Young kids have unlimited amount of energy. It’s always good to use that energy in some learning process. Young kids always want to spend time and want to play with their parents. Being a parent we want our kids to have a balance between playing and studying. But what if, we can manage both the things at the same time. We can do activities based playing with our preschoolers and primary graders. In this way, we not only spending a quality time with our kids but also utilizing it productively.
What Is Activity Based Learning?
Activity based learning is a learning while performing. It makes learning more engaging and interesting. In this, kids are involved in various activities related to their subjects. Educational activities as fun time may encourage kids about learning something new.
Activity based learning improves their creative thinking ability, problem solving skills, logical thinking, listening skills. It helps children to think out of the box. It overall does cognitive development of children. Conducting activities at home will enhance their ability to do better in their academics also. It also builds confidence and motivates them to learn new and creative. It maintains a healthier lifestyle as kids are away from the screen while doing the activities.
Here are some activities you can do with your kids.
Addition Using Dice
It will improve their mathematical and problem solving skill. It develops critical thinking and number sense. Take two colorful sheets. Give one sheet to the kid and one is yours. Make 11 rows and nine columns and write round 1, round 2…so on in each column. Now start playing for round 1. First player 1 will roll the dice and will write number in 1st column then player 2 will roll the dice and do the same. This procedure has to be repeated for all the columns and last row is for total. Now ask your kid to do addition for each column and find out total for each round.
Sell and Buy
Through this game your kid will learn addition, subtraction, mental math, and also understand the concept of money.it improves power of concentration, memory, language and teamwork. It gives them basic knowledge about how trading is done.
What is more interesting for a kid then playing with their favorite toys and things? Collect your kid’s favorite toys. Keep it on a table give some coins and paper money to him. First you be the shopkeeper and ask him to purchase the things from you. Tell him to give money to you and then ask him to be the shopkeeper and then you become the buyer.
Treasure Hunt
I am pretty much sure, that your kids would love to play this. It improves better problem solving, builds teamwork, enhance collaboration, creativity and cognitive skills. Play this game with your kids, giving them clues with some information that leads them to take their own decisions. This game you can play in various ways.
*If you want to make your kids learn spellings of long words then make chits of the spellings and hide it in different places in your home. Make a list of pictures of those things and keep it on table. Ask your kid to find out the spellings of all the pictures on the paper give a time out to him for this.
*Another way you can write different numbers on a paper and keep it on a table. Make chits of different operations whose answer is number written in the paper. Hide the chits anywhere in your home. Ask him to find all the chits for various numbers written on paper.eg. 25= 15+10, 8= 2×4, 15= 18-3,etc.
*One more way is, if you want your kid to learn different body parts and its spellings. Write half spellings on a paper and half on chits and follow the same as above.
Lock and Key Game
This activity will improve computational ability of kids. It will help kids to do various mathematical operations at the same time.
For this make different chits and write the numbers on some chits and write different operations for the numbers on some chits. Then lock the numbers in lock and hide the key of that lock under the bowl where the operation of that number is written give them a time out to play this game. This game becomes more interesting if you have 5 or more lock and keys and more than one player.
Design a map of your Society or Area
In this activity kids will learn about the concept of direction. It improves their drawing skills, visual representation and spatial thinking. Designing a map by themselves strengthens their imagination and curiosity. This also develops analytical thinking.
In this activity give an A4 size sheet to the child and begin with your own home ask them to design a map of your local area or society. They can include various symbols, shapes and color in the map.
Sink and Float Activity
This activity enables the kid to develop scientific thinking, such as observations, results, data gathering, experimentation and evaluation. For preschooler it is a great activity for improving their vocabulary by introducing new words. For this activity you can encourage kids to write down their findings which improve their literacy development.
Kids love to play with water. For this activity take different things from home like coins, small ball, beans, fruits, vegetables and different toy. Fill a small tub with water. Now show all the things one by one to kids and first ask them to answer whether that thing will sink or float and then give that thing to kids ask them to put that in tub and see the result.
Find the object
This activity develops motor skills, builds hand eye coordination, improves imagination and thinking skills and strengthens muscles. Another fun filled activity is “find the object”. For this activity take a small tub, fill it with sand, hide different toys in it and now ask kids to put their hand in sand to find the object and ask them to guess the name without seeing it.
Superb ideas. Would love to get more ideas from you. Keep posting
Thanks Monica for your words of appreciation.