I would like to collect peoples good practice where they have learnt or made up fun games and activities for their children.

I can imaging you wonderful people make fun and interesting parents, how do you do it?

Blow darts of happiness? laughter buttons fastened to your childs forehead? You can share successes where your child has been naughty and managed the situation particularly well, taught a difficult subject or just shared the love in a unique or NLP related way.

Would love to hear from you,

Matt

Take a deep breath before you watch this, no crying allowed :-)

YouTube - Britain's Got Talent Connie Talbot Conny

Currently I am teaching my 8 year old how to directionalize people's attention. We have been starting off with shopkeepers in busy stores.

I often set him the task of purchasing something from a busy store and it is up to him as to how he gains the shopkeepers attention amidst the throng of customers.

I wait and watch patiently as he continually tests various approaches till he gets their attention and is able to purchase what he wants. I then ask him what he has learned and how it might be useful for him in other places like school.

I have also started teaching him to recognize people in an uptime trance state. I often trance out when eating breakfast, there is something to the repetitive action of spoon to bowl, spoon to mouth, chew and swallow that has me drift off. He has caught me in an altered state a few times and when he does I reinforce it with - that's right, it is good to notice these things.

Paul, I can imagine you have a great family atmosphere in your house. What toys, board games, computer games etc have you has positive experiences with as you little ones have grown up? I recently became an uncle and god father and despite my drive to spoil them with prezzies I also want to deliver a little edu-tainment, any advice to splt the gimmicks from the great would be amazing.

Thanks

Matt

In most instances a toy is a toy. From my perspective it is the interaction with the little ones that counts the most. One can turn almost any game into an educational experience.

Battleship is a great game IMHO for calibration training. When I was playing with my son, I was calibrating to him and found I was able to consistently hit his ships with minimal shots.

I then turned this game into a lesson on calibration, teaching him to track for the sorts of responses that will let him know he is close or far way from hitting a ship. My main outcome for this was not necessarily for him to win at battleship, but to begin to pay attention to peoples unconscious responses.

Kids Monopoly is also a great game and levels the playing field between kids and adults. It also turns them into little capitalists! Which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether it is your money they are after.

I also think UNO is an awesome game for kids as they have to get used to the flow of the game changing, missing out on turns, getting close to their goals only to encounter a setback with having to pick up cards, creating playing strategies and tracking the card patterns. Plus it is another opportunity to calibrate to players, when they are seeking to bluff.

Hey by the way. Great link to the little girl singing! She sounded amazing given the amount of teeth she was missing at the time!

Hi,

I use this game in my NLP training programs & with kids; and it always gets great results.

Ok here goes:

Fold your right ( or left) hand at the elbow & lift up the elbow so that it is perpendicular to your body ( or parallel to the floor).Your palm should be near your ear .
Keep your palm open & facing the celing/sky. ( This position is like when you are about to throw a ball)

Now place a coin on the elbow. Using a quick whipping action try to catch the coin with your hand, the hand on which the coin is on.

Notice that as long as you consciously 'try' to catch the coin, you'll miss & it'll drop to the floor.

If you try to focus not on the coin but only on whipping your hand forward & down as quickly as possible , you'll be able to catch it. The faster the better.

So what's the learning?

This - IMHO - is a demonstration of how it's sometimes better to use right brain 'experential' versus left brain 'analytical'.

Like I wrote earlier, as long as you try to catch it you wont. Just trust your body, do it & bingo! you can catch it.

I dont know if my explanation ( of right brain , left brain) is right ;but what the heck, the activity is fun!!

What say, learned people?

Amruth

I need more activities from you.

One thing i used to do a lot with my children and still do on a occasion or two, is instead of getting a book from the shelf at bedtime, i took the invisable book.. One of my two children would put a name to the book, then i open my palms up to reveal the first page, to where my other child woulf give us the first character and the voice of that character, if they were going to be good or bad and say what they were wearing, then my other child would build the scene for this character and so forth, we built the story, the settings and the characters with their own voices. We had so many laughs doing this and it gives them the freedom to use their imagination in the most wildest sense. Now they are both very good story tellers, story writers and know that they can use their creativity.
Another thing i do with my children, i have a huge art chest, inside is pens, paints, cards, stickers, toilet rolls, everything and anything. When my son was into Thomas the Tank Engine and collected all the trains, we built a station instead of buying one. Through their fases of what they have been into, we have had the imagination to build what is needed to house, bed, etc, crocodiles, dinasaurs, you name it, it can be built somehow.
Another thing we do on the school run is road signs... most of us can remember trawling through the Highway Code book, learning all of our traffic signs etc.. both my children know them all, knowing it would combat some car boredom and help them when they reach the ages of learning to drive, i knew it would be a easy thing to play in the car and a learning key.
We also practice spellings in the car, times tables etc.
Each term each of the children learn a new subject from history, to make their learning more fun we take it out of the text book, we have so much fun being a greek god / godess and explaining our powers, what we can see around us, what we can hear, what we can feel and even the fights.
Its taking learning to more of their senses and its making it fun.

One other thing i have continued thoughtout being a mom, is i have never smacked my children. If they have done something that is percived as wrong, i have explained to them in boring detail, why its wrong and the consequences of their actions.. asking them also if they knew the information that i have given them how would they have acted differently.
The one key thing between my two children and me is communication, if one is mad or upset i ask them to explain their feelings to me, if one of them is doing well i praise them, if one of them is not doing so well in a subject we explore how we can learn it differently and try methods until they undrestand it better.
When they are learning specific subjects i generally show them if there is more then one answer / opinion... different ways to learn maths, spellings, or religious views etc. I am always teaching them to look out of the box and the different sides to things. The way they ae taught in school is just one view.
Learning can be a lot of fun and i love how much i always learn from doing this with them.
Living in Scotland, we are surrounded by history and we love going out and looking for the loch ness monster or being kings and queens of castles, its all FUN.
My son whom is 12 years old is always being commented on about how much discussion he can bring to a classroom and how much knowledge he has on many subjects.
One other thing we do in the car (school run is 10 miles each way, a lot of conversation time in the car) is we take turns in teaching the other two in something i learned that you might not know. The facts that come out from this and discussion is amazing, we have some fascinating conversations and its enlightening. Its one way i also explore what they have done in school that day and what they are learning about. If i ask them "what did you do today?" i generally get a "nothing" in reply, but if i ask what do you know that i dont know, they rack through everything they have done that day to test my knowledge and their siblings.


Keep safe & Have fun
Michelle

*smile* what a great mother you are Michelle! Paul you're a great mother too!

I throw mine to the wolves! Fun for me...maybe not so fun for them!
I'm kidding of course! But not completely.

I give them as much responsability as is appropriate and have found that they are becoming more and more autonomous. Makes for a team mentality in the household.

My 10 yr old son actually made pancakes for everyone this morning.

As for games...we make them up as we go. Sometimes they are more physical than others.

I do like to speak with them a lot and ask their opinions about all kinds of things. Particularly about decision making --theirs, their friends, anyone's!
I find that they actually teach me more than the other way around!

Just spending time with them and actually being present has an enormous impact on their self-esteem and confidence.

Enjoy them Matt! They'll love you for it!

Be healthy!
Isabelle