Sorry for the long period of silence. I’ve just been busy with other stuff. I’ll try to do a post at least once a month (or more!), starting again in September, as July/August will be busy months for moi. Thanks for visiting!
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I remember having fun with tangrams when I was growing up. Only seven pieces of flat shapes, but endless possibilities. Very challenging, although at times frustrating, but always lots of fun.
When I saw these games at a toy sale, I immediately grabbed them. This was when Josh was only 2 years old. Yes, I’m a hoarder. Guilty as charged.
Anyway, one lazy afternoon, when we were bored with the usual games and I didn’t want him watching TV or playing on the computer, I remembered about the Mighty Mind® game and brought it out.
Here is Josh, working on the first few puzzles:
The pack came with 30 image cards and 32 geometric shapes. Each of the cards are numbered and follow a logical sequence of patterns starting with two half circles that the child manipulates to form a full circle. Each card “guides” the child through different shape combinations and increases in complexity.
It was wonderful seeing Josh’s “Aha!” moments when he realized that X plus X shape makes a Y shape. You could almost see his increasing confidence as he moved on to each card. After sitting down and explaining to him how the game works, I pretty much left him to his own devices and he would just call out to me to go and see each time he completed an image. He kept at it for quite a while –at least an hour, --which was awesome and allowed me a little bit of peace and quiet to do my stuff.
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Once you are done with Mighty Mind® (Ages 3-8), you can move on the Super Mind® (Ages 5-9). Super Mind® follows the same concept, except that the images are more complex and more challenging.
Josh is pretty self-motivating most of the time, but sometimes he’d take a look and would go, “Aw, Mommy! It’s so tough!” Because of this, I was a bit wary about introducing Super Mind® to him now, lest he finds the complexity of the patterns too overwhelming and be turned off and not enjoy the game anymore. But we’d pretty much gone through all the cards in Mighty Mind® and he wanted a “surprise” from me for finishing his Math worksheets yesterday.
To my surprise and delight, he eagerly tackled the new patterns and actually completed the first five (photo of Pattern #36 above) before deciding to “save it for another day.” I think he surprised himself, too, because as he progressed, his excitement at completing each one grew. Look at this, Mommy –all done! I did it!
Great game for the preschoolers. Even Zoë was doing the first few patterns on the Mighty Mind® set. Zoë did it, Mommy!
Upon further research, I found that this game is apparently a winner of the Parent's Choice Toy of the Year award and has been nominated four times by Parenting Magazine to the Toy Hall of Fame, among other accolades and citations.
I got these two sets from Toys ‘R’ Us, but I do believe that these are also available at Apita and possibly Wing On, too. I can’t remember the exact cost, but for sure, each one was under HK$200. If you can’t find them anywhere here in Hong Kong, I’m pretty sure that you can order the games through Amazon.com.
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