There are so many simple activities that you can do with your 4-year-old to help stimulate their learning and development including playing with toys for 4 year olds, reading, and being out in nature.
At the age of 4 children are absorbing everything about the world around them. They are developing in countless ways. Improving their language and reasoning skills, learning to problem-solve and figuring out all the things they can do with their bodies.
Spend time with them one on one
Spending really good one on one time with your 4-year-old is one of the best ways to give their brain a boost. Be present with them, talk to them, answer their questions, explore ideas with them.
Giving children our focused attention is also really important for their general development and wellbeing, and you will often find that by filling up their attention bucket you get a better response when you need them to play alone or cooperate with you.
Reading Together
Reading with your child is a great brain boosting activity. It’s great for boosting early literacy and improving their vocabulary as well as sparking a love of reading. Reading together is also a great way of spending one on one time with a child.
Prioritise Sleep
Sleep is the time when your 4 year old is processing and filing away all the information they have absorbed during the day. Making sure they get enough sleep is vital for boosting brain power. They benefit from better concentration and focus, more thinking power, improved memory, motor skills and self control, and they tend to generally be in a better mood.
Engage All Their Senses
Engaging all the senses while learning or playing is a great way to stimulate multiple areas of the brain at the same time. This means more brain connections are being made and learning is both faster and more effective.
There are lots of activities you could think of that will engage multiple senses at the same time. Scented play dough is a great option, playing with water or mud, listening to music while you play, or getting hands on with food while cooking.
Get Building
Whether it’s stacking blocks or building a complex lego model together, building is a great brain boosting activity. It requires spatial awareness, fine motor skills, critical and analytical thinking and problem solving ability.
Get Physical
You might not think of physical activity being something you are doing to boost your child’s brain power, but movement turns on the brain and actually assists learning as much it strengthens the physical body.
Movement helps the right and left sign of the brain work together which makes learning quicker and easier.
You can simply make sure your 4 year old gets up and gets active as often as possible, taking them outside in nature adds even more benefits. Or you could set up some structured physical activities like an obstacle course or throwing games that can also incorporate counting or colours.
