7 Games to Share With Your Child
Being free, being able to laugh, exploiting curiosity, and imagination are some of the benefits that play brings to children, which can be duplicated when you become their playmate, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. With that in mind, we want to share 7 games to share with your child.
Sharing playtime with your child helps them to develop harmoniously, to relate to others, to be healthy, and to prevent obesity, for example. In the first years of life, play is the only way for your child to exercise. Long before they learn to play sports, the first type of physical activity they will have is play.
When you take your baby for a walk in your arms, encourage them to splash in the bathtub, or let them crawl on the floor, you’re sowing seeds of life that will translate into an adolescent or adult with a habit and facility for physical activity.
Your child’s motor skills will depend on the opportunities you give them to move. And these experiences improve their intellectual capacity, their concentration, their sense of balance, and their ability to communicate–a whole range of good things.
To involve your child in physical activities, you need to go step by step. It doesn’t make sense to go from telling a child to “stay still” all day to signing them up for soccer at age six and expecting them to keep up with the ball, run, sweat, laugh, follow the game, and then sit quietly again once they get home.
Games to share with your child bring your family together
If you share games with your child from the start, they’ll see that you, their role model, are also active, and exercise will become a space for communication and shared enjoyment.
Here are some movement games to share with your child that last ten minutes or a little more:
Simple activities are always best: Crawling, bending over and getting up, or jumping up are all very simple games to share with your child so you can connect and have fun together.
- Psychomotor circuit. Place pillows, cushions, a blanket, and other items on the floor if it were an obstacle course. Then, you and your child can go over or under, avoid obstacles, roll, crawl, or walk backward, There’s no doubt your child will feel like an athlete.
- Simon says. This is a simple agility game that’s easy for parents and children to share. The person leading the game says, “Simon says” and suggests a movement or gesture that the others have to imitate. For example, getting down on all fours, running, tiptoeing, etc.
- Balls in the hallway. Put on some music, close the doors, and release all the balls. When the music stops, you have to pick them up in the shortest time possible. You can also make a ball trap with a cardboard box. Basically, the idea is to hit the balls by rolling them, hitting them with your hand, foot, elbow or head.
- Tennis with balloons. Substitute paper or plastic plates for rackets. Here, the mission is to keep the balloons from touching the ground. This game is both simple and fun.
- Hoops: Who can capture the other player using a hoop? If you place it on the ground, it becomes an island. Mom or dad is a castaway, and the child is a shark. As soon as one gets off the island the other will have to try to catch them, but if he makes it to dry land, they’re safe.
- Dancing: Of course, play your favorite music and let yourself go. Most likely, you’ll learn a couple of new dance steps that your little one will teach you.
- Ring tosses, bowling, and any other aiming are great games to share with your child. Plys, they’re quick to organize and pick up when they’re over.
The idea of all of the above is to try to introduce and plan small routines. A typical day-to-day scene for parents is arriving tired from work and putting on some cartoons for their child while making dinner and putting a load in the washing machine.
If you make a list of alternative plans of five or ten minutes, it’s easier to end up doing other things with your child and share quality moments that, although short, are priceless.