Perseverance Games for Kids

Perseverance is taught through physical endurance.

Kids' games teach skills and values. Perseverance is a value taught through various types of children's games requiring strategy, planning, training, reward and feedback. Overcoming opposition, enduring discomfort and refusing to quit are qualities essential to perseverance. Games that teach perseverance are accessible to kids of all ages.

Sports

Swimming competition builds perseverance.

Competitive sports teach kids perseverance through physical endurance. Competition is a major motivating factor for many children and will encourage them to push themselves to gain greater skills and accomplishments. All sports training, whether team or individual, involves graduated exercises, physical activities and sport-specific practice intended to build healthy, athletic bodies and game skills. To succeed, athletes learn to persevere. Boy Scout camps and survival camps include endurance activities that require perseverance to accomplish.

Strategy

Developing chess strategies requires focus and concentration.

Strategy games teach kids perseverance. Video games involving strategy and progression from one level to another reward players with the pleasure chemical, dopamine, released into the brain. Board games, such as chess, checkers and Monopoly, are strategy games that encourage perseverance. According to game inventor Bill Ritchie, chess involves ". . .thinking strategies like staying focused and persevering, and working through the layers to find the right pattern."

Building

The reward of accomplishment promotes perseverance.

Building games encourage perseverance through planning and patience. Old-fashioned building blocks, lock-together plastic blocks and Popsicle sticks are all useful for building activities. Anything that can be stacked -- such as books or boxes -- are suitable materials for building games. Older children enjoy building projects with simple tools, such as building bird houses with hammers and nails.

Paper Crafts

Folding an origami lily requires following directions and concentration.

Paper crafts, such as origami and paper weaving, encourage perseverance. Creating with paper crafts involves trial and error, which leads to perseverance. Young children enjoy simple folding activities, making paper airplanes and weaving paper strips to form a mat or folding and cutting a square of paper for use as a Chinese paper lantern. Older children enjoy more intricate folded-paper crafts, such as origami.

References

• Mission Possible: Character Development -- Perseverance
• Houston Teacher Tech Archives: Group Game with Value
• Appalachian State University: Perseverance (PDF)
• Coaching Kids Sports: Endurance Training for Kids
• Edutopia: "A Neurologist Makes the Case for a Video Game Model as a Learning Tool"; Judy Willis MD, Apr. 14, 2011
• The United States Chess Federation: "Building Thinking Skills Through Chess"; Bill Ritchie; Jan. 19, 2011

Resources

• UnionvilleElementarySchool: Activities, Games and Chores that Promote Self-Regulation (PDF)
• ArtistsHelpingChildren: Ten Compelling Reasons to Use Arts and Crafts for Kids
• Kaboose: Chinese Paper Lanterns