Collaborative post
As some UK schools are still closed, and others only accepting certain year groups, parents have been faced with the challenge of becoming teachers in their homes. Most schools have been uploading work to online portals for students to complete so that they don’t fall behind, but the children often require support from parents to get through the tasks. Home schooling doesn’t come naturally to all of us and it’s particularly tough for parents of more than one child like myself who also have to somehow fit in working from home. Fortunately, there are lots of activities you can do with your child to help enrich their learning.
Today I’m collaborating with an independent school in Abingdon to bring you some great home schooling activity ideas for kids.
Popular Home Schooling Activities for Kids
Writing Exercises
Writing might seem like a chore for your child, but it’s a hugely important aspect of their learning and can actually be quite fun. You could encourage them to write a review of a book they’ve recently read or perhaps re-write the ending. If they’re struggling, it might be an idea for you to give them some sentence starters or encourage them to create a mind-map for a story.
Cooking
Allowing your child to help prepare a few meals is great for their learning on both an academic and a personal level. Not only do they learn a key life skill, they also have to follow instructions (reading) and measure ingredients (maths). Other important skills learnt through cooking are being careful and being patient. If you don’t own a child friendly cookbook, there are plenty of recipes online that you could consult.
Educational Computer Games
These days there are so many different ways to learn online. Children learn better when having fun so many schools have been setting up accounts with various sites for children to use. These are also ideal when home schooling. You can teach children to code, maths, numbers, letters, languages and more. It is also important when allowing your children to use a computer for anything to teach them about internet safety. It’s something they will need to learn when they are allowed to use computers unsupervised.
Arts & Crafts
Encourage your child to get creative with some arty activities. If you’re stuck for inspiration, Pinterest is full of ideas and there are lots of vloggers out there who provide a step-by-step tutorial. One of my daughters has been using a range of videos for inspiration and has created some fantastic pieces of art.
Perhaps you could challenge your child to try and replicate the masters or maybe try their hand at a still life of your fruit bowl, flowers or even a sibling. Art is a great way for children to express themselves and it can be quite relaxing and a great stress reliever.
Gardening
If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, it’s a good idea to encourage your kids to play outside and get some fresh air. You could plant some flowers together and enjoy watching them grow, or even start your very own vegetable patch. This will help your child learn responsibility, as they will need to take care of their plants for the foreseeable future. What’s more, they will learn about germination and seasonality. The best part is they get to enjoy the fruits of their labour (pun intended). Fruit picked from home always tastes sweetest we’ve found.
Reading
If you want to help your child with their spelling and grammar, and even boost their vocabulary, you can encourage them to read more frequently. You could even start a family book club and make it a bonding experience. Use dinnertime as an opportunity to discuss what they’ve been reading and what they like or dislike about their book. It doesn’t have to be a fiction novel; any type of reading is better than nothing!
Summary
These five ideas merely scratch the surface but should certainly give you some inspiration when it comes to helping your child with their home learning. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re struggling to fit in your own work and teaching your child; this is a challenging time for everyone and you are probably doing a lot better than you think.
What activities would you suggest for those home schooling?
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great post! very helpful for anyone who aim to homeschool or willing to expand the homeschooling experience for kids.
It helps when parents can get involved in some degree to help their kids learn.
For a parent, becoming a teacher at home can be challenging. The ideas explored in your article is helpful for parents and children.
It is difficult especially when you are also working form home.
These are great tips. I like the idea of homeschooling even though it could seem tedious at first. But I like that it creates room for bonding with the family as well as learning.
It’s hard work but not so bad once you get into the swing of it.
I think it’s a great idea to vary homeschool activities to include things such as cooking and gardening. These are very useful skills for kids to learn and they also encourage creativity!
They are ideal for encouraging children to be creative.
So many great ideas here for kids that are having home schooling The cooking sounds like fun to me x
It’s a good one. Mine love cooking.
I think gardening would be a great idea. It would be so exciting for children to observe how a plant emerges from a seed, or to be able to harvest fruit or vegetables which they planted.
It is a great way to teach whilst they have fun.
One of my friends has started to think about home schooling her daughter. I’ll definitely have to share this with her.
Thanks so much. I hope she finds it useful Kiara.
Good post! Kids have the tendency to be bored if they keep on doing monotonous activities, they always look for another things to do
That’s so true. It’snot easy to keep coming up with new things for them either.
Lots of great ideas – hands on ! Our boys will love baking and crafts
They are popular activities. There are so many things you can make with both too.
Brilliant activities, my son did lots of extra story writing throughout homeschooling, earned him some brownie points with his teachers too!
These are great things to continue even after normality (hopefully) returns x
All great ideas for parents who homeschool their kids. My step daughter homeschools her child so this post would be a big help for her. Thank you for these suggestions.
Home schooling can be challenging! But cooking is actually a good activity which i hadn’t thought of, it’s such am important skill for later on in life.
We tried a range of different activities during there homeschooling in lockdown, utilising Garden worked really well, as did arts and crafts, but balancing it all was the best technique.
We have had loads of fun with maths and baking and science walks outside, we have also had a lot of fun crafting and creating an entire dolls house too.
5 Fantastic home schooling activities which I do often with my children especially during lockdown when I have been homeschooling them
We homeschool and do all of these things, and they are great and easy ways to learn. I would also say finding people who do things in your community, like beekeeping, or crafts or art or creative things and seeing if your kids can join them and watch and learn from them or have a talk with them is a great learning experience too.
The kids have been doing lots of reading, arts and crafts and gardening over the last few months of home learning. They love doing them and cooking too!