How does it turn into a schoolboy (and what does board games have to do with it)
When they describe the periodization of children's development, it usually looks like that from three to seven years old a child has a preschool childhood and role-playing game is a leading activity, and at seven years old the child turns into a schoolboy whose leading activity is educational. It may seem that in the region of seven years some kind of qualitative change in the child’s mind takes place, and he passes from one discrete state (preschool child) to another (student).
In fact, this is a smooth process, stretched over several years, and those changes that occur, occur gradually. The kindergarten educational program is designed in such a way that the classes that the child attends become more and more like school lessons every year. In the preparatory group, the child in the lessons gets experience as close as possible to school: there is a class, and desks, and the Russian language with mathematics, and you need to raise your hand, and tasks are performed in notebooks. This is one vector.
The second vector is the formalization of the game. At three years old, when a child comes to kindergarten, most of his play is a free game. Either he manipulates toys in a free form (rolls, presses buttons, throws, knocks), or plays a simple story and everyday game (treats a bear, arranges dishes, puts a doll in a crib). Then the child begins to learn simple games with the rules. For example, the game "owl and mouse." Music plays, mice run. The music died down - the mice hid, the owl flies out to hunt and looks to see if anyone is moving. Here the emphasis is on the role component (hiding like a mouse), but there is already a simple rule.
At four years old, the child’s free play becomes more structured: he is already trying to adhere to some kind of action plan (at the level of “feed, drink, put to bed”). At this time, you can play very simple Toddler board games that do not require the ability to count, but for the child to be interested, these games should have a clear plot, and the chips should be concrete figures of living creatures, small toys.
At the age of five, children are already capable of collective role play; there is a need to distribute roles and coordinate their actions. Children begin to give each other specific game tasks: "you sit here and don't let anyone in, and you feed the kids." They get access to some of the classic board games - for example, simple walk-in games where you need to take as many steps as fell on a cube. The child can already play board games where the skill of counting is required, but at this time he does not play to win, but to enjoy the process. For example, with some five-year-old girls, you can play Takenoko, and they even perform tasks on cards, if you really ask, but the main pleasure they get from the plot is simply from the very fact that the panda walks and eats bamboo.
At six years old, the role-playing game is overgrown with a huge amount of detail, and the children are already able to organize it themselves and to follow the order themselves. At this time, they no longer need an adult, even as a moderator, because they keep the structure not only at the level of the plan and distribution of roles, but also at the level of constructive interaction. Since at the age of six the child can already critically evaluate the results of his actions and his work, he begins to play on the result and actively strive to win. When the interest in the fact of winning and the desire to master the skill of the game begin to prevail over the pure pleasure of the process, the child is ready to play abstract logical games: for example, checkers or mahjong.
The third vector is the area of interest. At three years old, the child’s life world is a house, a garden, a clinic and a playground. What happens outside of these locations, the child does not know, and does not really want to know. The themes of his games revolve around personal life experiences and familiar everyday situations, so the first role-playing games are about feeding, laying down and visiting a doctor.
At the age of four, the child’s ideas about the world begin to move apart, embracing a large society and nature. The child discovers transportation, professions, remembers the names of animals, birds, trees, vegetables and the like. He begins to navigate in the seasons and lives already in a certain time perspective, and not the present moment. This is an intermediate stage when the child is already beginning to accumulate knowledge about the world, but this knowledge mainly concerns what enters or can potentially enter the sphere of his personal experience. He sometimes drives by transport, sees trees around him, eats vegetables and fruits, the seasons are also quite observable for him. In the game at this time, urban themes appear: a store, a zoo, a bus, fire department, construction. If a child sees in action representatives of various professions (for example, an electrician has come home), then he then reflects his impressions in the game.
At the age of five, the child's horizons sharply move apart when he realizes how much more interesting things exist in the world, besides what he saw. He begins to accumulate a huge amount of knowledge from different fields. At this time, the child is interested in everything: space, dinosaurs, physical experiments, natural disasters, fantasy worlds. At this time, the child sincerely wants to know as much as possible (this is the first component of educational motivation).
At six years old, the child becomes able to evaluate the results of labor. He already understands, for example, that some in his group draw well, and some so-so. And at this moment, when he understands the difference between a good and a poorly completed task, he becomes interested not only in knowing, but also in how to be able to. This is the second component of learning motivation. At this time, the child gambles over all sorts of skills: learning to speak English, mastering the methods of hand-to-hand fighting, sewing, swimming, playing chess and so on.
Thus, by the time of graduation from the kindergarten, the child is psychologically ready to move on to school:
- he already knows how to sit in the lesson, observing the rules of behavior;
- he is retained as part of the assignment and is interested in successfully completing it;
- he wants to know a lot;
- he wants to be able to do a lot.
So, anyway, it looks ideal.
And now about what could go wrong
A common story that makes it very difficult for a child to go to school is as follows. Soft, loving parents grow an energetic, characteristic child. During the crisis of one year, he easily wins the fight of freedom, winning the right to impulsively follow his desires, because mother is pleased to create a happy childhood for the child - an environment in which he can do what he wants. During the crisis of three years, this child wins the fight again, almost without resistance, and a social situation is created where the child decides what and when he will do, and the family follows his desires. At this time, parents are again very pleased that they create a happy childhood for the child. The words “no”, “impossible” and “necessary” are practically absent in their vocabulary. If the child expresses some desire, the parents believe that it must be fulfilled, because if the child wants something, then this is important for his development. And if he doesn’t want it, then he doesn’t need it. The child takes the following attitude out of this social situation: “I am very important. My desires are much more important than the desires of others. Everyone must obey my desires. If I don’t want something, I won’t do it. ”
While the child is brought up in the family circle and goes to socialize unless on the playground, this works, albeit with a creak. With a creak - because the whole family is built according to the wishes of the child, and this often creates inconvenience. But you can somehow put up with them, and as long as the situation is tolerable, it remains generally the same.
And then the parents come to the conclusion that it would be necessary for the child to go to kindergarten in front of the school. Families with such a structure usually bring a child to the garden not at three years old, but later at five, for example. Sometimes they themselves try to delay this moment so that the child has time to get more individual attention, and sometimes the child actively resists being handed over somewhere. Since this is a beloved child who wants the best, at home they have a lot to do. He knows a lot. From the point of view of the general outlook, this child can be ahead of their peers who studied according to the usual garden program.
But when this child is in kindergarten, then he finds himself in a social situation, which is diametrically opposed to the usual. In the garden you must follow the rules! You can play in the garden when there is a special time for the game, and not at any time when you want! If everyone is going to dance, then you have to dance, and no one asks you if you like to do it or not! And most importantly: in the garden you are not the center of the universe, but one of the crowd, and no one wants to be built according to your desires. For a child who is used to something completely different at home, this is very stressful. He comes home and says: "I hate kindergarten." It can be understood. Psychologically, he is losing a lot at this moment. He loses absolute freedom, loses the ability to control the environment. In addition, his picture of the world is collapsing: he suddenly learns that the universe does not revolve around him.
If the child after that is not immediately taken away from the kindergarten, then further he tries to somehow deal with this situation. Teachers are subjectively enemies for him at this moment, because they force him to obey, but he is not used to it, and this is extremely unpleasant for him. Other children for him at this moment are also enemies, because their existence prevents him from being the center of the universe (and in addition they do not listen to him when he tries to command them). The child does the most logical thing: he begins to fight enemies. That is, bash other children and, in principle, not listen to adults, defending their right to do as they want. It is quite clear that if he lived up to five years with this right, then he would not want to part with it!
This has a number of consequences. Firstly, socialization (for which a child was sent to a kindergarten to a significant extent) fails: the rest of the children are afraid of the one who thrashes them for any reason, avoid him and do not want to play with him. If you are lucky, the child finds one or two friends according to his interests, and if he is not lucky, then he plays one. It turns out the situation of loneliness in the crowd. This experience will not help the child then in school to establish interaction with classmates, because the child makes him feel that there is nothing good in the team.
The second point is that a child protesting against the rules and requirements is unable to perform educational tasks. Say, a drawing lesson is going on, and all the children draw little people - except for one who, from a pure principle, depicts a scorpion, because at that moment he wanted to portray a scorpion. A scorpion in itself can be excellent, but the group as a whole leaves the lesson with some idea about how to draw a person, and the author of the scorpion does not take any new knowledge and skills from the same lesson. And if, say, at first he could have an advantage over the group due to what he learned at home, then this gap is gradually narrowing. And then the child is already among the lagging behind, because the group learns the program and moves somewhere, but he remains with what he knew and was able to at the time of entering the garden. If you do nothing with this, this situation is further transferred to school, and we get a school failure in a child who is quite smart and seems to have no violations. If you do nothing with this at school, you get adults who work based solely on their own ideas about how to. You order, for example, a site design for such a person, explain what should happen at the exit, and he sits down and does something completely different, because he thinks it is better. And then he is still offended that his creative impulse has remained unappreciated.
Actually, what do board games have to do with it
The main difficulty of a child with such a development path, as described above, is that he did not acquire the ability to follow the rules and act within certain limits at the right time (that is, about three years), and then he does not have the motivation to learn to follow the rules, because he experiences the rules as something repressive. They do not enrich his world, but deprive him of something valuable. For example, the ability to draw a scorpion when you want to draw a scorpion, or play Lego instead of going to dance.
And here we begin to play board games with the child in order to lure him into a situation of compliance with the rules. Rules are a necessary part of any board game, but they do not take away from the child a part of his freedom, but allow you to get some new interesting experience. Due to this, there is a motivation to follow them - otherwise it just won’t work.
Luring a game by the rules is not always easy. The most difficult situation is when the child says: "I will play only the way I want." This means that he is internally ready only for the sandbox situation, when there is no external rule, no external task, but only game materials and freedom of game expression. Then you have to bargain: "Let me choose the first game, and the second you." The child reluctantly agrees, for a few minutes without pleasure playing something by the rules, and then still rolls back to the sandbox mode. Subjectively, he experiences the game by the rules as an educational lesson: that is, as an onerous thing to which he was forced. But at least he agreed to her, and this is already progress.
The situation is a little simpler: the child listens to the rules, and then says: “Something I do not like these rules. Let's play by other rules, ”- and describes how he sees it for himself. Here are the options. Firstly, there is a possibility that the game objectively does not match the capabilities of the child, he understands that he will not be able to play such a difficult game, and is trying to carefully steer out of a situation in which he will certainly be unsuccessful. Secondly, there is a possibility that the child’s play is actually feasible, but he is not confident in his abilities, does not want to be unsuccessful and, again, wants to steer out of this situation. Thirdly, there is a possibility that the child didn’t even delve into the rules, he immediately filtered them out as unnecessary information and instead of them came up with something else based on what he likes and is already familiar with.
In any case, if at this moment we agree: “Yes, let's play as you thought up,” then we reinforce a certain type of behavior in the child: resolving difficulties by avoiding. What does a child do at school with such a strategy of behavior as the main one? If he did not understand how to do his homework, then deducts it from the one who understood (mechanically, without understanding). If a control scares him, he again writes it off from a neighbor - or skips it. And so on. As a result, we have a child who seems to imitate learning activities, but in fact he cannot be taught anything that is not extremely simple and self-evident, because at the moment when it is necessary to make an intellectual effort, he immediately leaves the situation.
The constructive reaction in this case will look like this: “Let's try to play by the rules, and I will help you, and if we don’t like it, we will come up with our own rules.” And then you can already see how much the child’s play is really feasible and whether you really need to come up with home rules for it that correct the level of difficulty.
Board game as a lesson model
In addition to the need to follow the rules and act on assignment, in the situation of the board game there are a number of elements that make it related to the training lesson - and, accordingly, allow it to be used as part of the system for preparing a child for school.
Don't twist
The first point is the arbitrary regulation of behavior at the level of the ability to calmly sit still and wait for its turn. For some children, this can be very difficult due to their internal developmental characteristics. For example, for a hyperactive child, the task itself to sit still without jumping up and running around the table is a serious test. Some children may behave in a similar way as a result of the fact that during the crisis of one year they defended their right to impulsive actions. They wanted to jump in - they jump in. Not that they would not be structurally able to sit still, they just did not need to learn how to manage their behavior.
Paradoxically, having a mother a lot of patience and free time sometimes works here as a brake on development. For example, a typical task: to get from home to kindergarten. Some children go to the garden for a very long time because they stop at every bush, flower, pebble, urns, lamppost, and so on and so forth.“Let's go soon,” says mom, “otherwise you will be late for class.” But the child stuck to the next flower and can not tear himself away from it in any way. Torn off - sticks to the next. What is it, curiosity? No, this is field behavior. The child is controlled not by the task of getting from point A to point B, but by any object that has come to his attention. If a mother is ready to calmly stand by each flower (and in other situations she is also ready to wait), the child can do without the ability to control her behavior and stay within the framework of the task for a very long time.
Order of progress
One of the fundamental skills that a child learns when playing board games is just the ability not to follow impulsive desires. In particular, to slow down the impulse to act without waiting for its turn. This is not easy for a small child - he is active and he wants to be more active himself than to watch how others act. But the older the child becomes (and the more relevant experience he has), the longer he can wait. This skill is very important for studying at school, because at the lessons the child will have to wait a long time for the opportunity to speak, and he will have to restrain the desire to shout from the floor - for example, answer for a classmate who is thoughtful and in no hurry to answer.
The more people play the same game at the same time, the more difficult it is for the child to wait for his turn. If the company is too big, it is noticeable how the child is bored and trying to keep himself busy: he fidgets on the spot, builds turrets and trains from chips, tells others how to walk, and rolls his eyes, demonstrating how tired he is of waiting. These are all signals that either the game is too slow for the child, or there are too many people. In any case, something needs to be changed, because if the game becomes boring, then it ceases to be a game and turns into another lesson. This means - loses the ability to motivate a child.
Manipulations
In itself, the fact that the child manipulates the components (fumbling, oppressing, building turrets) does not yet indicate boredom. The child is a researcher, and his natural desire at the sight of any new object is the desire to examine him. This means: grab, touch, twist in your hands, bend - and sometimes bite. The desire to examine everything and try it in action is one of the most important engines in the development of a child, but in a lesson situation it can often interfere with it. For example, you need to look at the blackboard and pay attention to what the teacher says, and the child at this time was distracted by the construction of a catapult from a pen and ruler or crumpled a corner near a notebook. Therefore, one of the first things that a child needs to learn when playing board games is to miss the components until the rules require this, and not to fiddle with their chips and cards.
Before or after the game, you can set aside time to touch the components of the game, consider cards, play with chips - this is also interesting and also developing, it just needs to be a separate activity.
Action program
Another point is the retention of the program of action. Success in any activity is directly related to the ability to perform a certain sequence of operations without missing them and without confusing their order. This is another important aspect of the ability to control oneself and manage one’s actions that a child will need at school. For example, if a child draws with paints, he needs to master the sequence of actions: dip the brush in water, squeeze it on the edge of the cup, draw paint, transfer the paint to paper. If he skips or confuses these actions, either his paints mix and get dirty, or the brush turns out to be too dry, or, conversely, a puddle appears on the sheet. Similarly, to solve a mathematical problem, a child needs to perform a certain sequence of mathematical operations, otherwise he will not receive the correct answer.
The ability to hold a program of action is developing gradually. First, the child learns to perform a sequence of two actions (take a glass and pour water), then from three and so on. Board games develop this ability due to the structure of the move. For example, if on your turn you need to lay out one chip and take one new chip, then this is a sequence of two actions. A more complex move structure may include three, four, five operations. The child usually remembers the first action of the move immediately, but first he has to remind about the next ones. Gradually, the program is automated and the child can already hold it himself.
When a child has difficulty keeping a program, it is immediately noticeable in everyday life: such a child often confuses what order to wear. He puts on, for example, a jacket immediately, forgetting about a sweater, or immediately pants, forgetting about tights. It is especially useful for such a child to play board games, and in different ones - there he can practice memorizing and holding sequences of operations. As a temporary aid, it is good to use a cheat sheet, where the sequence of actions is reflected. First, the adult controls the child and shows him: now, you performed the first action, and forgot the second. Then the child already controls himself on the cheat sheet: so, I already did it, but it is not yet. Then the program is automated, and the cheat sheet is no longer needed. Some games have such reminders in the kit (the same Takenoko, for example). If not,and the child has problems with keeping the program, you can draw such cheat sheets for games yourself. And not just games. A child who stubbornly confuses what order to wear on the street needs a chart in the hallway by which he can check for himself. This will take him one step closer to managing his actions himself (and not need to be controlled by an adult).
What next
This, of course, is far from everything that can be done with board games in preparation for school. So far, we have examined only what almost any board game suitable for age does with the child - the very fact that it is a board game and not a set of dollware. Further, depending on the type of tasks in a particular game, you can use it to develop speech, communication skills, counting skills, thinking, attention and so on. But that is another story.
There are many reasons why a child may have problems with studying at school. A significant part of them requires the participation of specialists - speech therapists, defectologists, neuropsychologists. We touched mainly on the difficulties that a normative child has in connection with the peculiarities of his upbringing. Difficulties encountered in children in connection with developmental disorders (ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, etc.) also lend themselves to game correction, but this is somewhat more complicated, and this is also a different story.
In fact, this is a smooth process, stretched over several years, and those changes that occur, occur gradually. The kindergarten educational program is designed in such a way that the classes that the child attends become more and more like school lessons every year. In the preparatory group, the child in the lessons gets experience as close as possible to school: there is a class, and desks, and the Russian language with mathematics, and you need to raise your hand, and tasks are performed in notebooks. This is one vector.
The second vector is the formalization of the game. At three years old, when a child comes to kindergarten, most of his play is a free game. Either he manipulates toys in a free form (rolls, presses buttons, throws, knocks), or plays a simple story and everyday game (treats a bear, arranges dishes, puts a doll in a crib). Then the child begins to learn simple games with the rules. For example, the game "owl and mouse." Music plays, mice run. The music died down - the mice hid, the owl flies out to hunt and looks to see if anyone is moving. Here the emphasis is on the role component (hiding like a mouse), but there is already a simple rule.
At four years old, the child’s free play becomes more structured: he is already trying to adhere to some kind of action plan (at the level of “feed, drink, put to bed”). At this time, you can play very simple Toddler board games that do not require the ability to count, but for the child to be interested, these games should have a clear plot, and the chips should be concrete figures of living creatures, small toys.
At the age of five, children are already capable of collective role play; there is a need to distribute roles and coordinate their actions. Children begin to give each other specific game tasks: "you sit here and don't let anyone in, and you feed the kids." They get access to some of the classic board games - for example, simple walk-in games where you need to take as many steps as fell on a cube. The child can already play board games where the skill of counting is required, but at this time he does not play to win, but to enjoy the process. For example, with some five-year-old girls, you can play Takenoko, and they even perform tasks on cards, if you really ask, but the main pleasure they get from the plot is simply from the very fact that the panda walks and eats bamboo.
At six years old, the role-playing game is overgrown with a huge amount of detail, and the children are already able to organize it themselves and to follow the order themselves. At this time, they no longer need an adult, even as a moderator, because they keep the structure not only at the level of the plan and distribution of roles, but also at the level of constructive interaction. Since at the age of six the child can already critically evaluate the results of his actions and his work, he begins to play on the result and actively strive to win. When the interest in the fact of winning and the desire to master the skill of the game begin to prevail over the pure pleasure of the process, the child is ready to play abstract logical games: for example, checkers or mahjong.
The third vector is the area of interest. At three years old, the child’s life world is a house, a garden, a clinic and a playground. What happens outside of these locations, the child does not know, and does not really want to know. The themes of his games revolve around personal life experiences and familiar everyday situations, so the first role-playing games are about feeding, laying down and visiting a doctor.
At the age of four, the child’s ideas about the world begin to move apart, embracing a large society and nature. The child discovers transportation, professions, remembers the names of animals, birds, trees, vegetables and the like. He begins to navigate in the seasons and lives already in a certain time perspective, and not the present moment. This is an intermediate stage when the child is already beginning to accumulate knowledge about the world, but this knowledge mainly concerns what enters or can potentially enter the sphere of his personal experience. He sometimes drives by transport, sees trees around him, eats vegetables and fruits, the seasons are also quite observable for him. In the game at this time, urban themes appear: a store, a zoo, a bus, fire department, construction. If a child sees in action representatives of various professions (for example, an electrician has come home), then he then reflects his impressions in the game.
At the age of five, the child's horizons sharply move apart when he realizes how much more interesting things exist in the world, besides what he saw. He begins to accumulate a huge amount of knowledge from different fields. At this time, the child is interested in everything: space, dinosaurs, physical experiments, natural disasters, fantasy worlds. At this time, the child sincerely wants to know as much as possible (this is the first component of educational motivation).
At six years old, the child becomes able to evaluate the results of labor. He already understands, for example, that some in his group draw well, and some so-so. And at this moment, when he understands the difference between a good and a poorly completed task, he becomes interested not only in knowing, but also in how to be able to. This is the second component of learning motivation. At this time, the child gambles over all sorts of skills: learning to speak English, mastering the methods of hand-to-hand fighting, sewing, swimming, playing chess and so on.
Thus, by the time of graduation from the kindergarten, the child is psychologically ready to move on to school:
- he already knows how to sit in the lesson, observing the rules of behavior;
- he is retained as part of the assignment and is interested in successfully completing it;
- he wants to know a lot;
- he wants to be able to do a lot.
So, anyway, it looks ideal.
And now about what could go wrong
A common story that makes it very difficult for a child to go to school is as follows. Soft, loving parents grow an energetic, characteristic child. During the crisis of one year, he easily wins the fight of freedom, winning the right to impulsively follow his desires, because mother is pleased to create a happy childhood for the child - an environment in which he can do what he wants. During the crisis of three years, this child wins the fight again, almost without resistance, and a social situation is created where the child decides what and when he will do, and the family follows his desires. At this time, parents are again very pleased that they create a happy childhood for the child. The words “no”, “impossible” and “necessary” are practically absent in their vocabulary. If the child expresses some desire, the parents believe that it must be fulfilled, because if the child wants something, then this is important for his development. And if he doesn’t want it, then he doesn’t need it. The child takes the following attitude out of this social situation: “I am very important. My desires are much more important than the desires of others. Everyone must obey my desires. If I don’t want something, I won’t do it. ”
While the child is brought up in the family circle and goes to socialize unless on the playground, this works, albeit with a creak. With a creak - because the whole family is built according to the wishes of the child, and this often creates inconvenience. But you can somehow put up with them, and as long as the situation is tolerable, it remains generally the same.
And then the parents come to the conclusion that it would be necessary for the child to go to kindergarten in front of the school. Families with such a structure usually bring a child to the garden not at three years old, but later at five, for example. Sometimes they themselves try to delay this moment so that the child has time to get more individual attention, and sometimes the child actively resists being handed over somewhere. Since this is a beloved child who wants the best, at home they have a lot to do. He knows a lot. From the point of view of the general outlook, this child can be ahead of their peers who studied according to the usual garden program.
But when this child is in kindergarten, then he finds himself in a social situation, which is diametrically opposed to the usual. In the garden you must follow the rules! You can play in the garden when there is a special time for the game, and not at any time when you want! If everyone is going to dance, then you have to dance, and no one asks you if you like to do it or not! And most importantly: in the garden you are not the center of the universe, but one of the crowd, and no one wants to be built according to your desires. For a child who is used to something completely different at home, this is very stressful. He comes home and says: "I hate kindergarten." It can be understood. Psychologically, he is losing a lot at this moment. He loses absolute freedom, loses the ability to control the environment. In addition, his picture of the world is collapsing: he suddenly learns that the universe does not revolve around him.
If the child after that is not immediately taken away from the kindergarten, then further he tries to somehow deal with this situation. Teachers are subjectively enemies for him at this moment, because they force him to obey, but he is not used to it, and this is extremely unpleasant for him. Other children for him at this moment are also enemies, because their existence prevents him from being the center of the universe (and in addition they do not listen to him when he tries to command them). The child does the most logical thing: he begins to fight enemies. That is, bash other children and, in principle, not listen to adults, defending their right to do as they want. It is quite clear that if he lived up to five years with this right, then he would not want to part with it!
This has a number of consequences. Firstly, socialization (for which a child was sent to a kindergarten to a significant extent) fails: the rest of the children are afraid of the one who thrashes them for any reason, avoid him and do not want to play with him. If you are lucky, the child finds one or two friends according to his interests, and if he is not lucky, then he plays one. It turns out the situation of loneliness in the crowd. This experience will not help the child then in school to establish interaction with classmates, because the child makes him feel that there is nothing good in the team.
The second point is that a child protesting against the rules and requirements is unable to perform educational tasks. Say, a drawing lesson is going on, and all the children draw little people - except for one who, from a pure principle, depicts a scorpion, because at that moment he wanted to portray a scorpion. A scorpion in itself can be excellent, but the group as a whole leaves the lesson with some idea about how to draw a person, and the author of the scorpion does not take any new knowledge and skills from the same lesson. And if, say, at first he could have an advantage over the group due to what he learned at home, then this gap is gradually narrowing. And then the child is already among the lagging behind, because the group learns the program and moves somewhere, but he remains with what he knew and was able to at the time of entering the garden. If you do nothing with this, this situation is further transferred to school, and we get a school failure in a child who is quite smart and seems to have no violations. If you do nothing with this at school, you get adults who work based solely on their own ideas about how to. You order, for example, a site design for such a person, explain what should happen at the exit, and he sits down and does something completely different, because he thinks it is better. And then he is still offended that his creative impulse has remained unappreciated.
Actually, what do board games have to do with it
The main difficulty of a child with such a development path, as described above, is that he did not acquire the ability to follow the rules and act within certain limits at the right time (that is, about three years), and then he does not have the motivation to learn to follow the rules, because he experiences the rules as something repressive. They do not enrich his world, but deprive him of something valuable. For example, the ability to draw a scorpion when you want to draw a scorpion, or play Lego instead of going to dance.
And here we begin to play board games with the child in order to lure him into a situation of compliance with the rules. Rules are a necessary part of any board game, but they do not take away from the child a part of his freedom, but allow you to get some new interesting experience. Due to this, there is a motivation to follow them - otherwise it just won’t work.
Luring a game by the rules is not always easy. The most difficult situation is when the child says: "I will play only the way I want." This means that he is internally ready only for the sandbox situation, when there is no external rule, no external task, but only game materials and freedom of game expression. Then you have to bargain: "Let me choose the first game, and the second you." The child reluctantly agrees, for a few minutes without pleasure playing something by the rules, and then still rolls back to the sandbox mode. Subjectively, he experiences the game by the rules as an educational lesson: that is, as an onerous thing to which he was forced. But at least he agreed to her, and this is already progress.
The situation is a little simpler: the child listens to the rules, and then says: “Something I do not like these rules. Let's play by other rules, ”- and describes how he sees it for himself. Here are the options. Firstly, there is a possibility that the game objectively does not match the capabilities of the child, he understands that he will not be able to play such a difficult game, and is trying to carefully steer out of a situation in which he will certainly be unsuccessful. Secondly, there is a possibility that the child’s play is actually feasible, but he is not confident in his abilities, does not want to be unsuccessful and, again, wants to steer out of this situation. Thirdly, there is a possibility that the child didn’t even delve into the rules, he immediately filtered them out as unnecessary information and instead of them came up with something else based on what he likes and is already familiar with.
In any case, if at this moment we agree: “Yes, let's play as you thought up,” then we reinforce a certain type of behavior in the child: resolving difficulties by avoiding. What does a child do at school with such a strategy of behavior as the main one? If he did not understand how to do his homework, then deducts it from the one who understood (mechanically, without understanding). If a control scares him, he again writes it off from a neighbor - or skips it. And so on. As a result, we have a child who seems to imitate learning activities, but in fact he cannot be taught anything that is not extremely simple and self-evident, because at the moment when it is necessary to make an intellectual effort, he immediately leaves the situation.
The constructive reaction in this case will look like this: “Let's try to play by the rules, and I will help you, and if we don’t like it, we will come up with our own rules.” And then you can already see how much the child’s play is really feasible and whether you really need to come up with home rules for it that correct the level of difficulty.
Board game as a lesson model
In addition to the need to follow the rules and act on assignment, in the situation of the board game there are a number of elements that make it related to the training lesson - and, accordingly, allow it to be used as part of the system for preparing a child for school.
Don't twist
The first point is the arbitrary regulation of behavior at the level of the ability to calmly sit still and wait for its turn. For some children, this can be very difficult due to their internal developmental characteristics. For example, for a hyperactive child, the task itself to sit still without jumping up and running around the table is a serious test. Some children may behave in a similar way as a result of the fact that during the crisis of one year they defended their right to impulsive actions. They wanted to jump in - they jump in. Not that they would not be structurally able to sit still, they just did not need to learn how to manage their behavior.
Paradoxically, having a mother a lot of patience and free time sometimes works here as a brake on development. For example, a typical task: to get from home to kindergarten. Some children go to the garden for a very long time because they stop at every bush, flower, pebble, urns, lamppost, and so on and so forth.“Let's go soon,” says mom, “otherwise you will be late for class.” But the child stuck to the next flower and can not tear himself away from it in any way. Torn off - sticks to the next. What is it, curiosity? No, this is field behavior. The child is controlled not by the task of getting from point A to point B, but by any object that has come to his attention. If a mother is ready to calmly stand by each flower (and in other situations she is also ready to wait), the child can do without the ability to control her behavior and stay within the framework of the task for a very long time.
Order of progress
One of the fundamental skills that a child learns when playing board games is just the ability not to follow impulsive desires. In particular, to slow down the impulse to act without waiting for its turn. This is not easy for a small child - he is active and he wants to be more active himself than to watch how others act. But the older the child becomes (and the more relevant experience he has), the longer he can wait. This skill is very important for studying at school, because at the lessons the child will have to wait a long time for the opportunity to speak, and he will have to restrain the desire to shout from the floor - for example, answer for a classmate who is thoughtful and in no hurry to answer.
The more people play the same game at the same time, the more difficult it is for the child to wait for his turn. If the company is too big, it is noticeable how the child is bored and trying to keep himself busy: he fidgets on the spot, builds turrets and trains from chips, tells others how to walk, and rolls his eyes, demonstrating how tired he is of waiting. These are all signals that either the game is too slow for the child, or there are too many people. In any case, something needs to be changed, because if the game becomes boring, then it ceases to be a game and turns into another lesson. This means - loses the ability to motivate a child.
Manipulations
In itself, the fact that the child manipulates the components (fumbling, oppressing, building turrets) does not yet indicate boredom. The child is a researcher, and his natural desire at the sight of any new object is the desire to examine him. This means: grab, touch, twist in your hands, bend - and sometimes bite. The desire to examine everything and try it in action is one of the most important engines in the development of a child, but in a lesson situation it can often interfere with it. For example, you need to look at the blackboard and pay attention to what the teacher says, and the child at this time was distracted by the construction of a catapult from a pen and ruler or crumpled a corner near a notebook. Therefore, one of the first things that a child needs to learn when playing board games is to miss the components until the rules require this, and not to fiddle with their chips and cards.
Before or after the game, you can set aside time to touch the components of the game, consider cards, play with chips - this is also interesting and also developing, it just needs to be a separate activity.
Action program
Another point is the retention of the program of action. Success in any activity is directly related to the ability to perform a certain sequence of operations without missing them and without confusing their order. This is another important aspect of the ability to control oneself and manage one’s actions that a child will need at school. For example, if a child draws with paints, he needs to master the sequence of actions: dip the brush in water, squeeze it on the edge of the cup, draw paint, transfer the paint to paper. If he skips or confuses these actions, either his paints mix and get dirty, or the brush turns out to be too dry, or, conversely, a puddle appears on the sheet. Similarly, to solve a mathematical problem, a child needs to perform a certain sequence of mathematical operations, otherwise he will not receive the correct answer.
The ability to hold a program of action is developing gradually. First, the child learns to perform a sequence of two actions (take a glass and pour water), then from three and so on. Board games develop this ability due to the structure of the move. For example, if on your turn you need to lay out one chip and take one new chip, then this is a sequence of two actions. A more complex move structure may include three, four, five operations. The child usually remembers the first action of the move immediately, but first he has to remind about the next ones. Gradually, the program is automated and the child can already hold it himself.
When a child has difficulty keeping a program, it is immediately noticeable in everyday life: such a child often confuses what order to wear. He puts on, for example, a jacket immediately, forgetting about a sweater, or immediately pants, forgetting about tights. It is especially useful for such a child to play board games, and in different ones - there he can practice memorizing and holding sequences of operations. As a temporary aid, it is good to use a cheat sheet, where the sequence of actions is reflected. First, the adult controls the child and shows him: now, you performed the first action, and forgot the second. Then the child already controls himself on the cheat sheet: so, I already did it, but it is not yet. Then the program is automated, and the cheat sheet is no longer needed. Some games have such reminders in the kit (the same Takenoko, for example). If not,and the child has problems with keeping the program, you can draw such cheat sheets for games yourself. And not just games. A child who stubbornly confuses what order to wear on the street needs a chart in the hallway by which he can check for himself. This will take him one step closer to managing his actions himself (and not need to be controlled by an adult).
What next
This, of course, is far from everything that can be done with board games in preparation for school. So far, we have examined only what almost any board game suitable for age does with the child - the very fact that it is a board game and not a set of dollware. Further, depending on the type of tasks in a particular game, you can use it to develop speech, communication skills, counting skills, thinking, attention and so on. But that is another story.
There are many reasons why a child may have problems with studying at school. A significant part of them requires the participation of specialists - speech therapists, defectologists, neuropsychologists. We touched mainly on the difficulties that a normative child has in connection with the peculiarities of his upbringing. Difficulties encountered in children in connection with developmental disorders (ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, etc.) also lend themselves to game correction, but this is somewhat more complicated, and this is also a different story.
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