Interactive Educational Activities Can Help Stimulate Students' Minds and Keep Them Positively Engaged!

It is not uncommon to see a toddler holding a smartphone these days. In fact, Generation Alpha has a good chance of becoming the most technologically savvy generation of all time. According to studies, by the age of eight, children spend approximately 7.5 hours per day in front of a screen.

You have to accept, whether you like it or not, that these kids will grow up with a smartphone in their hands.

So, rather than moaning and groaning, why not seize this opportunity and capitalize on this trend? Traditional teaching methods are changing, and educational institutions are learning how to adapt by modernizing their teaching methods.

Traditional teaching methods are cumbersome and inflexible. They do not work on every child and usually require extensive procedures before they can be modified.

Incorporating interactive educational activities is one promising way to modernize teaching. According to studies, adding gamified elements to assessments increases students' test scores by 14%. Not only that, but they also show an additional 9% increase in retention levels.

Educational games, in addition to being more interactive, promote self-motivation through rewards, feedback, and points.

Let's dig deeper and look at some of the research-backed benefits educational games have on children's mental abilities.

Encourage Imagination

If you give a child one chance, they will spill their creative colors all over the place. We apologize if it reminds you of a wall that your little Picasso sees as a canvas.

Educational games allow children to use their imaginations and come up with innovative solutions to problems.

According to psychologists, there are two types of problems: convergent and divergent. The former necessitates a single correct answer. The latter, on the other hand, yields multiple correct solutions.

In one study, children were given two types of materials: one for convergent activity (i.e., puzzle pieces) and one for divergent activity (i.e., puzzle pieces and blocks). It was discovered that children who engaged in divergent problem-solving displayed significantly greater creativity.

Online Education Tools have arisen as a means for children to channel their creative energies into something meaningful. A variety of games encourage and reward children for creating art. It contributes to the development of children's imaginative abilities.

Activate Executive Functioning

Educational games encourage children to activate their executive functioning, which is the allocation of mental resources to make quick decisions and solve problems efficiently.

A challenge lies at the heart of every interactive game. As the children play video games, they try to force their mental boundaries and use flexible thinking to overcome obstacles. But exactly, what is flexible thinking? Simply put, it enables children to see more than one workable solution.

As a result, when an interactive game presents a problem, a child is expected to devise multiple strategies, weigh their chances of success, and implement the most viable solution. Interactive games help children develop critical thinking skills because they require them to use their judgment and reasoning abilities to the fullest.

Prepare Them for The Real World

Role-playing is a favorite pastime among children. In other words, they try to understand the world by simulating real-life scenarios and re-enacting activities they see in real life. Experiments on pre-schoolers show that children as young as three years old can distinguish between pretend play and realistic scenarios and actively participate in interactive games that help them master adult activities.

Pretend-play has also been linked to self-regulation, according to research. When children spend time playing such games, they learn to control their impulses and emotions. It also improves their attention span.

Aside from the cognitive benefits, interactive educational activities not only give children an understanding of how things work as adults, but also help them develop an early interest in certain professions.

Increase Your Concentration

Sure, children's attention and vigilance are obvious requirements for making the most of their time. However, things become more interesting when we dissect them further. For starters, interactive games improve children's spatial attention. When children try to identify the target stimuli among a slew of distractions, it is the cognitive component that comes into play.

Then there's the reduced impulsiveness. Sticking to the goal is essential in interactive educational games. As a result, children are tested to see how long it takes them to respond to non-target stimuli.

Furthermore, educational games may be used to treat attention disorders in children.

According to a 2016 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 6.1 million children in the United States have been diagnosed with ADHD. Having said that, interactive games can be used to treat ADHD, according to Psychology Today. Another study found that playing video games can help patients with dyslexia, a neurological condition.

Memory Reinforcement

If your student or child has a tendency to forget school lessons, interactive educational activities could be the answer you've been looking for.

Interactive games, according to experts, rewire children's brains and improve neural connectivity and memory.

A study performed by the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) to determine the effect of playing interactive games on children's working memory revealed that the children's working memory improved as they spent more time playing games.

Not just that, but they demonstrated evidence of incorporating multiple strategies as the conditions changed and the difficulty levels increased.

As a result, it was demonstrated that game-based learning could aid in the improvement of children's working memory.

Why This Matter

Finally, the approach of incorporating interactive educational activities is the ideal teaching method, particularly for children. These interactive games can help stimulate students' minds and keep them positively engaged!

This is why, when planning lessons, teachers and parents should try to incorporate at least one interactive game per day as a teaching and learning tool, assessment strategy.

Learning does not have to be monotonous. It should be exciting, rewarding, and enjoyable. If we are content with providing boring learning experiences to our students, we are lowering the bar for the next generation of learners.

Students become more engaged in their learning when they play games, the content taught is reinforced, and class positivity is increased.