Games For Children's Development (Paperback)

INTRODUCTION The training of the physical coordinations of children is most naturally accomlished through the medium of games. Miss Wrightson has brought together in convenient form a large number of games especially adapted to accomplish these results. Her long experience with normal and sub-normal children is a guarantee of their usefulness and efficacy for the purpose. It should be fully appreciated by teachers, parents and superintendents that the playing of these games is not mere play, but definite training of the best kind. In many cases thre is little else to be done. The teacher should select such games as are most interesting to her special group and practice these until the children are reasonably proficient in them or until they prove uninteresting. The teacher familiar only with normal minds will perhaps think some-of the games here described of no value. It is always hard for the more intelligent to understand the less intelligent, for normal teachers to understand sub-normal children. It should be remembered that the joy of accomplislment is one of the greatest joys of life for all grades of intelligence. It is the fact that the list, includes games adapted to the simplest minds which constitutes one of its excellencies. It should not be forgotten that these games not only develop co-ordination and attention manners, morals, self-control, altruism, patience and many more desirable qualities are involved. What more can education do than develop to the limit of the individuals capacity these qualities which, possessed even in a small degree, will help to make him a social rather than an anti-social being, though with more on faneity, it is clear that these games will be of equal value to young normal children and will have great value in to them to develop their latent powers and to work on their naturl energy in pmf table ways. games and exercises in this book were written for use among mothers and teachers of normal and sub-normal children, the object being to help develop muscular control and to quicken the sense perceptions. The training should commence when the child is three years of age. The following instructions should be observed I. Each one of the exercises should be put before the child in a spirit of play. . Absolute simplicity in the training is essential. The manner in which a game is played is of more importance than the game itself. A simple game or exercise taught in a complex manner .will produce a confusion of ideas, 3. Aim to produce one idea at a time in the mind of the child. 4. In teaching both normal and sub- normal children the personality of the teacher plays an important part. She should be patient cheerful and optimistic, always ready with a word of encouragement when the child fails to produce the desired results thorough in her methods and with keen power to observe. The mind of the teacher reacts upon the mind of the child Education is the process by which one mind forms another mind and one heart another heart. 5. The principal weakness in most children is their inability to concentrate, and it is only by fixed methods of simple work, elimination of all confusion, and the conviction of the teacher that good results must emanate from her training, that she can develop and strengthen concentration in the child. The mode of procedure must not vary children should be lined up in the same way, material of the same color used, and diagrams drawn to the same dimensions each time the game or exercise is used...