A Glimpse of My Charmed Life: Aidan's Game and Learning Development

My son plays a lot of games and looking back I noticed that he had progressed to the games that he would play or his interests. He started becoming interested at around 15 mos old when he saw my husband doing some work on the PC along with that we spent most of our time together on the computer.

Starting 15 mos old he was surfing Sesame Street website , which had plenty of kids games and movies that he can interact with, also this site offers a lot of singing and alphabet tutorials.

He used PowerTouch learning system and Interactive DVDs system when he was two yrs old, basically these systems develop hand eye coordination by responding to stimulus in the form of spoken words, colors and music.

Along with the PowerTouch, he also played some not so educational games courtesy of my husband who had an X-box, so he was also playing Cars, Finding Nemo, Shark Tales, Spongebob and PacMan3 unfortunately we don't have these games anymore as I sold them without thinking they could still be used in a X-box 360.

By the time he was three we gave him Leapster Games and Nintendo Game Boy, you see this is the age where they complain a lot during long trips so these games were useful because it occupied his attention when we traveled.

He has now graduated to some X-box 360 games that are for his age, his favorite is Thrillville off the rails, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Avatar from Nickelodeon. The only problem with these games is that they are mostly role playing so it is still hard for him to follow the storyline.

I know some parents think, well let me quantify that they believe that video games are bad, at least with my son he will ask me if the words that he heard in his game are good or bad, at that early age he has some understanding that some games are bad and some are good.

These are the learning system that he used at the age of 4yrs old. He usually plays this before bedtime, specially the V-tech Alphabet Town because of the music and spelling features.

Lastly all through these years he has never lost interest in solving puzzles, these could involve the connect the dots puzzle, word puzzles and shape puzzles. He also loves completing puzzle maps specially the US map, see the picture below. I hope he keeps these interests as the inquisitive and curious mind is good for kids.