Educational Activities You Can Do at Home With Your Kids

While your children are currently following their remote learning curriculum as provided by their teachers here at Las Vegas Day School; remote-learning is only a part of your child’s day. Below we have provided a number of educational activities you can incorporate into your day to day routine with your children to support and encourage their learning in other enriching ways alongside their current remote learning responsibilities. Most of these activities can be adapted for your children to work on their own or you can involve the whole family and use it as an opportunity to spend quality learning time together.

Be a Chef – Learning in the Kitchen

Extra time at home means the opportunity to slow down and enjoy each meal with your children. There’s no better place to learn than in the kitchen, with adult supervision of course. Make your kids your sous chefs for a few meals each week. Teach them to measure and weigh ingredients and allow them to lend a helping hand in preparing some components of the meal depending on their age and capability. Older children can help with many cooking tasks on their own like chopping vegetables and measuring ingredients themselves; maybe they can even work up to preparing a whole meal for the family. Younger children will enjoy helping by mixing and pouring ingredients during preparation for cooking and baking. By allowing your children to participate in the preparation of meals you are not only teaching your children a practical skill you are also teaching them arithmetic skills with measuring and weighing.

Family Reading Time

It is essential to make time each day for reading in your child’s life. Reading is critical to your child’s language development at any age. With younger children, you can pick a few short books or stories to read to them and with older children you can encourage family reading time, where everyone even the adults, cuddle up with a good book and read quietly to themselves for a period of time each day. This is a great activity to help children wind down for bed and get them relaxed and disconnected for a good night’s sleep.

Your Spring Cleaning Sidekicks – Sorting & Categorizing

With the combination of springtime and free time at home many families are taking up their spring cleaning. Involve your children in tasks that involve sorting or categorizing while you are tidying up around the house. Little ones can help sort laundry into different colors while older ones can tackle larger projects organizing books, closets, or cabinets with some guidance.  Comparing and grouping is a basic cognitive skill learned early on in a child’s education that can be practiced and developed with many day to day household activities.

Mad Scientists at Home

If you want to shake things up and turn your house into a real-life science lab, try your hand at some easy at-home science experiments with your budding scientist. There are many simple science experiments you can conduct from home with every day basics you can find around the pantry and cabinets. Perform an experiment then talk to your kids about their findings and results. You are not only encouraging their love of science but also their inquisitiveness. Check out this site for different science experiments for kids of all ages.

Engineering at Home

Do your children love building forts and castles? Fort building is an excellent activity that allows your children to develop their engineering and problem-solving skills while teaching them to work together. Find some safe materials like pillows and cardboard boxes and an empty space to allow your child’s imagination to run wild.

Art & Crafts

Grab some crafting supplies, crayons, paint, or colored pencils and find some fun craft projects you can take on with your children. Make decorations for upcoming holidays and birthdays, or consider taking on a family DIY project you can all pitch in on. Maybe you can redecorate an old wooden chair or cabinet with a fun and colorful twist.

Board Games for Learning

Open up your board game cabinet and you will find a hidden treasure of educational resources to play with your children. Whether it’s a game of Scrabble to work on their spelling, Candyland to work on their colors and counting, or Clue to work on their deductive reasoning; board games are a fun and interactive way for kids to learn many skills while playing along with their family. Even a simple deck of cards or a set of dominoes can be used for counting and number recognition games.

Travel the World From the Comfort of Home

During this time many of the world’s most famous landmarks and museums have opened their internet doors to the public for free. Take a trip around the world with your family to discover new destinations, famous works of art, or animals in zoos and aquariums. There is no shortage of material to discover new places from the safety of your home. Make sure the children are being properly supervised when using the internet even if for educational purposes.

Puzzles & Building Blocks

The great thing about puzzles and building blocks is that you can never grow out of them. Take on a family puzzle or Lego project and work together to turn those pieces into a masterpiece. Depending on your children’s age you can select an appropriately challenging puzzle or building set they can work alone on or as a family for hours on end.

While this is a difficult and uncertain time for many of us it is also a unique opportunity for you to take a larger role in your child’s learning while spending quality time at their side. Keeping them on track with their current remote learning curriculum responsibilities and adding some extra fun home educational activities will set your children up for success once they return to their classrooms and regular routine. Get creative and play with your children to encourage their love of learning and keep their minds active and entertained.