With the kids cooped up at home during a school break or the pandemic lockdown, parents look for home activities that are fun and educational. Discover how play-based learning can benefit your child and some at-home activities you can get started on.
What is Play-based Learning?
A play-based program leverages a child's natural motivation to play and place it in a learning context. In such a program, children experiment, discover, solve problems, and explore. Such learning is child-initiated with the support of the teacher. While the child is playing, the teacher can ask questions that encourage learning, prediction, and problem-solving.
Child development expert Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek revealed that humans learn best with these four pillars present:
1. Learner is engaged
2. Social interaction when learning
3. Learners play an active role in the learning environment
4. Meaningful information
Play-based learning ensures the learner is engaged, social, and mentally active. A play-based curriculum has been found to influence grammar positively. Further, neuroscientists found that playing activates the brain so that testing, worksheets, and memorization cannot The Conversation reported.
Easy Home Activities that Encourage Play-Based Learning
Buzzfeed Nifty shared kid-friendly DIY activities with materials that can be found at home. These activities incorporate play-based learning like sensory play and encourage creativity. Kids will spend a lot of time enjoying these activities:
DIY Lava Lamp
Materials:
- vase of water
- cup of oil
- food coloring
Add a few drops of food coloring in oil, then mix. Children will see how the colors separate from the oil. Finally, add this mixture to the water. This is a good activity to teach kids that water and oil do not mix. You can teach them the difference between homogenous (saltwater, sugar water) and heterogeneous (water and oil) mixtures for older kids.
DIY Ocean Sensory Activity
For parents of toddlers, try this easy sensory play activity.
Materials:
- food coloring
- ice
- sea creatures toys
Add 1-3 drops of blue food coloring in a bit of water to create the ocean. Add ice and the sea creatures for a fun sensory play.
Quarantine Activity: Bubble Mountains
Test your children's oral motor and fine motor skills with this home activity:
Materials:
- dish soap
- bowl of water
- straws
Add dish soap in a bowl of water. Let the kids start blowing into the mixture. To create even bigger bubble mountains, let the kids put the straw's end inside the bubbles.
Kitchen Experiment: Rice Chickies
Materials:
- mung bean sticky rice
- alternatively, you can use cooked rice with yellow food coloring and coconut milk sweet
- chocolate nibs for the eyes
- pretzels for the little beak
- seaweed for nest
- macadamia nuts for their eggs
- a side of strawberries
Put two rice balls on top of each other. Add the facial features and combine the chickies in a nest with the eggs. Add berries when plating for creative snack kids can make.
a sweet and creative way to make snacktime exciting and new
Flower Sandwiches
Materials:
- PB and J sandwiches
- Sandwich or cookie cutter
Use the cookie cutter to create a flower shape. Make slices for the petals and add a berry to the center. It is a good time to teach kids that the seeds go in the center of the flower.
