Spark your language, co-ordination, motor and perceptual centres as you jump your way to the winners spot. Age: 4-8 years
Players: 2-6 Contents:
17 Jump mats (interlocking)
24 Animal Walk activity cards
24 Imitation activity cards
24 Action song activity cards
24 Hand signal activity cards
1 Colour Spinner
6 Round Tokens
Manual: How to learn through play Develops:
Language skills
Your child learns language through singing songs. Actions assist your child to memorise the words. Physical strength, muscle tone and co-ordination
Jumping compresses the joints together. This improves muscle tone. Lifting your body into the air when jumping demands strength. Using short and long jump variations whilst playing The Brain Game develops control of the start-stop motion central to co-ordinated movement.
Sequencing skills
The Brain Game provides your child with an opportunity to copy hand signals, actions songs, and act out activities in a particular order. Sequencing skills are central to reading, writing, spelling and mathematics. Observation skills. Your child has to look at a variety of activity cards and decipher what the action or physical position is that he/she has to imitate. Observation skills help your child to be aware and notice differences and similarities. This aids safety, facilitates performance of daily living tasks and learning.
Fine motor skills
Imitation of hand position sequences require finger agility and co-ordination. Fine motor skills are core to learning, as they
are central to hand manipulation and writing skills. Around ninety percent of classroom activities are desk based and require these skills. Imitation skills
Acting out what the card demonstrates creates an element of fun and provides an opportunity for personal style, self expression and new experiences. This builds self esteem. Imitation stimulates the co-ordinated use of the body. Social Skills
Taking turns, observing and commenting on others’ contributions, and racing to the winning position, all involve interaction and awareness of others. The opportunity to gain insight into their own and others’ emotions is optimal with all the novel events. The Brain Game evokes a non-threatening environment and provides the perfect setting for social experimentation. Motor planning
This is the ability to interpret the pattern of actions a novel movement entails, and to perform these movements in the correct sequence. For example, understanding that to gallop requires one to take a step forward and jump the back leg up to the lead leg, and being able to physically perform this.
Most children find it difficult to link what they want their body to do, with doing just that. Learning to break down actions into component parts will build the foundations for your child to be able to copy a diagram (2D level of motor planning), required in the classroom. The animal walk cards promote 3D motor planning. Bilateral Integration
Using the two sides of the body together requires the co-ordination of the two halves of the brain. The activity cards are designed to maximise this skill by using the two sides of the body in every action arena, and with varying complexity. Crossing the imaginary midline of the body is part of this integration. For example, a child needs to cross their midline when they place their exercise book in front of the centre of their body and write across the page. Children who are able to cross their midline are are more efficient and neater writers as they don’t need to rotate the page and compromise quality of work, to avoid crossing their midline.
The Brain Game is designed to challenge the child to develop bilateral integration through simultaneous use of the two sides of the body.
Social Competitiveness
The Brain Game provides a non-threatening platform to competition and an introduction to games with rules. An element of competition develops self awareness. Players become aware of what they find easy or difficult to do. Self esteem is boosted when you win. Learning to deal with challenges and having effort rewarded, boosts self confidence. Winning rockets the child’s self esteem.
|
