How To Play With Kids

Financial education is certainly as important as any other education. In the end we are living in a world driven by accountants and tax office. It all operates on numbers, planning and expenses.
As it appears to be, none or close to none of this is taught at schools. So what do you need to teach your children?
This is not a complete list, but can get you started. And remember, playful way is the best way how to show this world to your kids. Explain the rules, show them how it works and play the game with them. First with play money, then with real.
And let us know, how it went!

Rules to enter the competition:
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You can enter as many times as you like, every comment counts as one entry.
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A winner must have liked HowToPlayWithKids and placed a comment or submit an article.
We will also need your email address so we can send you the ticket, so don’t forget to leave a valid email as well!

Ticket for what? This! One of the best personal development trainings you can find. Imagine the impact on yourself and imagine the impact on your relationship with your kids!

Start typing NOW and good luck!

Did you ever play with LEGO?
Who didn’t
I bet there are still children in the world who did not hold a piece of LEGO in their hands but the group is getting smaller and smaller.

This is the story of LEGO. Enjoy watching it!

And then go and play with LEGO and play with your kids!

You know it all too well. We only have this much time in our lives.
You would love to have your kids around you more than you do.
You would even like to play with them but there’s simply no time left once you are done with all those household jobs.
So how do you squeeze in more children into your routine?

Involve them in everyday tasks.
Let them help in the kitchen.
Let them help with shopping.
Let them help … you know where I am going, right?

They will love helping.
They will feel important.
They will feel valued and appreciated.

Now this almost looks like contemporary song lyrics

But seriously. Let them help you in any kind of task you have scheduled for today.
The young ones will love the attention and being important to you; the older ones will be better prepared for life. They will know how to break eggs, which one is oil, that you have to mind the furniture when vacuum cleaning and so on.

And if you spend just tiny little amount of your time and use a bit of imagination, your daily tasks might magically turn into a lot of quality time with your kids. You can make it all seem like a pleasant game.
Sure, it requires a bit of patience at first but it is worth it. And if you need a bit of inspiration, here is one - just look at the pictures.

If you don’t have a LEGO Mindstorms NXT get one. This is the easiest way to build robots in a matter of days.
And should you run out of ideas? No worries. http://www.nxtprograms.com/ is just one of the sites where you will find additional building instructions, inspiration and fun. As said, this is just one. There are more of them. So get the LEGO Mindstorms NXT, get your kids and start playing!

That’s a quote from Harold B. Lee.
You know what? I believe he is right.
Children are the future. Literally.
By rising your children you are creating the future. Whether bad or good is really up to you.
Parenting gets a lot easier if you are part of their world.
Now, the easiest way how to enter their world I found so far is to play with them.
Don’t know how to play with your kids? Go get a copy of our guide, it’s just $1.

It’s not hard to achieve. It’s not uncommon. It’s not something you would want to have.
Broken relationship.
Well, in some relationships – when it does not work – you can quit.
You can announce you are leaving, pack your things and close the door.

Not with your children.

So when it gets tougher and tougher, what do you do?

Never take out your problems on your kids.
Yes, I have a job as well and there are days when the stress level is fairly high. Closing the office door does not help. Not even slamming it would.
You take the stress with you.
Home.
Where your kids are.

So when you are there, just about to vent all the frustration and anger on them, stop.
Step back.

Then, ask yourself a question: how did your kids deserve you taking out your problems and showering them with stress, yelling and barking?
They did not, did they?
Even though they might do all sorts of things. Annoy you even more. They ARE kids! It’s normal.

Then ask yourself another question:
How would I feel if anyone did the things I was just about to do to my kids to me?
Not pleasant. Right?

If that did not cool you down, you’ll do yourself and them a favor by taking a cold shower. Words hurt, use them wisely. A few “too loud” evenings can inflict a lot of damage in a relationship.

Shower your child with quality time
Find the time. No matter how busy you are. No matter how busy you think you are. Life is short.

When I look at old pictures, I don’t look at the buildings. I don’t look at the strangers. I only look at family. With respect, love and appreciation.
Now, let this be the lesson for you. Why should you feel love when looking at old pictures of the time long gone and spend no time now with your kids?

Find the time. Find out what they like. Join them in that activity. Play with them. If you don’t know how to play with kids or don’t have your own source of inspiration, keep coming to this website.
Find out what moves them. Find out which is their favorite toy. Join them in their life and they will tenfold pay it back.

If you don’t think that will work, try it first on your partner. Here are three tips how to do it from an expert bigger than me. And if it worked it’s about time. Go, create and enjoy a healthy and happy relationship with your kids.

I believe it is. And so do a few people featured in this video. How many of them do you recognize?

Think about it. After watching this video I have to say it would seem it does.

Now I don’t think you can change the entire education system but you can compensate.

Play with your kids, enter their world and give them what a school can never give.

Support them when they fail. Because unlike us, they will try again.

Support them when they do all the stuff that is not taught at school. Because that just might be the thing that will count in their life.

Don’t agree? Watch the video.

Kids will be typically attracted to computers because of computer games. It seems to work better than gravity

I have been thinking about alternatives. If they are already sitting there, what else could they be doing than playing games?

The answer came pretty quickly – our oldest started to watch videos made by others while they have been playing games.

I kept searching and experimenting and came to the conclusion that there can be a few things you can actually like to do with computers if you are a child.

Computer programming is one of these (I will get back to a few more later on).

So what is out there that can help?

There are a few computer programming enviroments designed for kids on the Internet.
But my preference goes to
LEGO Mindstorms NXT

Now why would I chose that one.
LEGO Mindstorms NXT is programming.
But unlike any programming I have ever seen.

You barely type anything. Most of the actions of the programmer are done by dragging an dropping.

It is very simple and intuitive. It is so simple that you don’t need any programming experience and literally a child can do it. Any child.

And it is connected to the real world.

What you are programming is a fully functional robot made of LEGO bricks.

You build it and program it.

All on your own. (Or I should rather say, your child does that. Well, I prefer building it together with them and programming it with them as well. I bet you would do the same.)

The robot can dance, throw balls, it can see colors…

Where to buy? LEGO Mindstorms NXT is avaliable from Amazon.