Keeping children educated, engaged, and entertained for hours at a time is challenging enough, not to mention keeping up with standards and individual learning goals. Yet, this is also a golden opportunity to offer kids a new type of at-home learning experience.
Whether you’re a parent or a teacher (or both!), you can make learning at home fun with just a few steps and materials. Teachers offering distance lessons may need to reach out to families ahead of time to see if parents are able to pull the materials together so that no students are left out. Here are a few hands-on and engaging educational activities that you can do at home.
1. Learn with Shaving Cream
Sometimes, the most unconventional of materials can be transformed into a fun, simple learning tool for at-home learning sessions. In this case, a can of shaving cream is all it takes to make educational learning fun for kids of various ages. Any brand of shaving cream that produces a fluffy white foam works for this project.
Kids of different ages tend to get excited to practice their math and literacy skills as they write out numbers, equations, sight words, etc. They see it as a welcome break from writing answers in on sheets of paper.
Below are some topics that you can cover using the shaving cream method, but don’t limit yourself. There are many other activities you can do with shaving cream (creating marbled shaving cream artwork is one such idea). For this educational project, you can do any of the following ideas:
- Pre-K – Practice drawing basic shapes.
- Kindergarten – An adult can help shape letters and numbers and have children identify them.
- 1st Grade – Add and subtract within 20.
- 2nd Grade – Add and subtract within 100 or 1,000 (depending on skill level).
- 3rd Grade – Multiplication and division within 100.
- 4th Grade – Fractions, decimals, and place values for multi-digit whole numbers.
- 5th Grade – Adding and subtracting fractions.
Here are some examples of what this would look like:
2. Learn with Rice or Dried Beans
Add some dried rice or dried beans to a plastic bin and have kids write letters or numbers with bright nontoxic paint. Keep in mind that it will be harder to make out what you’re writing compared to writing with shaving cream, which is why I would recommend this for younger grades. Practice the basics, such as drawing shapes, letters, numbers, etc.
Here are some examples of what this would look like:
3. Learn with Bowls and Plates
Write colors on paper plates and have your child search the house for tiny items that match each color. You could also use plates or bowls that are already colored, as shown in the second image below. If your child is a little older and is learning about money, have them sort coins by writing the coin values on the plates. Just beware of coins going missing! The opportunities are endless if you get creative with what you have.
Here are some ideas:
4. Learn with Uncooked Noodles
Use a variety of noodle types and colors to practice patterning. If you have basic yellow noodles, pattern by type. If you have tri-color noodles, pattern by color. And if you have the time, use food coloring to dye your noodles different colors.
Below are some examples of what this might look like:
5. Learn with Dice
Do you have a set of dice? You can have an exhilarating word race! … With each role of the dice, words are added to the grid until a word wins the race.
Have a word race. Write your child’s sight words or spelling words at the bottom of a piece of paper with a grid, like the one below. Pretend that the words are racing to make it to the finish line. You could extend this activity, using two dice and practicing 12 words at once.
You can also use dice for a variety of math activities. Some examples are below:
For free resources to help teachers, parents, and children navigate this unprecedented time, check out the Really Good Stuff® Resources tab. You can also search our blog for more free tips and ideas from real teachers.
By Nicole Morelli
3/31/2020
Nicole Morelli formerly taught first, second, and third grade. Before teaching, she was a paraprofessional, where she assisted in multiple elementary grades and a special needs class. Nicole has worked at Really Good Stuff for a little over two years as a Product Developer and Content Manager. Her specialties are STEM education and social-emotional learning. She has a lot of fun developing products for those topics!