Monday means one thing…school. But before you all groan, I’ve got some ideas here for making learning more fun:
- Little ones like to pretend by copying adults, so get some toy money and let them set up shop with your tinned goods, toys or just about anything else! Simple money maths, like giving change, teaches counting, adding, subtracting (find the difference) and as they get older the numbers can go to 20, 50 or 100 and use multiples (3 tins at 5p each, etc).
- Snap! There are hundreds of printables for this, or you can buy matching cards, so for little ones you could play with numbers and pictures or for older ones, try equivalent fractions…so you can play snap, memory and match the pairs.
- Monopoly. My inspiration for this post was playing Monopoly with my daughter at Christmas…She’s won every game (bar one) since she was 8 years old! It’s basically good for the same reason the shop thing is; money is a visual representation of the maths, making it easier to comprehend. You can get Junior and Party versions of Monopoly for little ones, but we never did. Using an adult board means they deal with numbers in the hundreds and thousands… a bonus is you can get them for almost anything your family is interested in, From Stranger Things to Disney (which is the one I had for Christmas…thanks Mum & Dad! 😉 )
This is truly limitless and there are tons of books for experiments to do at home, but these are a few toys I like:
- Fossil excavation toys where kids dig a toy dinosaur or fossil out of some rock-like substance…you can teach them about fossils, dinosaurs, archaeology and other things with these.
- Geology: Hundreds of things from volcanic rock to crystals and sand, even jewellery-making kits exist to help with this one. Incidentally, the same company who do the fossil toy above, also do a mineral excavation one.
- The classic chemistry set. Enough said.
- Lemon or Potato clocks are impressive for adults as well as children…you really can use kitchen stock for batteries!
I could go on like this for days, so I’ll leave it for now (I think I’ve filled your brains with enough ideas!)…maybe I’ll do a part 2…..?
Have a great Monday!