Kids are pure as angels. The best period of their innocence is when they are toddlers. During these years, they are funniest, cutest, messiest, emotionally furious, and much more that makes them unique. Being a responsible parent, this is the time when it’s necessary to start training them to develop the must-have skills. Starting at this early age helps toddlers to enhance their skills, both physical and mental well-being.
There are several ways to teach toddlers or preschoolers to prepare them for the coming years. One of these activities is problem-solving activities. Problem-solving activities prepare your children for any situation and develop them in their early childhood days.
These skills help them to understand everything about the world they are living in and prepare their minds to become independent every day. Problem-solving skills are necessary for their cognitive development. Such skills help to understand the circumstances near them and react specifically with an open mind and heart.
Thankfully, there are several problem-solving activities for toddlers that you can teach your kid at home. You can choose the type of activity as per your child’s interest and teach accordingly. Also, you can try other activities to prepare your child’s mind without losing interest. We bet your toddler will love these activities.
Here is the list of 5 problem-solving activities for toddlers and preschoolers:
Pattern Blocks
It might seem common activity running for ages but it’s one of the most effective activities till now. Also, known as tangrams, pattern blocks are beautifully designed coloured blocks that come in various shapes and sizes. It’s a kind of toy-based fun game that you might need to guide them. You can teach to use blocks to create patterns, images, and more. You can also print such patterns online and give a personal touch to the activity. Or, ask your toddler to create the image as per their imagination. It will help them to think in creative ways and build confidence in them. Plus, it will keep them busy for long hours as well.
Hide-and-seek or Playing Peek-a-boo
Yet another common activity but mostly loved by toddlers. It brings excitement to your kid. They believe you are showing some magic to them which excites them a lot. Also, this game creates a sense of satisfaction that you will come around eventually to them even if you are gone for a few minutes. Once they get aware of the activity, you can add some twist to it by hiding their favourite toys somewhere and asking them to find them and win the reward. In such a way they will be curious and would try their best to complete tasks with the hope to win a reward.
Storytelling
It’s a fascinating activity that touches on the creativity, logical reasoning, analytical thinking and communication skills of your toddler. Whenever you share a story with your kiddo, they feel excited and ask several questions to hear the complete story. You can use a book of pictures and start creating a story around it. Once they get used to this activity, share some pictures and ask them what they see, and what could have happened. Or simply ask them to create a story of their own. Such methods help to enhance their creative skills and increase their imagination level.
Board Games
Board games are basically the representation of one of learning through play activities. There are plenty of skills a toddler can develop with every board game they try. Also, there are several types of board games are available in the market such as completing images using a missing piece, memory match games and many more. Introduce your toddler to such games and try to figure out which of them they find interesting. Accordingly, introduce them with a complete set.
Matching Letters and Objects
It’s a fun and easy activity to enhance your toddler’s ability to recognize colours, letters and shapes. Even the best playschool such as Makoons introduce this activity to toddlers or preschoolers as it helps to develop the skill sets to recognize letters and objects. You can buy toys and different objects to get them matched or print images with some variations and ask them to match the right ones. Whatever ways you decide, your toddler will grow into an intelligent child through visual learning and understanding.
Conclusion:
Problem-solving activities might sound difficult but these are the easiest and quickest activities you can do with your toddler while doing your own work. These activities help to increase your toddler’s thinking power and act as the perfect tools to prepare them for the coming days. They get creative, imaginative, intelligent and independent to some extent which helps them to stay one step ahead. Try to find out what your child likes the most and accordingly choose your activity. Parents are always considered the first teachers of a child. Hence, it is your duty to find the right tool or activity to make learning fun and effective for your little pumpkins.