At Home Learning

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As we all know, COVID-19 came and has stuck around. With COVID-19, most schools closed and parents had to take on a more active role in teaching their kids. I don’t know about you, but I have ZERO experience in teaching my young kids the things they learn in school. Teaching them colors, numbers, a little math, etc for fun, sure but not focused on what they need to know for school and to move on to the next grade.

The first few weeks at home it was up to me to come up with educational ideas. Luckily last summer I purchased some Pre-K and Kinder learning activity books. Those books saved my life! The kids loved using them for learning and were very active participants in the learning process. My daughter was extremely excited later because when her school started providing learning, she had already learned some of those things with me (Mama win)! We did YouTube videos as well but I tried to keep those to a minimum just because I didn’t want them always on screens. The workbooks offer all aspects of learning so that was a huge positive.

For my youngest, workbooks would not work. He’s not quite old enough for them yet. We have done sensory bins which are pretty simple to make. You can make your own sensory bins with larger plastic food storage containers, buckets, or larger plastic containers that are used to store larger items. You can get some containers from Dollar Tree that have lids or use what you have on hand. I used rice and dry beans in some of my sensory bins. I had purchased some rice and dry beans a long time (like YEARS) ago and didn’t feel they were safe for us to eat anymore so they would have been thrown out anyway. My littlest learned very early on that we don’t put things in our mouth. If we do, we no longer get to play with the toy (or bin in this case). I also always sit right next to him and watch him closely so if he tries to put the rice or beans in his mouth, I can get it before it makes it to the mouth. If you choose to make your own sensory bins, I highly recommend you remain right beside your little to ensure he/she doesn’t put something in the mouth and choke. I put toys we can use to learn things (trucks of different colors, bath toy letters, blocks, larger plastic animals, etc) in the bins so it is a sensory bin but also a learning bin. One of his favorite things to learn with has been the craft pom poms. I have SO many of them from craft projects with my daughter. He loves those things! We use them to learn colors and have started trying to sort them by color. If we are sorting I only use 2-3 colors until he gets the hang of it.

I have also tried to do science experiments with all the kiddos at home. One day we made homemade ice cream in a bag (I’ll have to do a post about our homemade ice cream)! That was tasty and fun for all of us! We also tried to do a walking rainbow. We saw how temperature changes an ice cube. I wanted to try to do coloring carnations, but I didn’t want to physically go into the store to buy them so we didn’t do that. I want to light up a light bulb with a potato with them! I think they would love it.

Some of my favorite things to work on math at home is Starbursts, M&Ms, or Jelly Beans. Each has different colors so it allows us to work on patterns, addition, subtraction, and grouping. The best part is the kids get to eat their math! Of course you could choose healthier options or choose not to let them eat the candy, but that’s the fun part! Let them go outside and exercise after to burn the sugar off! Take them on a scavenger hunt. Then everyone gets exercise and you get to enjoy the outdoors at the same time. It doesn’t have to be a super structured scavenger hunt. Look for different bugs. Find one you don’t know, take a picture of it and research it with the kiddos. Find things that are a certain color (i.e. something red, something blue, something green, etc.). Look for a certain tree or a pine cone or acorn. Make it fun!

More ideas to come!