Here are 10 games you can play with your tot to boost cognitive skills

Play these games parents, it helps in bonding too.

Cognitive skills are the core skills that the brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Cognitive functioning is the term given to the individual's ability to process thoughts and act accordingly in response to a stimulus. The cognitive ability of is to carry out functions from the most simple to the complex ones as smoothly as possible. As a child's brain develops it is necessary for parents to boost cognitive functioning too. A child takes in what he sees, touches, and hears using all his five senses. This helps in brain development too. So, the more the parents help them in exploring the world around the more it helps. Here are a few games you can play with your child that will help in improving his cognitive skills and help the brain develop faster.

1. Sing lullabies: This is a wonderful way to connect with your child. Singing lullabies will not just calm and soothe your baby but will also expose him to different kinds of sounds, words and notes this helps the brain in understanding sounds, word identification and boost memory.
2. Identify noises: There are various kinds of musical toys which play sounds of birds and different animals. Get one of those and tell you child which sound belongs to which animal. This will explore his sense of hearing, memory and help to know how different sounds relate to other objects and things.
3. Play alphabet games: There is a reason why we sing the ABC songs to our kids all the time. No, we don't want them to master alphabets before they reach playschool but to simply boost their brain power. Once you sing the song a couple of times you can also start with relating alphabets with objects around.
4. Play counting games: First, start by saying the numbers 1 to 10 slowly in a playful manner and then move on to counting objects like the number of red toys versus the green ones, number of shoes, colours, etc. It helps in boosting memory and numeric too.
5. Introduce to different colours and shapes: This is why they have an abundance of these toys in the cr che and playschools. Introducing the concept of shapes and colours early helps the brain to develop and boosts the grey cells.
6. Go to the park: All work and no play can really make your kid dumb so go to the park often and play. Nothing boosts a child's brain development like free play does.
7. Ask questions often: Then more you interact with your kid the more his brain power builds. So ask questions often 'What you want to eat?' 'What colour is this?' 'What is your name?' You have no idea how these little conversations transform your baby's brain for the better.
8. Play an instrument: Do this with your kid. Nothing enhances one's cognitive skills more than music. It doesn't have to be anything exorbitant. Even the simple play drum will do.
9. Play with clay doh: It might seem like a mess first but squishing and moulding the clay develops senses of touch which helps the brain to grow and enhances synaptic connections.
10. Read with your child: We cannot reinstate the benefits of reading enough. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to help your baby's brain develop, improve vocabulary and promote rational thinking.

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