The holidays are behind us it's time to get back to basics, routines, and encouraging the healthy development of our children.
There are so many healthy life skills children can learn through playing games such as sportsmanship, teamwork, eye-hand coordination, manual dexterity etc. Another benefit is building reading skills.
One such game that motivates children to practice reading is Zingo. Not all kids like to read, especially if they’re not really good at it yet, but throw in an addictive fun twist and you might just change how your child feels about reading.
That’s where Zingo by Thinkfun Games comes in.
The rules are simple. It’s like Bingo but with a twist and with its game boards filled with pictures and matching labels, it motivates children to practice reading.
The object of the game is so simple children as young as 3 years old can play.
Slide the red dispenser for
ward to reveal two of the game tiles which show a picture and a word. In the case above, an “owl” and a “bat.” You can then ask your child to ‘read’ the words on the tiles. If your child cannot ‘read’ the word yet he can learn it by associating the ‘word’ to the picture on the tile and now you’ve made some critical ‘word association’ headway in his learning. The first player to say the name of their match takes the tile and places it on their board. Then you slide the dispenser again and drop two new tiles.
The first to fill the board is crowned the ‘official winner’ creating a perfect opportunity to also show how to be good losers and offer a heartfelt ‘congratulations’ to the winner.
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dition to Zingo, ThinkFun also offers another early literacy game called ‘What’s Gnu’ where you spread out cards showing two letters and a blank. One player slides the tile dispenser to drop two tiles.
Players must race to use the letters that are revealed to make a word on one of the cards.
The player who has made the most words when the tiles run out wins the game. It’s a motivating, entertaining way to practice sounding out words and is PERFECT for beginning readers.
Joanna Mileos and husband Craig Hartman are the owners of The Granville Island Toy Company in Vancouver, BC, a member of Neighborhood Toy Stores of Canada (NETS). Their motto is “We don’t dease to play because we grow old, we grow old because we dease to play”. GB Shaw
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