinosaurs and other extinct creatures will prove invaluable at school and motivate them to learn more about these creatures. Such motivation can carry on into further school lessons and help young people to learn more about Earth sciences. You never know, you might even end up with a palaeontologist in the family.

Maths For Kids (2 of 2) - The Relevance Of Mental Arithmetic To The Real World

In the previous article of this series, we discussed the relevance of maths to the real world. This time the emphasis is on the narrower field of mental arithmetic games.

Mental arithmetic involves solving mathematical problems in one's head. It is a common technique used by teachers to teach maths in a fun way. The fact that arithmetic games are usually undertaken as a group activity encourages broad participation, with the benefit of friendly rivalry. Mental arithmetic can alter an otherwise dull subject for many students, so that it appears more relevant, with the added advantage of enabling children to demonstrate speed and mental agility.

This article will go deeper into this subject and show that beyond teaching the basics of mathematics, mental arithmetic games will instruct students in a whole range of mathematical concepts. There is the added benefit that confidence is derived through being able to solve these problems without the use of a calculator.

Students will learn various techniques, either by trial or error, or through solving simple additions and subtractions. For example, to subtract 12 from 99, the simplest way to do this is to subtract 12 from 100, as 99 is only 1 less than 100, and then reduce the answer by 1 to compensate for the extra 1 that was added earlier.

Another technique that mental arithmetic games should teach is the application of 'rounding'. This skill will again be useful in the student's later life, for simplifying calculations. For example, the calculation 1.95 + 3.45 can be done by adding 2 and 3.5 to arrive at a quick and easy figure, and the finer calculation to arrive at the final figure can again be done by the adjustment outlined in example one, but in this case by subtracting 0.1.

Yet another simple, and therefore quick, mental process is regrouping numbers, such as demonstrated in this simple addition: 4 + 59 + 26 + 11. This can be done the hard way, one figure at a time. But, if the first and third figures are grouped and similarly the second and fourth ones, the match of numbers will give decimal multiple figures, which are easy to add (30+70). This also teaches that the order of doing a calculation will not affect the final result, at least in simple calculations such as this example.

There can be trickery involved in these mental arithmetic exercises, such as introducing false trails in puzzles. For example, by giving the speed of trains, then asking questions about how many people are left in the carriage after x number have got off at a certain station and y number have got on, from an initial number of z. However, trickery can have its role as well, teaching students to separate useful from irrelevant information.

Mental arithmetic games usually involve the concept of real object and real world situations, helping the student to visualise problems and making the exercise more relevant and understandable. This visualisation is in itself, also a mental exercise, helping to instil into the minds of students that maths is not just about theoretical games, but is a rational way of dealing with numerical problems that the real world throws at them.