5 ‘Out of the Box’ Ways to Engage Your Children in Learning During a Pandemic
Now is a great time to help your children discover and develop their passions. Assisting them requires planning and observation, but the more you understand your children’s desires and focus, the better you can design engaging activities for them.
Here are 5 activities for you and your children to do together while staying at home:
1. Scrapbook/Vision Board
What does your child like to do? Does she want to be a surgeon or a videogame designer? Does he like animals or sports? Start from anywhere. Even if their dream seems silly or vague, let them explore their passion. It may change or morph as they grow older, but the ability to develop a clear vision for the future will be a practical organizing and motivational tool they can use throughout their life.
Help them start a scrapbook based on things they like. Together, explore related topics and careers using magazines and websites. Print out images, cut out quotes, and make drawings. Have them get creative: use flowers, sticks, and leaves. They can keep adding to it as they age.
Based on their scrapbook, older children can create a vision board to hang on their wall. As they visualize and set goals for the future, their dreams will become an attainable reality.
2. Crafts and Recycling
Start saving your cardboard and egg cartons for crafts and projects. Have your children make an obstacle course, a science project, or a piece of art.
Even better, teach your children about recycling and why it’s crucial. Help them design something they can keep and continue to use, demonstrating the practicality of reusing in action. WeAreTeachers has many ideas for crafts using trash and recyclables, such as a hanging planter, bird feeder, and wind chimes.
3. Design a Website/Blog
Create a website with your child. The site can be a place for them to talk about their interests, their life at home, or to display their art and science projects by uploading pictures and videos.
They may need your help setting the website up, but let them direct the blog’s content. If you allow your child to lead the design and focus of the site, your child will be proud and invested in their work.
4. Creativity in the Kitchen
Get your children involved in the cooking process. They will learn all sorts of lifelong skills if you’re creative. Use the opportunity to teach them about fractions, measuring, food groups, nutrition, etiquette, safety in handling food and cooking utensils, and the like. Preparing food will develop children’s fine motor skills too.
You can incorporate cultural and historical awareness into your cooking as well by designing authentic dishes from other countries.
5. Penpals
Do you remember when you were a kid, and you got a letter in the mail? It was exciting. You felt like a grownup.
Whether you go old school with snail mail or use email and online platforms like Penpal Schools, writing with a penpal will develop your child’s communication and social skills. Connecting with an international student will broaden your child’s worldview while communicating with an individual or group interested in the same subject will teach them teamwork.
Ask friends and family if they know people who would be interested in having a penpal. Talk to your child’s teacher. Your school may already have a system for connecting students with other penpals.
Facilitating a Vision
These activities are great because they can become almost entirely student-led as your children mature. You are helping develop independent thinkers capable of and already in the process of carrying out their visions.