Educational and fun at Home Activities for Your Kids

Let me start out by saying I hope all the mamas had a great Mother’s Day!  We work so hard and our jobs are never done. Its tiring and rewarding all rolled into one package that we would never trade in-so bizarre when you think about it, right?

So, home life still continues to be super busy for us.  We have been working on continuing a lot of the skills we were trying to master in the previous weeks.  For instance, Jamison is working on his letters daily so we are doing games and activities related to that.  Jewel is slowly learning how to read, spell and add.

In terms of Educational Activities:

• • We have made our animal craft alphabet all the way up to L.

    

  • We have started playing Minute To Win It  with letter flash cards where we have to take turns and identify as many letters as possible in a minute.  For the adults, we have to identify the letter and say the silliest word we can think of that starts with the letter. This is just so we aren’t finding the game too easy and beating the kids.  It also makes us all end up laughing really hard which is more entertaining and therefore keeps the kids willingly participating.
  • We walked around the block with a notepad.  I had all the letters of the alphabet listed and told the kids they had to find each letter and we could cross it off as we went.  This was a cute little task.  It worked well for both kids.  Jewel is slowly learning how to read and having her sound out letters on signs was great!  Jamison is just learning what the names of each letter are, so for him, this is good repetition.  This activity also allowed us to get out, move around and get fresh air.  A lot of the places they found letters were on license plates of parked cars so I had to keep reminding them not to touch anyone’s cars-that was fun!  I’m not sure what people thought if they saw us hanging around outside their car but luckily no one said anything to us.  Oh well, the things we are willing to do for the sake of our kid’s education!
  • I had the kids work together to find a item in the house for each letter of the alphabet and bring it to the board where I had the alphabet written.  With each item found, they had to identify the corresponding letter so we could  cross it off.  This was a good task for the kids to practice team work and brainstorm and again reinforce their letters.  They were both really into it.  They handled it like a game more than a school assignment which again is fantastic for willing participation.

• • Jewel at 5 is doing more math.  I’m showing her how to use her fingers or objects to count so she can get the correct answer.  She is also reinforcing her writing skills of numbers and letters.
  • I am having Jewel write daily and I can’t say she loves it because she finds it to be challenging, but she is slowly getting better and not fighting with me as much about doing it.  She wrote Mother’s Day cards out, writes in our bean seed journal daily, and writes out words for her brother to see which letter they start with.  These, as well as many other tasks I have her do throughout the day.  I always have her look at letters to see if she can read them or sound them out.  I also encourage her to learn so she can read her own books, play games on the ipad or do anything else she wants without help.  She’s buying into it thankfully!  It helps that she is impatient in that respect.
  • We did three science experiments this week:  one about the membrane of an egg and it’s permeability.  Another about how plants take up nutrients and water.  The kids were interested in all of them since they were experiments that they could see,  some had colors, and others they were permitted to touch.

1. The first was the egg submerged in vinegar .  It soaked up so much vinegar because it was in a glass of vinegar for 6 days.  The vinegar refreshed daily.  The egg grew almost twice the size of a regular egg and due to the excess fluid it held, it “bounced.”  It was very fragile though, which Jewel encountered quickly when she burst it in her hand.  Another interesting observation about soaking the egg was how the shell broke down and was almost completely gone by the 6th day due to the acidic vinegar. In conclusion, we found that the membrane allows for items to pass through it to nourish a growing baby bird.
2. The second experiment, was the old vinegar and baking soda rocket launch.   I made a rocket from an empty bottle.  I taped 3 pencils around it to form a stand.  I then filled it a bit with vinegar.  I took some plastic wrap and loosely wrapped baking soda in the plastic and placed that in the bottle.  Once I had the baking soda wrap inside, I placed a cork on top and shook the bottle to let the baking soda mix with the vinegar and form the reaction.  I did this fast and stepped back while waiting for the pressure to build and the rocket to blast off.  It was so awesome to see the rocket blast into the sky and I definitely scored points on the kids’ meter of cool mom with this one!
3. The last experiment was having celery in a few inches of  food-colored water for 3 days.  Our celery didn’t have any leaves on it, so we didn’t notice them changing color, however, when we cut the celery length-wise, we did see the the same colors at the top of the stalk.  The kids thought that was cool.  They understand this as the celery “drinking” the water and  the water traveling throughout the plant as needed.

• • We had family building time with some DIY cardboard stackers which was both fun and easy for all ages.

• We built with our new dominoes set and crashed it down-we are newbies so this should be fun as we get more skilled and obtain more dominoes.

In terms of Entertaining Activities:

• • We cooked with Made by Me Cooking School.  We made delicious Aged Cheddar Cauliflower Soup and Chocolate Chip cookies.  I also cooked pizza from scratch which kids love to help especially with the dough and toppings.  If your name is Jamison, you like to eat all the toppings before the pizza is even compiled!  I’m sure most kids are this way though.

• • We had sensory fun with JELL-O.  I made the JELL-O with their favorite toys submerged (after thoroughly washing them )so they could dig them up.  They loved it.  Jewel said it was her favorite activity.  I think because she also got  to eat it so it earned extra points-playing + eating = double score!

• • • I made the kids an obstacle course with a balance beam, some throwing challenges, a bear crawl, a crab walk and cone weaving.  This was great for following directions and physical activity.
  • Since the beam was one of their favorite parts of the course, I thought a pool noodle joust duel would also be a great idea.  It was!  They loved hitting one another with the soft noodles and being up on top of the balance beam simultaneously.  I personally found it very entertaining and an escape from their bickering and requesting.

• • Jewel and I made nature artwork out out of gathered sticks we found in the yard and glued them on stock paper to form her name.  It came out pretty fabulous.  This was a task for her to use her fine motor skills while placing the sticks where they go to form the letters of her name.

• We painted some Mother’s Day gifts from Michael’s crafts.  I found these really pretty wooden bird feeders and thought it would be great to gift bird sightings as they hang them with seed inside.

  

• I made a cardboard family tree and hung laminated photos of each generation going back to the great grandparents only due to lack of space.  I added the kids photos into this family tree so they could trace their roots. It is always interesting to see how a child thinks and what they grasp.  The questions around family that they asked are very entertaining.  I think this is a great lesson because I want them to understand the importance of family and have a sense of pride in who they are and what they will be.

Now that the stay at home order has been lifted in our area and we can go to parks, I’m sure I will get back out to more places to take the kids with these blog posts.  It has been fun for me finding ways to entertain and educate them while at home though.  I hope you found this blog useful and were able to pull some ideas from it during this time.  I do like several of our activities and I intend to do them again and again between all of our outings.  I would love for you to shoot me any feed back that you have in terms of outdoor locations to take the kids.  I am always looking for new places and love referrals.  Thanks for your support.  As always, stay healthy!