Kingka review -- part 2

This is a continuation of "Kingka Games -- the most used language on earth is now more accessible to everyone", Part 1 of my product review of the Kingka Mandarin Chinese learning game system.

If all the fun and functional applications of Kingka use weren't enough to convince you, consider the many cognitive benefits inherent in this kind of game-play.

THE BENEFITS:

Kingka was created by Chinese-American mom, author and educator Shoellen Lou-Hsiao, for her "impatient" son, to keep him engaged.  She had discovered research that found children's IQ scores improved five points after learning Chinese characters, and that children as young as two years old can benefit from learning the Chinese language.  The key, according to Minster of Education and Culture, Professor Andreas Demetriou of the Departments of Psychology and of Educational Sciences at the University of Cyprus, is that learning the logographic Chinese writing system stimulates spatial perception, which many children with developmental disorders have trouble with.  It also helps develop the “Right Brain” which is associated with creativity, is used with vision, yet is not actively engaged when reading English.  These benefits factor in whether or not the person playing the game is truly ready to understand that the characters are another language's way of writing familiar words, and not just abstract lines and complex compositions.  The Kingka website asserts that, "Once young players have mastered identifying the basic shapes of circles, triangles and squares, they are ready for a KINGKA challenge."  This versatile toy, even if used solely as a puzzle, can stimulate visual discrimination, a critical cognitive development in early childhood regardless of whether the child is 'typical' or 'special needs' -- a bonus for family game-play in families with mixed-neurology siblings.  Kingka game play in general can help develop and exercise concentration, fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination, memorization, critical thinking and social skills.  In relation to all this did The National Lekotek Center rank Kingka highly on its AblePlay rating system, with 4 stars in communicative and cognitive areas, and 3 stars for physical and sensory areas, with each area having a possible maximum rating of 5 stars.  That utilization of sensory integration skills could make Kingka play particularly beneficial for children with Sensory Processing Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or even Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder.

It is with Autism in mind that I easily see another advantage of the aforementioned possibilities and benefits of the Kinka games.  While any parent can appreciate a game that grows with their child, parents of Autistic children also know that getting their child to move on to new things that are more developmentally appropriate and/or challenging, can be quite difficult.  There is a tendency among Autists to fixate on the familiar, and on rituals created around the familiar, which can further impede developmental progress.  I know my now-five-year-old son would be merrily playing with old baby toys like stacking rings and shape sorting boxes, if I had not eventually removed all evidence of them as options, to push (it doesn't sound nice, but as varying people are credited with saying, "The difference between try and triumph is a little umph!") him to engage in activities better suited to his actual abilities.  With a game system like Kingka, however, an Autistic child like my son can continue using a familiar game, while continually getting new things out of it.  Not only is that directly useful, but it also helps reinforce the general principal that there might be more to things than what you first knew about them or did with them, and that's ok.

The above is exactly why, as it happens, it took so long to convince my son to do more than just look at the box as a new part of the living room's scenery, actually try the game, and give me the personal perspective I wanted before completing this review.  To be perfectly honest, I anticipated that it would be some time before he -- five years old and evaluated as having Sensory Processing Disorder, low-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder and potentially mild Cerebral Palsy as well -- would be ready to play the game, as a (structured) game.  That isn't because the design of the Kingka game isn't accommodating enough for his developmental stage, it's simply because he's still working on adapting to structures that are not his own idea.

As also anticipated, Jamie was immediately fascinated once the box opened.  First, he helped me pop all the cards out of their cardboard frameworks -- a handy bit of fine-motor coordination, if I do say so myself, though it also does credit to the sturdiness of the cards that he didn't manage to bend any of them in the process.  He was delighted by the photographic imagery on the cards, and announced what each was of, to me, as he first handled it.  Because he can read, he thought on his own to check his claims against the English text oriented above the photographs, and corrected himself on the few occasions it was necessary (generally the less obvious things, like "Behind").  Thanks to Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go!, and a few Spanish-English library books which those shows inspired him to pick out, he also recognized a few of the Spanish words, and from there was able to infer that the other text represented the same words in yet more languages.  I could've covered the pronunciation of English, French and Spanish, but my husband (who took Mandarin in college) wasn't available to help with the Chinese, and kiddo was not yet up for adding the additional new experience of listening to the pronunciation guide CD.  All the same, when the first card was flipped over to reveal its simplified Chinese character, there was a triumphant cry of, "No, dat's Chay-neez!"  Jamie has come to recognize the general appearance of the writing system, between his daddy's lingering academic interests, and a delightful and fairly ingenious library book called, "The Pet Dragon", by Christoph Niemann.

Once each Ping card had been examined, front and back,  at least once, Jamie spread out the six playing cards and began matching things up.  He'd place a Ping card, photo-side-up, then pull it away again, looking once more at the character on the back before putting in down in the pile, and rifling around for the next card that caught his eye.  It wasn't structured, but it WAS all his idea.  I have the feeling it'll be his idea again, tomorrow.

• Asia Store at Asia Society and Museum
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• Oriental Book & Stationary
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• West Side Kids
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• Limpopo Kids
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