Using Resources at Home to Encourage Learning

Using Resources at Home to Encourage Learning Children are always learning. As they play, they are busy discovering how things work in the world around them. Parents can encourage this learning process by providing some purposeful, hands-on activities using resources from around the house or inexpensive craft items. Letter activities: Use wooden craft sticks and fuzzy sticks (pipe cleaners) to make letters. Make the letters in your child’s name. Talk about how each letter is made with straight lines, curved lines, or both. Write each letter of your child’s name on a separate piece of paper. Also, draw pictures or choose a few fun stickers to place on a few additional sheets of paper. Crumple each paper into a ball and have a safe “snowball” fight indoors. Set a timer. When the game is over, open each snowball and ask your child to name the letter or picture. Spread a thin layer of flour, corn meal, or candy sprinkles in a small tray, pie pan, shallow bowl, or cookie sheet. Children can use their fingertips to draw letters or numbers in the tray. Gently shake the tray to spread the flour out again. Number activities: Make a sorting tray using a 6-cup muffin pan. Cut colored paper circles to fit in the bottom of each cup; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. You can sort small toys, mini erasers, colored counters, or pom poms by matching items to the colors in the cups. Children can build fine motor muscles by using a clothes pin to pick up the pom poms (or small items) to place them in the muffin cups. Build number skills by counting how many objects in all, if there is one in each cup, two in each, etc. Also, count and compare the number of items in two cups. Which cup/color has more? Which cup/color has less? How many items are there if add them together by counting both colors? Have your child help set the table and count the number of plates, forks, etc. Colors: Choose a color. Then have a scavenger hunt throughout the house to find items of that color. Fill an ice cube tray about 2/3 full of water in each compartment. Use food coloring to make a red, a yellow, and a blue compartment. Let your child use an eye dropper to mix colors in the other compartments. Literacy: When reading a story, say, “Let’s begin,” as you open the book and, “The end,” as you close the book. Review what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Also, moving your finger across the page as you read, will help your child learn to track from left to right as they learn to read. After you read the story, choose a letter. See how many times you can find that letter on a page. Fold a couple of sheets of paper in half and staple them on the fold to make a booklet. Draw pictures or let your child put stickers on each page. Ask your child to describe what is on the page, and write his or her words. This will help your child discover the link between written and spoken words. These are just a few ideas to add some intentional learning to the playful learning that your child does every day. Have fun! Check out this article on the Pre-K Pages website for more fun, learning ideas: https://www.pre-kpages.com/preschool-activities-to-do-at-home-or-in-the-classroom/ Here is another good resource: https://www.prekinders.com/home-learning-for-pre-k/