Minecraft Is Shaping A Generation, And That Is A Good Thing

Encourage a videogame? With a screen?  As Nick Bilton wrote in a New York Times article urging parents to calm down about Minecraft, a Stockholm school has made Minecraft a requirement for its 13-year-old students because it helped them learn to plan. With millions of users, this wildly popular game mostly involves a world in which you manipulate really really big Lego-like objects. The game requires that you build shelters and tools to fend off zombies and other predators who come out at night. This game have an enormous learning, motivation and creativity benefits. So let’s start playing.

Learning a routine, using a task board with kids.

A routine is A prescribed, detailed course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure. Kids are not born knowing how to follow a routine. So sometimes we need to teach them how to follow a set of steps, a routine till it’s clear to the child what is expected to be performed.  An obvious example may the morning routine in which we need to wake up , prepare to school and eventually get out of the house ; or the evening routine ;even a routine of learning the alphabets may not be so obvious for kids.

Let’s take the morning routine as an example: if it’s an issue, here’s another simple tip (among many in this blog) to help you get this going. Just build a routine task board.

1.       First step will be to visualize your tasks, using drowning or pictures . Visualization works wonders with kids. Make a list of tasks on the board according to the order expected.

2.       Make sure to mark tasks when they are done. Do it with your child! It usually works best with smaller kids. The mark can be a smile, a star or whatever incentive to continue to perform his/hers tasks and learn the routine.

You can collect the marks during the week, or count them for a price or a praise.

3.       Never assume that just having a task board for your child will make him/her perform his chores. No matter what kind of a task board you use with your child, don’t forget to talk it over with the child every day. This is the agile part. Let your child be an active part on planning his tasks, placing them on the list or board, performing them and moving them around. Don’t do it for him/her 

There are many other ways to deal with routine tasks, or learning a routine you just need to pick whatever fits your best.

For more articles about the subject of how to get your child performs his task or various task boards, you can read here:

·         Are we overloading our kids with tasks? And if so, what can we do about it?

·         The best way to deal with kids and their chores

·         How Agile helped a father get his kid to tidy the room

·         Using Task Boards with Youngsters

·         A mother creative solution for helping her girls with their homework

·         How not to set tasks on the family Kanban board

·         Permanent task boards are nice, but they aren’t the point!

·         What is a schedule board?

·         Using the task board to initiate the family dialog.

·         Operating a task board in 10 min