Kids Love To Play Games

My little girl loves playing games. She has all kinds of different ones. One of her amazing talents is her ability to take a game like Operation for example, and turn it into a completely different game. A kid's ability to entertain themselves and create stuff out of thin air never ceases to amaze me. I wonder what happens as time goes by that we don't do that as often.

Anyway she recently found a new fascination. She loves mazes. We were sitting in a restaurant and the waitress brought over a cup full of crayons and a huge paper place mat with all kinds of activities on it.

The place mat had a bunch of classic games on it like tic tac toe, which she loves as well, along with a whole bunch of other stuff. I think her favorite is the one where she has to spot the picture out of a group that all look alike but there is subtle differences in one or two or something like that. Anyway, whatever it is, she loves it. She was playing her way through all the games and puzzles when she came to the maze. She was instantly fascinated.

She figured out where she had to start and where to end and quickly made her way through it. She asked me if there were other mazes that she could try and we had to tell her that all the place mats were the same. So, I grabbed the place mat, flipped it over and drew a new maze for her. She loved it. I don't know how challenging a maze maker I am, but she still dug it.

When I went home I found out that you can print out all kinds of great mazes of the Internet and there are all different levels to challenge the kids. There are also truckloads of these activity books available that you can find at book stores and toy stores.

Here's the best part. Young kids working on mazes is great for different aspects of their cognitive development. It actually enhances their problem solving and calculating abilities. I'm assuming those are almost the same things but if there is some clinical psychologist out there who knows the difference, I'd love to hear it.

Anyhow, enjoy those puzzle books. The kids will love them.