Our Favorite Games and Toys for Gifted Kids

Looking for a fantastic toy or game for your Gifted little one? I’ve compiled a list of favorites that my kids love!

My children are currently nine and four. I have included toys and games that they either repeatedly play with or highly engage them. To me, that is the sign of a great toy for a mind that craves mental stimulation!

FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small percentage of a sale at no extra cost you.

Science Toys and Games

Snap Circuits Jr.-

Kids have fun building their own circuits! My advice, don’t look at the pamphlet showing you all the circuits you can make. Let the kids figure it out first. There is so much learning in failed attempts. It gives the child a chance to evaluate why the circuit isn’t working and determine how to fix it.

Attempting to build a circuit

Before I started lunch, I sat with my just-turned four year old and we tried to create a circuit at his request. It took a couple of attempts, but we eventually did it together. As I was fixing lunch, he explored the toy on his own. Some of the things I heard him say were, “…do this to complete the circuit” and “If I connect this one…”. He was fully engaged in this toy and using it in an open ended fashion. That’s why I love it!

Mad Science Kit-

We got this kit free at an event at my oldest son’s school. It’s from a franchise company called Mad Science. In this kit, you receive three small magnets that you arrange so that they repel each other. Since they are repelling, they appear to be floating on the small rod. It is an awesome hands on way to learn about magnets and how they behave. The child can test different ways of arranging the magnets to see what would happen. If you don’t have a kit like this, it’s ok. You may be able to make something similar at home with strong magnets from a store!

Human Body Game (from Lakeshore Learning)-

Even though this is a game, my kids have always used it like a puzzle. They enjoy taking the body parts out and putting them back in. In the process, the are learning some basics on where body parts are in the body, the names and general appearance of the parts. I like the hands on nature of the toy as an introduction to human anatomy. My kids like the puzzle aspect of it!

Math Toys and Games

Equate-

This game is a lot like Scrabble, but instead of building words the child builds equations. Kids get to create with all sorts of numbers, even fractions! This is the perfect game for a math loving child. There are various levels of difficulty available. They can build the equations mentally or use a paper and pencil to work it out before playing. It’s a very unique game. They might even make up their own way of playing!

Pattern Play

This toy is essentially hands on geometry. The child gets to create a pattern or picture using geometric shapes. They can follow a given pattern or make their own design. I like how open ended it can be and the combination of math and art. Many kids don’t realize how much math is in art. This would be a perfect way for a math focused child to delve into art.

Blokus

This is another game that my kids use as a toy. Maybe once they’ve actually played this as a game. My four year is the one who really loves this. I refer to this as hands on Tetris. My preschooler usually tries to fit the different shaped pieces so that they all fit into the board. It is a wonderful spatial toy! Just by attempting this challenge he created, he has to manipulate the pieces in a way that makes them fit together in just the right way. Without realizing it, he is practicing sliding, turning, flipping, and area.

Logic & Reasoning Toys and Games

Stratego

This is the newest version. We actually have this one and the original. I personally prefer the original.

My son loves this capture the flag style game! You have to devise a strategy to get past your opponents troops, avoid or diffuse their bombs, and capture their hidden flag!

Mancala

The goal is to get the most gems in your trough. You have to plan your moves based on where your gems and your opponents gems are. There is strategy involved in planning your move and anticipating your opponents move too!

Mastermind

This was one of my favorite games growing up. My oldest is just now getting into it. There is a lot of deductive reasoning involved as the player attempts to figure out a hidden color pattern. The other player gives clues and the person solving the pattern needs to put those clues together. It’s not as easy as it sounds sometimes. It’s a pretty good challenge!

I hope this list helps you find a game that is just right for your little ones. We have so many games in our house; our shelves are bursting with books and games. I narrowed our selections down to three per category to make the list manageable. But, I have throw in our honorable mention– Qwirkle!

Playing a fun game of Qwirkle

Update:

We got Q-Bitz as a Christmas gift and it is absolutely amazing. I have to mention this one!

Happy gaming

This post is part of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum May 2014 Blog Hop: Special Tips, Toys, Tricks, and Tools For Parenting & Educating Gifted/2E kids. To read more amazing blog posts, click here!

Empowering Parents to Teach- Counting to fifty

Math in Literature: Counting to Fifty

11. May
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Math Reading
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2 Comments

Is your little on learning how to count to fifty? I found two fun books to help support their learning! Read on and I will tell you more about them.

The Long, Long Line by Tomoko Ohmura

In this book, you see a long line of animals who are all waiting for something. That something will not be revealed until the end. Starting with fifty, each animal is numbered according to their place in line until you reach number one. It counts down instead of counting up. If your little one is new to counting down, you could start at the beginning of the line (end of the book) to teach counting up to fifty. I like that it is versatile, giving you the option of counting up or down depending on how you choose to read it. Also, if your child is learning how to identify bigger numbers, you can have the child attempt to read some of the numbers along the way.

It’s also really fun to see what the animals were waiting for at the end. The author builds anticipation through the animal’s simple dialogue to one another!

Robot Burp Head Smartypants! by Annette Simon

In this very silly book, two robots are trying to talk but they keep burping in the middle of their sentences. Belching is usually met with a lot of laughs from little ones, which gets their attention! Among the things the robot is trying to say is his numbers. One robot manages to count to ten and then counts on by tens up to the number fifty. So instead of counting each and every number up to fifty, they can practice skip counting. Skip counting is a very useful skill, especially as they learn bigger and bigger numbers.

Put the two books together and your child is shown every number from one to fifty, how to count down, and counting by tens. It’s a great combination!

Sentence Making

05. May
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Reading
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No Comments

Do you have a beginning reader? When your little one recognizes enough sight words to read simple books, he or she may enjoy this activity. It helps young readers reinforce words they already know, practice new words, and understand the concept of a sentence.

My son is a beginning reader and he just started routinely reading out loud to me every night before bed. This routine was started by him mainly to put off going to bed, but I went with it. Now that he is motivated to read, I began this activity using sentences that he was capable of reading from his nightly books. Like any learning activity, I only do it if he enjoys it and is motivated. If he isn’t interested, I don’t push him. He actually asks to do things like this because he wants to ” do homework” just like his older brother! This activity is one that he enjoys.

Here’s what we did:

1. He found a book that he wanted to read. He could read some of the book independently and I helped him with the words he did not know. He picked I Like Crabgrass from an early reader set.

2. The next day, I picked out a sentence that he was able to read all on his own without my help. In this case the sentence read, “It did not like to be cut at all!”. I wrote the sentence on a sentence strip. Teaching Tip: I purposefully chose a sentence that he could easily read on his own so he would be successful in this activity. I can always increase the difficulty if need be, but at this early stage I want him to feel capable of reading.

3. I showed him the cover and asked him if he remembered the book. I opened the book and showed him the page with the sentence I chose. I pointed to it and asked him to read the sentence. He did this easily. Teaching Tip: By showing him the book and page where the sentence came from, I was reminding him of the context of the sentence.

4. I drew his attention to the sentence on the strip of paper. I told him that he was going to build the sentence that he just read. In the small cup was each word of the sentence. He took out one word at a time and matched it to the sentence.

I kept the book on the tray to remind of us of the sentence’s context.

5. After he was done, he read the sentence that he created to make sure it was correct. We also looked to see that each word matched visually.

6. After this, I took away the sentence on the strip and jumbled up the words on the tray. I spoke the sentence one word at a time and he searched for the word I said. I brought out the sentence strip at the end so that he could check his work. Teaching Tip: This is a little more difficult because the visual cue of the sentence on the strip was removed.

Checking his work.

7. After this, my little one wanted to dictate the sentence to me and see if I could make the sentence. He was now the teacher!

8. Lastly, you can have your child build the sentence once more, completely on his or her own. Jumble up the words once again, and have the child build the sentence without the sentence strip or the parent dictation. We did not do this step because my little seemed ready to be done. However, the fact that he was able to dictate the sentence to me earlier indicates to me that he probably would have been able to do this if asked.

9. Once he was done, I put the sentence into a chart that is designed to hold sentence strips. I hung this where he would easily see it on a regular basis. This allows him to read the sentence any time he wants to. As we read more books, I can pull more sentences for him to practice making and add them to his chart.

Why did I do the activity this way?

First of all, I structured the activity to have a lot of support in the beginning and gradually took away the support. If he had trouble on any step, I could stay on that level of support.
I took the sentence from a book he chose. I did not have to prod or offer incentives for him to read. He likes this book so he has a desire to learn how to read it.
It was a real sentence from a real book, which provided context for the words he was reading.
This sentence has a lot of commonly used words in it. So even though he was practicing one sentence from one book, the word recognition from this sentence can help him read many other stories.
I included the punctuation mark because I wanted to show the structure of a sentence as well.

We kept it short and sweet so the learning activity ended on a fun positive note! We can repeat this activity with different sentences from other books he reads and add them to our chart. The more words a child can read by sight, the better his or her reading fluency will become!

This post is linked to:

Empowering Parents to Teach- Counting Money

Counting Money for Beginners

28. Apr
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Math
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4 Comments

My preschooler received some Easter money from his grandmother ($5) and found some hidden inside of an Easter egg ($2). Since we were headed off to Target, he really wanted to bring his money to buy a Skylander. I told him that they cost ten dollars or fifteen dollars. He had to count his money to see if he had enough to purchase one.

Young ones usually count the number of bills. For example, he had a five dollar bill and two one dollar bills. Most of the time, kids that young will count the three bills and say they have three dollars. Ideally, if I had five one dollar bills I could show him that the five one dollar bills was the same as one five dollar bill. But I didn’t have enough bills for that. Math bears came to our rescue again!

Here’s how I would show a young one how to add bills of different denominations using readily available materials:

Step 1:

Place the bills largest to smallest in a line.

Step 2:

Have the child read the number on the first bill. Take out the corresponding number of math bears, i.e. five math bears for a five dollar bill. Teaching Tip: This gives the child a visual, concrete representation of the number on the bill.

Step 3:

Repeat the process of corresponding the math bears to the number on the bills.

Step 3:

Have the child count all the math bears together. Teaching Tip: Have the child start on the left hand side to count. Just like reading, we typically solve math problems left to right. It’s never too early to establish good habits!

In our case, we were not done yet. Remember, he was counting for a purpose. He needed to see if he had enough money to purchase a Skylander. I asked my little guy if seven dollars was more or less than ten dollars. He said, “Less” and immediately started to throw a tantrum because he realized he didn’t have enough money.

Once he calmed down I asked him an extension question, “If you have $7, how many more dollars do you need to make $10?” He responded, “$3″. He can mentally figure out what numbers add up to ten so I did not need to use the math bears to help him solve this. But, if he needed help, I could have put out seven math bears and we could count together how many bears we added to make ten.

Older brother came to this rescue and gave his brother his Easter money- $5. It was super sweet. We counted the money once again and he now had enough money for his new toy!

I love when math can be taught in context for a real purpose! Next time your preschooler or kindergartener wants to buy something, teach him or her how to count money! Evaluate at the end if they have enough for their purchase.

Linked to:

Colorful Eruptions

14. Apr
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Science
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No Comments

We had a dozen left over hard boiled eggs from our egg hunt. My three year really wanted to do science experiments with them. He enjoys mixing things, so his initial idea was to put the egg in some kind of mixture. At first he said he wanted to get two cups- one with cold salt water and one with hot salt water. He would put the egg in each cup and see what happens. But then, another idea came to him, he wanted to make a volcano and put an egg in it. Mixing vinegar and baking soda is one of his favorite activities, so I think that is where his idea came from. He hypothesized that if he placed an egg on top of the volcano, the egg would fly into the air from the eruption.

That was how our adventure started! My boys worked together to make a volcano using a kit my oldest received as a birthday present. I was impressed with the quality of the kit, even the paint looked crisp.

My little one announced he would paint the volcano all red, but my oldest wanted to paint it multiple colors. My youngest went along with his older brother’s idea and they created a super colorful volcano!

Next, we ventured outside to see what happens when you place an egg on top of a plaster volcano, mixing baking soda and vinegar to simulate an eruption. We had red food coloring to dye the vinegar so the eruption looked more like lava. With the baking soda already poured in the eruption chamber, the egg was carefully placed on top of the volcano.

They lifted the egg slightly to add the vinegar. Quickly, they placed the egg all the way on to see if it did in fact fly in the air. It did not. I asked the boys why they thought the egg didn’t fly into the air, and my oldest was able to articulate that there wasn’t enough force to send it flying. We also chatted about the chemical reaction that occurred and the carbon dioxide that was formed. To learn more about this with a kid friendly explanation we visited this website.

Another thing my kids love is coloring mixing, so upon seeing the food coloring, their next idea was to mix the vinegar with all different colors.

More red:

Some green:

A beautiful blue:

We had so many more colors- orange, bright green, purple, pink! They had so much fun watching the colors erupt from the volcano. This activity brought a lot of smiles and it was all their idea! They were even surprised to see that the egg was dyed in the process.

Now that they are so interested in volcanoes we picked up these books at the library:

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Sheana

My background in education consists of multiple types of experiences in various settings. Public school teaching, homeschooling, private tutoring, raising two boys, co-creating curriculum for a non-profit, and designing for various consultant projects have allowed me to gain an enormous amount of insight into how we can help our children learn in a manner that works for them. With a master’s in curriculum design and a wealth of experience, I am happy to share ideas with you as you support your child’s education.

Email: creativelearningpath@gmail.com