Boost kids’ confidence: 10 learning activities to enhance decision-making skills, self-worth

Inviting children to engage in theatre or other oratory activities encourages them to develop critical and creative thinking. (Image: Canva)

Confidence plays a significant factor when kids grow up socially or even personally. Once this determinant is fully achieved, only one thing is highly recommended: learning. The rate of technological evolution over the last couple of decades entailed the imperative of an ever-changing hands-on approach to learning, one that stresses the importance of real, tangible objects and the developed environment around children rather than the typical, please ‘tick the boxes on-screen’ approach most learning has now gone to.

These children who are availed of such numerous activities are not only going to enhance their emotional and self-efficacy but also their competencies. The growing self-reliance and other aspects of growing up with a proper attitude can be achieved in a sound or permanently if they engage in educational parks possessing a positive constructivism environment that encourages exploration, play, and creativity.

One can find those techniques in the following 10 experiential learning activities, which can gain children quick confidence in a creative manner through entertainment and unique experiences suggested by Hasmukh M. Gorava, Marketing Head, KidZania India.

• Participating in real-life career simulations: Help children develop self-assurance in similar circumstances by including them in play acts that involve performing responsibilities closer to what real-life professionals have, such as doctors, firefighters, or other interesting professions. As this increases their self-esteem, it helps them enhance their decision-making.

• Interactive science labs: Children aspiring and developing imagination and creativity can be encouraged to pursue subjects like chemistry, biology, and physics in a more practical setting. As opposed to passive reading of a textbook, these activities enhance the children’s ability to learn and discover on their own.

• Culinary workshops: Cooking workshops are fun and provide hands-on learning, and, in the process, kids acquire important life skills. They create self-esteem, cooperation, and time management skills through following directions, doing calculations, and preparing food.

• Theatrical performances and public speaking: Inviting children to engage in theatre or other oratory activities encourages them to develop critical and creative thinking and helps them to overcome stage fright, which enhances their confidence. They build an ability to discuss any subject freely as well as perform short pieces, and this improves their public speaking skills.

• Art and craft workshops: These art workshops that include painting, sculpturing, or crafts help children channel their photographic memory. They can make their own artistic masterpieces with raw materials that they can present, which in turn boosts their self-esteem.

• Problem-solving games and escape rooms: These are collaborative activities that enhance critical thinking, cooperation, and communication as children engage in group work, self-assign tasks, and come up with creative solutions to problems, hence improving their problem-solving self-efficacy.

• Environmental and community engagement: Sharing with children’s activities such as recycling projects and tree planting campaigns creates an attitude of responsibility towards society. It also enables children to take values like kindness and self-action and helps them feel a sense of achievement, which enhances their self-worth.

• E-modules and coding content: The technology and putting up coding classes for children helps them to engage with the cyber world in a fun way as well as enabling them to learn skills that will be beneficial to them.

• Music and dance classes: Experiential learning enriched with dance and music enables kids to develop their creative expression, memories, rhythm, and coordination. The same is true with group performances; as learning new skills and stage fright is overcome together, kids gain confidence.

• Business simulation activities: Business simulation activities enable children to understand the essence of entrepreneurship through the production of goods, marketers of goods, and conducting transactions. That helps children in such fields as financial responsibility, literacy, leadership, and collective work while raising the sense of self-efficacy in their business skills.