Game for it

Says chess coach Abhay Kadekar,“Only two out of 10 parents who come to me to enroll their kids for chess coaching,want their kids to take up chess as a profession. Rest of them want me to work on their child’s patience and concentration.” However,Kadekar feels that the ancient board game has more benefits to offer. He says that it is remarkably helpful in building up mental astuteness,the spirit to lose and win with grace and not to underestimate or overestimate your opponent. According to Kadekar,who also works as a chess coach at Vikhe Patil School,these benefits prove significantly helpful in the long run.

Sangeeta Joglekar,mother of 10-year-old Pranav and seven-year-old Rucha agrees and says that after seeing the changes in her son Pranav’s thinking pattern and increased focus,she enrolled her daughter for chess classes as well. “The most notable change I observed was that he started doing self-study,which was never the case earlier,” says Joglekar. While Joglekar swears by chess,Romila Thakur,member of Scrabble Association of India recommends scrabble for kids of all age-groups. She believes that besides developing vocabulary,the board game also increases mental calculation skills. “The player has to use various strategies to gain maximum points and this requires tremendous concentration power,” says Thakur,who is also the secretary of Poona Scrabble Club.

When it comes to concentration,one can’t ignore yoga and meditation — the time-tested methods — which are popular worldwide. No wonder then,that the city is abuzz with several yoga institutes which offer special batches for children. Another activity which has gained popularity in the past few years is abacus,which helps in mental arithmatics. A teacher by profession,Charu Narse,whose 11-year-old daughter Saloni is in the eighth grade of abacus now,gives full credit to the activity,which she says helped build up her orientation,besides increasing her analytical and logical reasoning skills.

Megha Shah,who runs the Vedic Maths Academy on Tilak Road feels that one of the ways to work on the short attention span could be vedic maths,which also improves speed and accuracy. Since the activity eliminates steps involved in reaching the answer,there’s a lot of mental calculation,which can be achieved only when one remains focused.