Cognitive abilities refer to how a child learns, gains knowledge and communicates with the environment around. When a child passes through different milestones of development, different cognitive abilities are acquired. However, active learning can speed up the development of cognitive abilities and this is one of the main objectives of every childcare program. Here are some simple but very useful activities to implement at your childcare center that can help promote the cognitive abilities of your young learners.
Sing songs with children
Sing songs with the kids and also encourage them to sing with you. It is a good idea to play the music and songs children like and encourage the children to sing aloud that can help them come out of their inhibitions and develop their memory and identification of words.
Recognize Noises
Train the kids to pay close attention to the sounds around and recognize them. Some of the sounds you can turn their attention to are the chirping of birds, car horns, dishwasher’s sound and the sound of running water for instance. The objective is to make the child learn how sounds and objects are related to each other.
Train them in alphabet
Give them songs on alphabets, puzzles, activities and games to work with alphabets. For example mix up cards of alphabets and ask them to identify and arrange them. Ask the children to search around the center and find out a particular alphabet you say.
Train them to count
Through the training at the center, keep track of opportunities to train them in counting. For instance, counting the number of kids in a group, counting the number of books or play items in a rack and other simple activities like this can help.
Teach the kids shapes and colors
During your interactions with the child, ask the child to identify the shapes and colors. While identifying the things, you can club the identification of colors as well like saying, “This is a red tomato”, “this is a yellow box” and so on. As the children grow, you may ask them to tell the colors when they see something.
Teach them to work with options
Ask the children, “Would you like to carry a blue box or red box?”, “Will you like to eat a small apple or a large one?” and so on. This will help them identify the differences and find out things in their right perspective.
Teach them how to ask questions
Questioning is an important ability every child must learn to acquire knowledge and information. Teach the kids how to question by giving them examples. For instance, you may say, “Why is it important to walk carefully down the stairs?”.
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