In the last chapter I explained why using games and fun activities makes learning more enjoyable and memorable. In this post, I share 50 ideas to make learning fun. Remember, there are plenty more ideas and if one doesn’t work for you, try another one.
I hope this list will be great help for parents and teachers who are sometimes stuck for ideas, so please share with the parents and teachers in your (child’s) life.
Learning takes a big part of our life. As babies, we learn all the time. I can look at my granddaughter after not seeing her for 3 days and see she’s learned new things. And she has a lot of fun learning.
Later in life, we go to school to learn in a structured, controlled environment that doesn’t take into consideration that the brain needs to be open to absorb new knowledge. Sadly, I think that in the format it is now, school destroys a big part of our ability to learn.
I work with many children and the system has failed to instill the love for learning in them. I also work with grownups that consider school a traumatic period of their life.
On my happy list, I wrote, “It makes me happy to listen to my kids singing”. This was true even when they were babies. I remember my youngest daughter Noff joining us in Alicia Keys’ song Fallin’ when she was one year old. She always joined on time and it made us all very happy.
Singing is a very sensitive thing for me. Well, it was very sensitive. Today, when I run workshops or stand in front of a big crowd during my presentations, no one can guess that years ago, when I was young, I sometimes had no voice. Speaking was difficult for me and singing was not even an option.
Read Singing Family Full of Joy »
If you wonder how to give your kids the best life possible, do not buy them things. Instead, give them great, exciting experiences. Research shows they will remember special events and adventures longer and relive the joy and excitement again and again.
We live in a world of abundance. If you want to understand how much you have today, all you need to do is think of how your life would have been 50 years ago. I like asking myself, “What did my parents not have 50 years ago that I (or my kids) have today?” It is a good lesson in perspective.
Unfortunately, not every person who asks this question reaches the same conclusion. Some people feel grateful and other feel fear. Grateful people, who feel that they are fortunate, tend to appreciate what they have and care for it. Fearful people panic and start to accumulate things. No matter how much they accumulate, they are never happy. Fear takes away the joy of what they already have.
Read Experiences, not Possessions: How to Best Spend Money on Your Kids »
I am celebrating my birthday tomorrow. Every year, on my birthday, I hold a reflection ceremony. It is like a stock take for the passing year. I hope to grow from the inside every year, like the rings of a tree. I hope to add learnings into my life that will make me stronger and happier. These realizations are my own birthday presents.
Some people say that change takes a long time. I disagree. Only the lead-up to the change takes time. The change itself is immediate.
This year, when I did my annual reflection, I realized I had an insightful quantum moment that changed my path. This profound moment was short. It only took one hour.
Over the last 30 years, I have had a chance to see many children with speech difficulties. Children who do not speak properly may sound cute at first, but this might become an obstacle as they grow up. At some stage, their parents stress about it and take them to a speech therapist or a speech pathologist.
But parents can fix some of the speech problems very easily. This post includes my tips for fixing one of the major speech difficulties – physical sound production. Hundreds of parents around the world have used them and changed their children’s life. If your child has trouble pronouncing words, you do not need a speech therapist. Using the suggestions below will do the same for your child.
Summer vacation is an exciting, yet anxious time for many parents. Every year, parents want a break from taking care of getting up in the morning, preparing lunches, following timetables, driving the kids, checking homework and enforcing sleeping times. At the same time, they are scared of having to fill the huge amount of free time that school handles so brilliantly during most of the year.
I have 3 children and have those feelings every school break. In some of the places we lived around the world, our kids had many holidays besides the summer vacation, so the challenge was even greater. I count the days to the next break with my kids and mark it on our family calendar. As we get closer to it, I get a bit anxious, imagining them wasting time, watching TV or sticking their head in their computer for hours. Preparing and making plans for the summer vacation is the best way to get over this anxiety.
One of the greatest things to do with your kids during the summer vacation is take them on a trip. I have written a lot about traveling with kids. Gal and I traveled with our own children a lot and not only during the summer vacation, but throughout the years, even during school months.
We believe it is meaningful to do in every age (Tsoof was 2 years old when we traveled to China). It is good to have short and long travels (longer trips are better). Travel is good whether you are camping or staying at a fancy hotel. It is beneficial for your kids whether you travel in the same country or overseas, in the company of others or just with your family.
Last week, I worked with a 7-year-old kid and when I asked him what mom or dad can do to make him happy, he said, “Be fun”. When I asked him if he liked his teacher, he said with a big smile, “Yes. She’s fun!”
I have heard this phrase from children many times. For them, fun is a currency. This is how they measure their relationships with their parents or with other people. First, you need to be fun. Then, you fit on a scale from “a little fun” to “great fun”.
The opposite of fun is old
I have written about the fun incentive as a motivation tool. It is also a trust tool, because it is a fantastic way to build rapport with your children. From working with many kids and raising my own children, I know that if you are not fun, you are old! Every time they say it, I feel I deserve it.
So as a parent, you need to get into your kids’ “fun club”. If you are in, they consider you as a partner for life and you can instill many thoughts, beliefs and ideas in their mind, as the best role model. If you are not at all in the club, you stand no chance.
Liam was a very handsome man. When he entered my life coaching deck, I didn’t believe he was almost 40 years old. He looked 25 and I wondered what kind of woman would leave such a great-looking guy. On his client details form, he wrote that he had two boys and that his wife had left home suddenly and took the boys with her.
If he was the first man who came to coaching because his wife had left all of a sudden, I would have thought that something was wrong with his wife. Who on Earth leaves home all of a sudden? With two boys? After 12 years of marriage? But Liam was not the first and, unfortunately, will not be the last man whose wife left all of a sudden.
During the initial assessment of his life, he told a story of a great love, two well established professionals, parenting maturely, living in their own house and even owning an investment property. Their life was the ultimate picture of a perfect marriage.
“When did the relationship start shaking?” I asked Liam, trying to find the most reasonable explanation for “all of a sudden”. He said that it had started when his youngest daughter was born, about 4 years earlier, and then he told me the typical story of a marriage that brings wives to leave “all of a sudden”.
He worked until 8 or 9pm some days. He worked on weekends. His main goal was to make more money. For every problem he had at home, his solution was making more money. When his wife wanted him to take a day off and spend time with the family, his mind went straight to “If I made enough money, I wouldn’t have to go to work so many hours and then I could be with my family”.
Read Stop Making More Money »
Anxiety is one of the most debilitating feelings we can have. We are anxious when we imagine a negative future. We do this in our head, triggering many processes in the brain that make us feel helpless and lost. Therefore, learning how to control anxiety can be very important in living a happy and healthy life.
Last week, I shared 25 tips on how to calm anxiety. Here are 35 more tips on how to control anxiety, which I hope you will find useful and easy to follow.
How to Control Anxiety Tips (26-59):
26. Tell yourself “I am safe” whenever you feel unsafe. Remember that anxiety is all in your head. Teach your head to say it whenever anxiety happens and it will do it after enough practice.
27. Set goals. Make sure to write them down. Having goals and having anxiety is the same process. We go into the future and in both of them, in our mind, but with goals, we imagine a positive future!
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