Games to Motivate Children

Motivate Children to Pay Attention

• Children are naturally intellectually curious. They love new and unusual challenges and tasks. If you give your students an interesting kids' game in the morning, you will be reaping the reward of increased attention span all day. For younger children, you can use a simple clapping game. Clap a pattern and have the children repeat it. Then, clap a more difficult pattern while the children repeat. Continue until your students can't repeat the pattern anymore.

  To motivate older children, try charades. Have each child take a turn picking a name of a popular movie or book out of a hat and acting it out while the others try to guess it. For a more educational game for kids, have them act out topics from the class curriculum.

Motivate Children to Settle Down

• Children naturally have a lot of energy, and will lose focus if they aren't allowed to burn off some of that energy. An outdoor recess with plenty of games for kids is a great way to motivate children, but sometimes students need an additional mini-break in the middle of the day. "Wait Until Dark," created by drama teacher Dean Acheson, is a great game to help a small group of children burn off some energy without going outside.

  The game, inspired by the play of the same name, centers around a blind man or woman trying to ward off a group of thieves. The teacher blindfolds a student and gives her a soft roll of carpet, foam stick or something else which won't cause injury, to use to defend herself. He gives the thief a piece of masking tape, wrapped around his hand with the sticky side out. In the first round, the thief tries to stick the tape on the blind woman's back before she can hit him with the carpet roll. If he sticks the tape, he wins and becomes the blind man. If she wins she has to face two thieves the next round, then three and so on until one of them gets her.

Motivate Children to Get Creative

• Although most children are naturally creative, many have trouble translating that creativity into writing and storytelling. Fortunately, writing teachers have invented plenty of games for kids to help develop creative writing skills. One of the best is the sensory description game. Turn off the lights and instruct the kids to listen silently for half a minute. After half a minute passes, turn on the lights and ask the kids what they heard. Make a list of their descriptions on the board. Then, repeat the activity with smell, feel or sight.

  One variation is to have the children remember a favorite place and describe what they see or hear in the memory. One great thing about this activity is that it is not just a kids' game. It can also help adults who are creatively blocked to develop their own descriptive voices.