So... I haven't wrote a blog post in near two years. Wow. Guess life was pretty busy, moving to the states, getting married, working on my art and mental health...
Anyway, I feel pretty compelled to write about these logic games from "smart games".
Anyway, I feel pretty compelled to write about these logic games from "smart games".
First time I got to try them was when my partner got me one to occupy myself while I was recovering after the surgery. I played it every day!
Soon we got another one and another....
While I see many benefits to these games in this post I want to concentrate on two of them:
How these games are an awesome educational addition to learning process and how these games can help to deal with anxiety.
Soon we got another one and another....
While I see many benefits to these games in this post I want to concentrate on two of them:
How these games are an awesome educational addition to learning process and how these games can help to deal with anxiety.
There are moments when your emotional brain completely takes over your thinking, that's not the time to start playing logic games. At those times you need to engage in self-soothing, surround yourself with lovely and soft things, toys, stim, eat nice food, drink tea...
But there other times, when you are already feeling better or when you just feel the anxiety attack coming, personally for me playing these games on these moments really helped. They took my mind off the things I was extremely anxious about and let concentrate on solving problems presented in the games.
There are many techniques out there about different approaches to this. Counting in your minds, writing down every prime number, saying every animal who has no letter A in their name, etc. etc. Everyone needs to find the way that is the best for them. The reason why I really like to use one player "smart games" for this is because I can actually touch them, the problem is right here in front of me, so I don't need to use my already overwhelmed brain to keep the imaginary picture in my mind. Even if for one moment I loose it, it's still here, right in front of me.
Another reason is that there are so many different themes! I am obsessed with animals, so any game with animals is going to get way more attention from me than the one without. For example we have a game "Jump In" and there are rabbits and foxes. The goal is to get all rabbits presented on the board into the holes. At first I was worried that I will have to try to "protect" rabbits from the foxes, but no! in this game foxes are actually helping rabbits to get home. I love it!!
One day I was so stressed to leave the house and go to the zine fest. I was mentally prepared, but then I felt anxiety just rising and rising. Luckily I was able to remember the distraction technique and just sat on the couch, choose of the challenges from the "Penguins On Ice". As soon as I was finished, I felt so much better. Instead of going over and over my fears, instead of over-thinking everything I chose a perfect distraction for my minds. This is just one of the examples, but in the last months there have been many!
That's only a couple of reasons how these games can be a perfect distraction for autistic children and adults.
But there other times, when you are already feeling better or when you just feel the anxiety attack coming, personally for me playing these games on these moments really helped. They took my mind off the things I was extremely anxious about and let concentrate on solving problems presented in the games.
There are many techniques out there about different approaches to this. Counting in your minds, writing down every prime number, saying every animal who has no letter A in their name, etc. etc. Everyone needs to find the way that is the best for them. The reason why I really like to use one player "smart games" for this is because I can actually touch them, the problem is right here in front of me, so I don't need to use my already overwhelmed brain to keep the imaginary picture in my mind. Even if for one moment I loose it, it's still here, right in front of me.
Another reason is that there are so many different themes! I am obsessed with animals, so any game with animals is going to get way more attention from me than the one without. For example we have a game "Jump In" and there are rabbits and foxes. The goal is to get all rabbits presented on the board into the holes. At first I was worried that I will have to try to "protect" rabbits from the foxes, but no! in this game foxes are actually helping rabbits to get home. I love it!!
One day I was so stressed to leave the house and go to the zine fest. I was mentally prepared, but then I felt anxiety just rising and rising. Luckily I was able to remember the distraction technique and just sat on the couch, choose of the challenges from the "Penguins On Ice". As soon as I was finished, I felt so much better. Instead of going over and over my fears, instead of over-thinking everything I chose a perfect distraction for my minds. This is just one of the examples, but in the last months there have been many!
That's only a couple of reasons how these games can be a perfect distraction for autistic children and adults.
Motivating students to learn can be tough. I wish we had these games in my school. And while I think these brain games would benefit any learner, I would like to concentrate on how these games could really help engage cognitively, mentally or intellectually disabled students.
I am disabled myself and it is very frustrating to see so much articles or tips on disabled students learning are not concentrating on their actual learning, but rather on trying to make them "pass" as neurotypicals or non disabled students, meet "boxed" standards or to keep them quite. The concentration is almost always on neurotypical teachers, parents, sibling or other students (even if it's hidden using pretentious language, acronyms or words majority never even heard about).
I love play based learning, especially if it's child lead play! We usually see the examples of neurotypical teachers always being right and disabled children either pitied or always being wrong. There is really a need to see more examples of educators accommodating different types of learning!
That's why these logic games can be used as one of the tools to support math, STEM, visual discrimination, etc.. All challenges increase in difficulty, so great tool for different levels.
I am disabled myself and it is very frustrating to see so much articles or tips on disabled students learning are not concentrating on their actual learning, but rather on trying to make them "pass" as neurotypicals or non disabled students, meet "boxed" standards or to keep them quite. The concentration is almost always on neurotypical teachers, parents, sibling or other students (even if it's hidden using pretentious language, acronyms or words majority never even heard about).
I love play based learning, especially if it's child lead play! We usually see the examples of neurotypical teachers always being right and disabled children either pitied or always being wrong. There is really a need to see more examples of educators accommodating different types of learning!
That's why these logic games can be used as one of the tools to support math, STEM, visual discrimination, etc.. All challenges increase in difficulty, so great tool for different levels.
I received four of these games "Penguins On Ice", "Quadrillion", "Trucky 3" and "Color Code" from Tryazon featured Smart Games party. I was a huge fan of logic games before this, so I want to thank them for choosing me to try these games, share them with others as well as write my opinion about them. Thank you. I honestly wish for more opportunities like this.
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