Games

Calling all junior Olympians! Show your stuff this Friday at AmCham’s annual Kid Olympics at the International School of Beijing–complete with hula-hooping, dunking, contests and games for prizes. Enjoy the barbecue, cool off with cold drinks, and catch the firework show in the evening.

What: Kid Olympics

When: Friday, July 4, 3pm to 9pm

Where: International School of Beijing

Why: It’s fun!

Watching a two-year-old whiz their way around a computer screen is a sight to behold. For children this young (who don’t even have the fine motor skills to write yet), scooting and clicking around a virtual page is a great way to hone the skills needed to read and write – such as hand-eye coordination.

There is no doubt computers are the way of the communications future, and even if your children don’t end up making a career out of IT, it’s certain they will need computer skills in their every day lives. In fact, many high schools now request their students submit work typewritten on a laptop.

Here are some great websites that can help your child’s IT skills, no matter what their age is. Ten minutes practice each day will see them well on the way to Mastering the Mouse.

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The poverty stricken regions of the world need food. Students studying for exams, be it SAT, IB or GCSE, need to boost their vocabulary skills. FreeRice.com is the very definition of a win-win situation.

Every time you visit FreeRice.com, you have the chance to play a word game. For every word that you correctly identify the synonym for, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) will distribute 10 grains of rice to impoverished regions around the world. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but already the site has donated 1,194,402,960 grains of rice. The site works by exposing you to advertising banners along the bottom of the screen while you play.

The best thing is that the program adjusts to your language ability, and selects from the thousands of words in the database that are best suited for your level. The longer you play, the more you learn.

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When I was about five years old, my brother and I were given a Rubik’s Cube as a toy to exercise our eyes and brains. Instead, we exercised our hands more than anything else – we’d get so frustrated with it that we often ended up taking the whole thing apart and putting the pieces back together in the correct order. Then we showed it to our parents claiming: “We did it!” and enjoyed the little praise from them gained by cheating.

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