No doubt you’ve heard the message “play with your child” but what they don’t tell you is what games are good to play and how to play them. Did you know it’s these two things – the what and how – that makes the difference to your child’s development?
So why take the time to play with your child? Well, research shows us play allows children to use their creativity as they develop their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and social and emotional skills. Phew! That’s a lot of areas play can influence. Play is also so important for healthy brain development. Most of all play is fun and simple joy that children love and by playing with your child, you are giving them time when they feel special.
To help you out we’re going to answer the what and how for playing with your child by telling you about a game we like to use in clinic and sharing our top three tips on how to play the game to encourage your child’s listening, talking and thinking skills.
Hedbanz for kids!
What’s it about?
Hedbanz is a fun, interactive game that is known as the quick question game of what am I? The aim of the game is to ask questions until you figure out if the cartoon on your head is an animal, food or household item. Everybody else knows your cartoon but you! The winner is the first person to guess their cartoon before the timer run out!
Our top 3 tips
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With younger children, this is a great game to develop basic vocabulary and simple categories. You can use the nicely illustrated playing cards that contain pictures of familiar foods, animals and household items which can be used to teach simple vocabulary or turned into a category sorting task.
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For older children, this game encourages item descriptions and the use of adjectives. Ensure all questions asked contain an adjective whether that be focusing on the colour, size, feature or category. This helps promote sentence complexity as well as vocabulary development.
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Get your child to focus on the previous questions they have asked to ensure they are not repeating the same questions. This helps target auditory recall as your child needs to recall the answers to previous questions and comprehend the answers to begin creating a mental picture in their minds.
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