Why is visualization important?
Visualization is an important skill for your child's intelligence. A person needs it for imagination, creativity, problem solving, understanding of written material, and it has many other uses. Visualization is a skill for life, and can be developed at any time. Just like imagination, it is a skill that is related to the right brain hemisphere, and is easily developed early in life. If you take some time to develop it in your child and practice, you can achieve fantastic results.
Fantastic Examples
The famous chess grandmaster, George Koltanowski, set the record in blindfold chess, by playing 34 opponents simultaneously. I have watched Koltanowski, at the age of 90, give a very impressive demonstration of his visualization skill, when he let people in the audience assign an object to each square on the chess board. He looked at the chess board for several minutes, and then turned around and proceeded to name the objects one by one, using knight "jumps".
One of my son's young friends, at the young age of 8, managed to play a blindfold game of chess with the master, and win! (the master was not blindfolded!)
Activities and Games
Here are a few activities and games you can play with your child, to develop and strengthen this wonderful skill. These activities and games are fun, and can be adopted to a group, if you'd like.
1. Draw a red triangle. Cover the triangle, and have your child see the triangle in his mind's eye. Then draw a blue triangle, let your child see the triangle in his mind's eye. Keep doing this activity using different colors and shapes.
2. Tell your child to draw a red triangle in his mind's eye, without actually drawing one for him. keep doing this using various shapes and colors.
3. Have your child imagine 2 squares, the left one is blue, the right one is red. Then change the colors, the left one is red and the right one is blue. Make the left one yellow...
4. Have your child see in his mind's eye a flower (or any other object you'd like). Ask him to describe the flower, in as much detail as possible. After he is done describing the flower, you can ask questions. Like: how thick is the stem? Is it in a planter or a vase? Ask about details your child hasn't described. This will get your child into the habit of adding details to his imaginary creations.
5. Can your child play tic tac toe? Great! Then play tic tac toe using an imaginary board. You might have to write the moves down, to be able to go on with the game if one of you gets "stuck". Start at a 3x3 board, and advance to more and more elaborate dimensions.
6. After your child has mastered all the previous activities you can advance to shapes like the US map, have your child study the map, and then answer questions from memory. From here you can advance to the globe, and other 3 dimensional shapes.
As your child (and you, helping your child) gets better and better you can go on to more sophisticated games, like "blindfold" chess.
Have fun and invent additional games that develop visualization skills. Let your child invent games too, and don't forget to praise lavishly for great achievements.
A child’s mind develops a lot faster than we may think, so it is important to be creative with activities you do at home with your child, even at the youngest ages.
Enjoy being a "Creative Parent" with your children!
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