A year ago, my daughter Kitty (age 7) was leery of any "game" because of the violent, scary video games that my ex, Jack, forces her to watch him play for hours at a time during every visit she makes to his house. They give her nightmares and she doesn't understand them. Among other things, this sabotaged my attempts to use games to help Kitty learn math and I quickly moved on to other teaching methods.
In order to help Kitty have fun playing games without the worry of additional nightmares, my mom and I have created multiple "cooperative" games–usually spur-of-the-moment games, but some are a little more sophisticated. They are often silly, and I have felt a little ridiculous sometimes playing them, but Kitty seems to enjoy them.
A few days ago, Kitty located a pair of dice and after playing with them by herself for a while, she approached my mom. She told Mom, "If you roll doubles, you get 12 hugs!" So the two of them took turns rolling the dice, hoping for doubles. After 4 or 5 turns without doubles, Kitty changed the rule to, "If you roll an even number, you get a dozen hugs!"
Mom then rolled a 1 and a 3. "That equals 4! It's even, so you get 12 hugs," Kitty announced with glee. She then gave my mom 12 hugs, smiling with pleasure and excitement all the while.
Then it was Kitty's turn. She too rolled an even number, and Mom gave her 12 hugs. I could see the delight on Kitty's face as she soaked up hug after hug!
Recently I searched for "cooperative games" on Amazon and to my surprise, I found a small selection. I ordered one called, "Outfoxed! A Cooperative Whodunit Game" for ages 5+ and Kitty loves it. We have played it at least once each day since we bought it. So much joy!
This joy that Kitty has rediscovered in games has transferred to math. She is in the process of learning addition and subtraction problems (up to 12+12 and 24-12) by heart. We have several types of flash cards, but the best ones (i.e. the ones that Kitty really "gets") are triangular. My mom selects 2 at random several times a day and shows each one to Kitty and me together. The first time she did this, I beat Kitty to the punch (5+7=12) and since then Kitty has used many strategies to keep me from answering the problems before she can. For instance, Kitty will rush up to my mom and curl her hands around the card to keep me from seeing it. I also drag out my responses, "Hmm, let's see, 9-5 is … um …" to give Kitty the opportunity to win. It isn't supposed to be a competition, but Kitty sees it that way, and to be fair, the brain "rewards" (dopamine) for arriving at the answer first seems to fix the equations in Kitty's memory much more reliably than any amount of repetition or analysis. She really seems to find enjoyment in the competition and the "game", and I take delight in the fact that games can once again be fun and not traumatizing for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment