How to Improve Intelligence in Children

What Are Some Ways to Help Boost Your Child's Intelligence?

Read Together

Reading to your child is not only fun, it can also help him or her become a better learner. Listening to stories can improve your child's comprehension skills, vocabulary, concentration and absorption of knowledge. Your child is less likely to have difficulty reading in school if you read to him or her on a regular basis at home from an early age.

Web resources can help you find lists of read-aloud books for kids. A good starting point is to check out the websites of children's bookstores and libraries. Reach out to community-oriented, children's literacy advocacy organizations for advice and resources. One such organization is the Children's Reading Foundation (www.readingfoundation.org).

Play Games

You can also encourage your child to learn by playing educational games that promote thinking. Without even making a purchase, there are a plethora of games you can play with your child to improve their spelling, math skills, reasoning and ability to effectively formulate strategies. A few games that come to mind include hang man, tic-tac-toe, dots and even rock, paper, scissors.

Educational board and card games are another great resource. Games such as Chutes and Ladders, Yahtzee, Uno and Connect Four can all help your child's brain development and learning processes. You can direct your child to numerous websites where they can play learning games. Funbrain.com and Funschool.com are just a few sites that provide interactive online puzzles and math games.

At-Home Learning Activities

Your child is always learning, so he or she will benefit from positive stimulus that you provide from day-to-day. By providing educational activities around the house, you can build intelligence in your child and help keep learning skills sharp even over long summer vacations from school. Science experiments, like the Mentos Diet Coke Geyser, can be fun to complete together.

The U.S. Department of Education offers ideas on how to improve your child's intelligence, illustrated in a series of free downloadable PDF documents (www.ed.gov). This series covers many learn-at-home topics, like 'Helping Your Child Learn Mathematics,' 'Helping Your Child with Homework' and 'Helping Your Child Succeed in School.'