With this year turning into something out of a sci-fi movie, all you seem to hear about is COVID-19. With every state having a shelter at home order currently, I wanted to share some ideas on how to have fun with your kids at home.
I also wanted to share about a new website that is helping families affected by COVID-19. ShelterinPlaceTips.com is trying to help families by donating all proceeds from their site to families affected by the virus. I think that's a wonderful way to help out. Something I hope to see from them soon are some fun activities for kids that are printable.
If your looking for some new activities that will help you teach the kids at home, while also having fun then check out the below activities which are so enjoyable that the children probably won’t even notice they’re learning...
I also wanted to share about a new website that is helping families affected by COVID-19. ShelterinPlaceTips.com is trying to help families by donating all proceeds from their site to families affected by the virus. I think that's a wonderful way to help out. Something I hope to see from them soon are some fun activities for kids that are printable.
If your looking for some new activities that will help you teach the kids at home, while also having fun then check out the below activities which are so enjoyable that the children probably won’t even notice they’re learning...
Create a scavenger hunt
Scavenger hunts are so much fun. Children love following the clues to find the various treasures that you’ve hidden around the home and garden for them. They definitely won’t feel like they’re doing anything educational, but if you’ve taken the time to write some crafty clues, they definitely will be. They’ll have to use their creativity and their finest cognitive skills to work out where they’ll find that hidden treasure and it will make them smarter.
Do puzzles
Doing puzzles, like the crosswords at https://www.pennydellpuzzles.com/fill-ins/books/ is another activity that really doesn’t feel like normal school-work, but which will definitely teach your children a thing or two about language, words and using your cognitive skills to solve a problem. You can get puzzles for all age groups and abilities, and many are available online, so it has never been easier to get the whole family involved in this fun learning activity.
Play in the sandpit
If you have younger children, you may want to consider getting your very own sandpit. Why? It might not see,m like messing around in the sand could have much educational value, but it can teach children all about spatial awareness, coordination, teamwork and even a few basics of maths and science. Oh, and spending your day building sandcastles and other neat constructions is a lot of fun. That’s why most kindergartens have a sandpit or two on the premises!
Read with them
Chances are you already read to your young children every night, but if you want to make the activity even more fun and even more educational, you should try to read WITH them instead. If they’re old enough, you could read a paragraph and then have them read a paragraph, each doing all the voices to make it fun, or you could even act out the parts together.
If they’re too young to read, you could set them challenges such as hunting every ‘A’ on the page or trying to predict what will happen to their favorite character next. The aim is to get them totally engaged in the activity.
Family quiz night
Looking for a way to keep the fun when teaching your older children? Why not try holding your very own family quiz night. Put on a sparkly quiz show host presenter jacket, write up a few questions and think of a prize that everyone will want to win. Then pit the family’s brains against one another in a battle of the intellects to see who comes out victorious. Don’t have time to set your own questions? Trivial Pursuit is a ready-made family quiz night. You could also look online for past Jeopardy! Questions or similar and repurpose them for your family. If you make it a regular thing, you may notice the kids start to bone up on their general knowledge so they can win the much-coveted prize and claim their place as the smartest person in the family.
Play with Lego
You might think that playing with Lego is all fun all the time, but it does have lots of educational benefits too. Lego can, for example, improve fine motor skills, encourage teamwork, develop creativity and mathematical thinking and improve planning skills. It’s not just for young kids either — older children and adults can get a lot out of playing with Lego too.
Play charades
Charades isn’t just a party game that you can wheel out to liven the place up when things get awkward at Christmas —it is a great game for making children think more creatively. after all, it’s not easy to convey various concepts in mime. Your kids will have to put some serious thought into how they can use their body to convey “The English Patient” or “ The Cat in the Hat” and you’ll all have lots of fun, not only trying to guess each other’s mimes but also laughing at the many failed attempts you’re sure to have along the way.
Create your own comic books
If you have a kid that loves comic books, get out the crayons and paper and encourage them to come up with their very own superhero adventure. They’ll have a lot of fun putting their ideas down on paper, and it’ll encourage them to be more creative, develop their fine motor skills and get them writing more. It’ll be fun seeing what kinds of stories they come up with too.
Practice Origami
Kids love taking pretty squares of colored paper and turning it into various animal shapes, so you know you’ll be on to a winner when you suggest a spot of origami. More importantly, when they’re creating that paper crane or turning a piece of paper into a beautiful rose, they’ll be improving their hand-eye co-ordination, practicing geometry, improving their knowledge of measurement, fractions & proportion, and learning how to problem-solve. There’s a reason why so many mathematicians love origami!
Make slime
The craze for making and playing with slime has baffled many a parent who sees it as a strange and pointless activity, but kids love it and you know what? It does actually have some educational benefits too. I mean, the making of slime is basically chemistry, albeit at the very simple end of the scale. Not only that but playing with slime can engage the senses and help to develop measuring skills and the ability to follow instructions. It might be silly, but spending an hour or two with slime is not a complete waste.
Next time you’re stuck on ideas, try any of these fun learning activities and the kids will have a great time, while also improving their education, and they won’t even realize it! You’ll find yourself having a lot of fun with them too, which is always a bonus.
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