Most importantly, when I talk to my kids about a video game, I’m teaching them that after they get lost in the experience of game play, they should also stop, back-up, and think about the game as if it were a text.
In the case of my kids and Donkey Kong, I’m ask them to think about what it means when they “like” something or think it is “cool.” I’m asking them to evaluate their own thinking about the game, to assess the language they’ve used to describe their experience, and then to revise or iterate their language in a more precise way. Metacognition, put very simply, describes an individual’s ability to think about one’s own thinking. My kids are older than three, and they are already pretty good readers, but they need more guidance understanding the ways they can apply vocabulary to make meaning from the world around them.ĭiscussing Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze with my kids also helps them to develop their metacognitive functions. In some ways, that’s kind of obvious, how can one acquire anything that’s not there? So, put more vocabulary in front of your kids and they’ll have a larger vocabulary. Research shows that exposure to more words between birth and three years old correlates to increased language skills. It reinforces a use of precise language and increasingly complex vocabulary. This kind of questioning probably annoys my kids, they just want to play the game.
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