4 Things To Do At Home To Enhance Your Child’s IQ

Can we enhance our child’s IQ through a stimulating environment at home?

The answer is yes!

Research shows it is possible to create a highly conducive environment for cognitive and emotional growth.

A child surrounded by books and educational toys will leave positive imprint on their brain, which will follow through into their late teens.

Improving your child’s intelligence requires organising and streamlining your child’s thought process to suit and match a stimulating setting.

How can you do so? Through math and unstructured play activities.

Such experiences will help develop their fluid intelligence, sharpen their creativity and capacity to learn.

Here are more ideas on how you can create a stimulating home to boost your child’s IQ.

1. Open their world to maths through stories

Counting

My Very First Book of Shapes

By Eric Carle. This book allows children to identify, find and match pairs together.

The Shape of Me and Other Stuff: Dr. Seuss’s Surprising Word Book

By Dr. Seuss. This book encourages children to ponder on shapes they may never have considered before through the whimsical rhymes and pictures of Dr. Seuss.

2. Create a construction or art corner at home

Set aside an area where your child can build, stack, draw, paint, or sculpt. You can part of their room into a craft and construction corner, well-stocked with paint, paper, blocks, clay, cardboard and other recycled materials. Let this be your child’s safe space to take apart and put together things and get all messy!

Let them have time to play or create freely, because play helps in a child’s brain development. As they draw, paint, mould and build, they are working on their imagination, creativity, and spatial skills. Spatial skills have been shown to rely on neuronal networks partially linked with mathematics.

4. Weave maths into your conversations

Demonstrate concepts of numbers such as “You have three candies, I’ll give you two more, now you’ll have five” or “Dinner will be ready in five minutes”. Not only does this train their cognitive skills, it also builds your child’s problem-solving and language skills.

According to psychologist John Protzko, kids that get early exposure to educational resources will gain higher level of IQ and give them a leg up on their peers. The idea is to have early exposure to maths and make learning fun and memorable. Having a good maths program can engage children with dialogue, probing questions, props, games and a healthy dose of encouragement.