5 Riddles and Brain Teasers for Kids

Brain teasers are puzzles that require thought processes and out-of-the-box thinking or creativity to come to a solution.

They encourage the thinking of the mind in unconventional ways towards a problem while keeping the mind aware of the constraints of the problem.

Cognitive health benefits and easy accessibility are factors responsible for fueling growing interest in brain teasers and puzzles among kids and parents.

The thought process is an integral part of such activities and exercises.

It develops the brain of a child at a very early age towards logical thinking and rationality.

Children's brain teaser games are made to garner more attention and are more straightforward than adult brain teasers.

They provide welcome diversity and versatility to conventional learning.

Brain teasers are particularly helpful in increasing concentration of mind in kids besides stimulating their cognitive abilities.

There are different brain teasers, common ones being - lateral thinking, root cause analysis, riddles, practical questions, etc.

Brain teasers are a welcome source of refreshment and recreating from the monotonous routines of conventional education.

Brain Teasers are broadly categorized based on the following four ways: -

1. Mathematical Brain Teasers

Maths is a fundamental and integral part of consulting equations and estimations.

It has immense explanatory power and is well understood across the
aisle.

Simultaneous equations being part of school math help here.

Setting up and solving the equation gives the desired answer.

This helps in recognizing a disability to organize and use relevant data.

2. Logical Brain Teasers

Such teasers require you to carry out necessary logical evaluations to arrive at the correct answer.

3. Lateral Brain Teasers

These teasers check our creativity. It gauges our ability to look for alternative solutions when the obvious ones are no longer answers.

4. Trick Wording questions

Sometimes, we fall for obvious answers without carefully analyzing the question. Simplicity dawns on second thoughts from hindsight.

Advantages and benefits: The pros of brain teasers on kids are manifold, especially if they are involved in such activities early through the academic curriculum.

1. Improves concentration

Focus and concentration, often elusive due to shorter attention spans, encourages children to stay focused on a problem longer than usual until they can solve the problem.

Participation in mind-boggling brain teasers and puzzles improves their concentration, particularly in simplicity and difficulty in equal proportions.

Stimulating and mind-grossing puzzles balanced on being neither too easy nor too tricky prevents abandonment in the former and creates anger and reluctance in the latter keeping the mind involved.

2. Creative Stimulation:

Brain teasers requiring lateral thinking and creative solutions boost a child s creativity and encourages the kid to think out of the box to solve puzzles.

This habit of thinking out of the box enhances their ability and comes to great use when they pursue creative arts in the future or even in subjects like mathematics and science where innovative ways to solve a problem improve an aspirant s scientific temper and mathematical ability.

3. Memory Power

Memory games are the focal points of learning and retaining information. Skills learned from brain puzzles requiring sound activity help children in applied activities like quizzes.

Moreover, children don t realize they are training their memory, making it a fun activity that doesn't feel like hectic work.

4. Sharpens Thinking Process

A brain teaser employing logical analysis to arrive at the answer encourages students to execute and implement different thinking approaches to solve it.

Lateral thinking or solving a problem creatively often helps to come to the solution from a different angle.

Brain teasers being designed to stretch our mind encourages a kid to try alternative ways of arriving at the answer, a practice that may come in handy in the future.

5. Mind Exercise

We need to keep our brain shape-preserving our mental strength like any other muscle in the body.

Maintaining an exercised mind acts as a machine well lubricated and improves flexibility and adaptability in new challenging situations.

Brain teasers and puzzles thus exercise the mind in a different way to conventional learning.

They act as spells of rain on a drought-stricken land, fueling inquisition in curious minds.

Besides improving attentiveness with increasing concentration, a certain level of interest also grows over time in children participating actively in such exercises.

It prevents children from getting bored with their curriculum as they see things from newer perspectives with out-of-the-box thinking.

Often it is recommended that we enable kids at an early age to participate in a mixture of different brain teasers like riddles, optical illusions, picture puzzles, mind or memory games, mathematical puzzles like Sudoku, etc.

The aim is to introduce diversity and versatility to the curriculum to make the activity more exciting and fun than great work reducing it to mere obligatory participation from the children s perspective.

Incorporating such activities in the school curriculum itself would go a long way in developing the brain and hence the mind to meet future challenges.

However, it is also important to note in this context that we take care of the limits of stress manufactured during such games, especially in the virtual ones like video games.

This should be dealt with on a saner case-to-case basis, catering to individual nuances without blanket generalization.

Researchers say that logic and limit stress generated throughout participation of brain teasers and puzzles are positive stress, improving attention periods, problem-solving aptitude, concentration abilities, and alternative psychological skills related to the brain s frontal lobe.

Through meditation, socializing, and nutrition priorities, more traditional agencies of better living brain teasers on kids from an early age positively impact their minds, which may help them in the future by having a better mental posture.