Positive mental development is essential for any child's long-term growth, to ensure that they will be able to function independently on a day-today basis. Here's our parent support guide to helping your kids' learning abilities with mental development games.

Games

Playing games has a proven means of stimulating the imagination of any child, and naturally involves exercise. Linking these two together from an early age will create a healthy state of mind and body that your child will always benefit from.

The following games are particularly effective in combining these two. Try to suggest them to a child, or lead them into it. If they resist, try to show them the fun that could be had, but never use force.

1) Exploration

Let your child become the explorer of a wild and dangerous environment. The imaginative aspect will be entirely up to the child's disposition: you could find yourself in a fairytale wood or a haunted forest: the child will decide what he prefers. Suggest things to explore and treasures to find, and the child will fill in the gaps.

2) Personalities

Let the child take on the identity of someone: a cartoon character or pop star, and act out a scene with them. Take an object and use it as the magical means of their transformation. Pretend to interview them or take on a character yourself, and see what they ask you.

3) Music

Playing music, of whatever sort, can encourage children to develop social behaviour, working together with friends to produce a musical result. Improvise instruments with tin cans for drums, and a rubber band for a guitar, and request a special performance of their debut album.

4) Collections

This activity often creates pride, because children have a collection of more than friends, but children or siblings can work together to create a collection. Make it into a competition: who can collect the most shells at the beach, or red stones from the pavement.

5) Sports Games

There are, of course, many classic sports that children will learn to play at school. You can teach them any that they don't already know, and encourage them to teach their friends. Playing cricket with a tennis racket ('French Cricket') is always a favourite, as well as simple games like football.

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