When my daughter turned 4 years old, she was active and always looking for things to do on her free time. I was not experience then, especially in looking for resources for children exposure. Along the way, I have learnt to note down some interesting activity that she can focus on.
Our primarily focus is to spend time with them during their growing up years. We want them to learn important life skills from us too. Home is the best place to learn because it's a safe place to improve and make mistake. Once they reach teenager years, they will have friends they want to spend time with. Therefore, in their early years, we want to build a strong and trusting relationship with them.
Below are some suggested activity you can easily do together with your children :-
1. Start a journal together with them. Note down their happiest and interesting moments. It will put a smile on their face when they read it again. It will remind them on memory they have with the family. You can print some photo and stick on the journal book. Pictures speak a thousand words. Your child learn to cherish things in life.
2. Write thank you card to people that matters to them. Make time to help them count the blessing and be thankful to people that matters to them. You can bring them to post office to post the card. Your children will have opportunity to learn about post office too. This can be a yearly affairs. It can be on every December.
3. Turn on your favourite music and dance with them! It's time to bring out the little child in you. Your children need to see you letting loose and have fun too!
4. Cycling around the neighbourhood. Along the way, teach them about road safety. Remember to have fun along the way and don't turn the outing to a lecture session. You can plan a biking trip with them. Let them map out the route. They will have change to exercise their judgement skill.
5. Make your own wrapping paper. You can use them to wrap birthday or Christmas gift.
6. Unleash your child creativity. Design a family photo album. Let your child select pictures they like and get some material ready . Spend couple of weekends with them to produce the album. They will be delighted as output comes alive!
7. Mark important dates and decorate it on the calendar. Plan to do list on that important dates. The first thing they might tell you is their birthday! My birthday is an important day! :-)
8. If you have more than one child, let them choose a topic and arrange a play during Christmas or weekends when grandparents is around. This will strengthen relationship among siblings. It will help them to work together too.
9. Choose a topic and do a project with them. For example if you child likes car, then you can help him build a car model. Find some material that you can use to build a model. Eg: Clay, cardboard, wood, newspaper etc.. It'll definately takes more than a weekend. Building a model from scratch involve a lot of trial and error. Your child will learn that perseverance is important to achieve the right outcome they want. This is an important life skill. The good news is you are there to encourage and support them.
10. Make salt dough together. You can create lots of things with salt dough. Fridge magnet, snow man, hand and finger print, animal or flower model and the list go on and on. Fridge magnets can be given away as a gift too.
To ensure the mixture turn out right involve adding, subtracting, measuring and judgement. Your child will learn maths concept like composition and measuring. Your child will have chance to practice their judgement skills too. Baking with them are fun too.
11. Play dress up with them. Take out some old clothes and look for material to enhance it. For example use fabric paint or pens to add new print on it, use ribbon and sew it to the edge of the collar etc. The process creates lots of fun and spark creativity.
12. Plan a camping trip. Let your children plan the activities. It will open up their world to nature and skills to survive with basic amenities.
13. Get a glass marker and let your child unleash their creativity on window or sliding door at home. You can clean it easily after that.
14. Organize play date with kids in different age. Let the older kids plan for treasure hunt. The older kids can exercise their leadership skills to lead the younger children. The young ones will learn teamwork to find the answer.
15. Decorate an old jewelry box.
16. Have a balloon or pillow fight.
17. Work with your child on your supermarket trip. Your child can learn about Mathematics in supermarket. They can learn about sorting, categorization and counting. Eg: Explain to your child that supermarket categories things and let your child direct you to the right aisle to pick up things according to your shopping list. It's exciting when they can find they favorite milk!
18. Let you child plan a meal (age appropriate). They will be thrilled to see what's on the dining table. For sure, it's a life skills that they need to learn.
19. Select a topic (general knowledge) and organize a show and tell. You can start with topic that interest them most. Show them informations (if they are young) and encourage them to share their point of view with you.
If you have an older child, let them do some research in the library and share their finding with you. Make sure you do your research too. Your children learn through modeling. If they know you put in effort, you will be very very surprise of the output from your children. In the long run, you are building a relationship where your child can talk to you about anything under the sun! You will become their friend.
20. Imaginative play. Suppose your child tells you that he's a doctor. You can play along with them imagining all the possible situation in a doctors' life. Let them lead the play and act it out.
Or your child tells you that she's a princess. You can act as a servant and serve them. It's fun to see them pretending. It helps them in expressing their thought and enrich their vocabulary. They might stop, blinking their eyes and tell you to pause just to ask you how to describe certain thing. This will lead to teaching moment.
I hope I have enriched your imagination and ideas. I hope you will enjoy some suggested activities above as we do. Please tailor the activities to you child's age. Learning should be fun.
I hope you can take some time to share with me here if you have tried them. Or please share with me if you have other fun ideas.
Have Fun!
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