Today, children are really pressurized as far as academics are concerned. Sports help their mind and body to relax. Sports helps children develop physically which is so important especially when child obesity is becoming a growing concern for most parents.

Children in schools today are increasingly overburdened with academics. Most parents make all efforts to get them to excel at studies. However, going with the popular saying, ‘all work and no play’ is not necessarily the best strategy to improve your child’s performance at school. Because sports involve teamwork and coordination, it develops a child’s brain to perform in a team.

Sports lets you experience the joy of winning at the same time it teaches you how to face your failure when you lose and how to learn from your mistakes. Participation in sports teaches children to cultivate a never say die spirit and single-mindedly pursue their goals. Each time your child wins a game; he will experience a thrill and will want to surpass his own records. Gild children should be equally encouraged to play sports as boys should. Playing a competitive sport will help your children to work against their own limitations.

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Before a child starts to collect maps he or she must know about the general considerations for collecting maps. One should know about the elements on a map, how to read a map, different papers used for printing maps, learning how to recognize fake maps from  the authentic ones etc. Parents should help the child in doing this and should also build his interest. If one is collecting maps according to their history, it is important to preserve the maps in a chronological order. The best thing that your child can do as an amateur map collector is to visit antique map shops, talk to the dealers and see the wide range of maps that are available. Not just that, there are dedicated map fairs, and antiquarian book fairs which help to learn a lot about maps. Maps of Africa, Russia, and South America and other less popular regions can be very affordable. Old antique world maps dating back to the 16th and the 17th century are very expensive as against the new ones.

Collecting maps will help your child to learn a lot about different places, their climatic conditions, their topography etc. Mere collection of maps is not enough. Make sure that your child enjoys studying those maps as much as collecting them. There is a lot of scope of learning in map collection. This can be fun at the same time can be very interesting as well.

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Like Snoopy, Pokemon is also a craze amongst kids. The name Pokemon comes from the Japanese term ‘Poketto Monsut?’ for Pocket Monsters. Pokemon was an instant hit with the young Japanese children.

Pokemon video games are very popular amongst young children. The Pokemon video game is based on a story that requires the players to find and collect as many as possible Pokemon characters scattered around the world of Pokemon and train them to compete with Pokemon characters trained by others. Collecting and battling Pokemon characters is the central theme of the entire Pokemon game. In fact Pokemon video game titles have a record sale of 155 million copies.

Apart from the videogame, children love collecting Pokemon soft toys, Pokemon notebooks, Pokemon wallets, Pokemon mugs, Pokemon T-shirts, Pokemon key chains, and other Pokemon goodies. In fact, there are so many birthday parties organized for children that have Pokemon as a theme. Here, not only are children given all kinds of Pokemon goodies and gifts, but there are Pokemon cartoons all around. Pokemon is also an ongoing animated series, which has since been adapted for the North and South American, Australian and European television market.

There are so many Pokemon cartoons that feature on the Indian cartoon television. Not just that Pokemon card games, books and comics too are available. Not just children, people of all age groups love to play Pokemon games simply because they are fun and you get addicted to the excitement. However, make sure that your child does not spend too much of time on these cartoons.

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Today’s kids love Harry potter, superman, Spiderman, Mario, Pokemon and Snoopy. Snoopy has become a brand in itself. Snoopy is a famous comic character that featured in the long-running comic strip called Peanuts. This strip was developed by Charles M. Schulz. Snoopy plays an ordinary dog but eventually he becomes the most popular character of the story. Kids indulge in collecting various Snoopy items like Snoopy toys, Snoopy watches, Snoopy figures and the like.

The character of Snoopy has been so well developed that one can actually imagine a real dog instead of a fictional character. Snoopy has a rich fantasy-like life. He loves to play tennis, hates coconut candies, loves root beer and pizza, loves to play with soap bubbles, is afraid of icicles over his doghouse etc. Hence with such development of this character since the 1950s, Snoopy has almost become a part of many individual’s life.

Since kids love snoopy so much, there are Snoopy books, CDs and DVDs that are available in the market as well as on the internet. Some of the popular Snoopy books/ CDs/ DVDs are “Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life by Barnaby Conrad”, “Peanuts: A Golden Celebration: The Art and the Story of the World’s Best-Loved Comic Strip by Charles M. Schulz” etc. Kids pester their parents to buy them Snoopy soft toys, Snoopy notebooks, Snoopy wallets, Snoopy mugs, Snoopy T-shirts, Snoopy key chains, Snoopy rings, Snoopy Aprons, etc.

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Encourage your child to play with numbers on bus and train tickets. Join him in the process. Use various combinations and add, subtract, multiply and divide all the numbers. Tables are also very important. Try and let your child take by heart tables up to 20. Initially it may seem like an impossible task by revising tables everyday will help your child to remember them easily.

A little inspiration and practice and your involvement with your kids in dealing with numbers and mental calculations will go a long way in sharpening your child’s mathematical ability.

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Parents need to be cautious and avoid unfavorable behavior atleast in front of their kids. A ‘favorable home environment’ precisely means sharing quality time with your kids, making the home environment happy and calm. You can involve your kids into a lot of creative activities.

Do not leave your child alone for too long. There is a lot of research that shows people who are left alone in their childhood suffer serious personality disorders. Try and spend atleast two to three hours of quality time with your children. For working mothers, it is important that you keep your child under someone’s supervision and not leave them alone.

Grandparents also help a great deal in inculcating good values in your children. Typically, grandmothers are best at doing that. Teach your kid to respect each and every family member including your servant or maid as well.. Suitable and favorable home environment can go a long way to teach your kids good manners and behavior.

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Music has healing attributes. It is a great stress reliever and enlightens your mood and this eternal fact applies to people of all age groups including kids. But how many of us know that music can be a good teacher too? Now, that’s certainly a revelation for many parents. Parents can use music in an effective way to teach the child a number of things. This will help in stimulating child’s brain. According to some scientific research, music and math have a great connection. The logic behind it is very simple to understand. Elements like math, music and spatial understanding is controlled by the right brain whereas language is controlled by the left brain. So if child’s musical taste is developed it will also help in improving his mathematical aptitudes. Now, that is certainly an interesting find.

In the beginning parents should try to introduce different kind of music to the child. It could be pop, jazz, instrumental or classical. Slowly, make them identify different instruments like drums, piano and flute or guitar. Tell kids to focus on music and make sure it must be done in small time frames. Sit beside him and listen attentively. Slowly, child will be able to understand the beats.

Parents can choose to follow many innovative steps like choosing suitable dance music and dancing accordingly. Make your child observe you and slowly he will start joining you. Many kids learn to recognize rhythms at a very young age and the reason is free dancing encouraged by parents. It simply means moving to the rhythms without actually following any particular movement as such. Ask your child to make sound track or produce any sound he finds amusing or interesting. It could be waltz or twittering birds. Finally help the kid in identifying different sounds.

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The charity begins at home. Start with giving your own example. For the uninitiated, encourage your child to read the newspaper on a daily basis. Soon, it will become his habit. This habit can’t be developed overnight. One good idea is to discuss headlines with your child so that he develops a keen interest in what is going around the world. Try not to dwell on just news. Your discussion could involve subjects like movies, music or sports.

The advantage of discussion is your child will be more interested in current affairs as you as parent will be leading by example. Child often follows his parents so if you yourself is into news and current affairs, naturally child will find it easier, comfortable and motivating enough to generate interest. It is a common sight now a day to find kids having poor general knowledge. They totally seem clueless of what is going around the world. This is definitely not an encouraging sign and at some point of his life child will find himself alienated. Command over general knowledge will make your child more confident and a better conversationalist.

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Many a times parents complain of their child having a poor memory. He or she can’t remember things in the class or examination and paper remains blank. Well, that’s quite understandable considering It is a normal phenomenon. So how to improve memory? Before going into the methods, let’s talk about what is memory? Basically, memory refers to the mental capacity of retaining facts, events and impressions. Different people have different memory and some just have that extra edge over others.

One of the commonly used systems of developing memory is Mnemonics. One technique that many parents have found helpful is Acronym. It basically refers to abbreviation for a set of words. If I say ASAP, that refers to As soon as possible. Similarly a child can be made to learn different acronyms with regular practice. Parents can also rearrange the words and derive some other set of words. Apart from acronym, Acrostics is another method. In this technique, first letter of each word is taken from the words that are supposed to remembered and them a sentence is made using those letters. This is a helpful technique because it is easier to remember a sentence than a list of unrelated words.

Apart from these methods, parents can also use poems and songs, Loci or chunking. A child will be more able to remember things if it sounds rhythmic. Chunking refers to segregating long list of numbers and associating each separate part with some events. That proves very handy for kids in remembering things.

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We will not go into the detail of which approach is the right one. However, we can always discuss what the advantages of the contrasting approach are. One of the neuroscience consultants believes in the first approach and the reason being cited is presence of 12 billion neurons in the child. If these are not used till the age of 12, approximately half of them die and that must be termed as sheer waste. So he advocates parents must take steps that make kid use these neurons. That will also ensure that child is using his optimum brain capacity.

The fact that the pressure on kids has increased tremendously in recent years because of ubiquitous competition, parents have to be involved with child to make sure child is not lagging behind. Now just being a book worm does not suffices. A child has to participate in several extra-curricular activities to develop an all-round personality. Children might scoff at so much of workload but in the end it pays off. In such scenario, it becomes quite obvious for parents to place emphasis on all the aspects of kid’s personality and make sure he is using his optimum capacity.

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