Learning activities for children work as stimuli to achieve educational objectives. Thus, they enhance your child’s development in a fun way, in addition to promoting meaningful interactions.
Childhood is full of learning and discoveries, most of them being the result of play. However, it is possible to further enable child development in all its aspects through targeted activities.
Some of these aspects of development are: physical, cognitive, social and emotional and linguistic. In each of these areas, learning activities for children help develop essential life skills.
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Those who believe that activities with a pedagogical approach only happen at school may want to review this misconception. From the first months of life on, you can provide favorable conditions for expanding your little one’s knowledge and abilities.
After all, interaction with the environment is responsible for much of our education, especially in early childhood. In that matter, the family is the most influential group, alongside the school. That’s why it’s worth adding guided activities to your child’s routine.
With that in mind, we’ve separated 6 learning activities tips organized by age. Take a look!
6 learning activities tips
1. Reading and Repeating
If your child is over 12 months old, you can prepare them for the beginning of the most productive stage of language development. To boost their language skills, you can practice this activity every day, introducing reading habits into your household routine.
Start by inviting your child to read a story somewhere comfortable. Encourage them to repeat words and name the pictures they see in the book. Practice this exercise with other books they are already familiar with.
Encouraging them to repeat words is great to develop vocabulary, as well as paving the way for an early interest in reading and writing. Also, you will experience very important moments of interaction to strengthen your connection with your child.
2. Freehand Doodles
This activity is suitable for children over 2 years old. The goal is to foster your child’s creativity, as well as using full sentences. Besides that, this activity can also strengthen motor development – doodling is an excellent exercise for fine motor skills.
It’s simple: give your child sheets of paper and crayons and let them draw freely. Then ask them to explain what their masterpiece is. See if they can already come up with complete sentences and put them together. Engage in a dialogue about the topic, encouraging conversational skills.
3. Sorting by Color
Starting at 2 years old, your child will likely begin to develop sorting and counting skills, as well as color recognition. You can engage with this activity, which only requires:
- Adhesive tape in different colors;
- Paper clips in matching colors.
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First, show them how to make squares on the floor using the tape — make one of each color. Then, spread out the clips and explain to your little one that they should classify them within these squares, according to their color.
In order to make the moment more fun, play some very lively music. You can also help them count the clips in each square as they sort them.
4. Estimating Quantities
Has your little one already turned 3 years old? So, this playful activity will be a lot of fun! You will need:
- 5 plastic containers;
- Balls in different colors (or any matching object);
- Paper sheets;
- Crayons.
Place the five containers in front of your child, each with a different amount of objects inside (from 1 to 5). Ask them how many balls they think are inside each container. Take this time to explain that different numbers represent larger and smaller quantities.
Ask them to write down their estimates on a sheet, while you also write yours down on another. At the end, take off the balls and count together to see what the real amount is. Compare how many guesses each one got right, setting up a suspenseful vibe before each revelation. Remember that curiosity is a great ally to the learning process!
5. Making Sentences
This is another learning activity for children who are already familiarizing themselves with writing and reading. To start, provide them with several cards with high-frequency words in everyday sentences, such as:
- The pronouns “I”, “you”, “he” and “she”;
- The verbs “to be” and “to have” and their third person conjugations;
- Some numerals, adjectives and nouns (“one”, “ball”, “happy”, “beautiful”).
The game is simple: read the words on the cards and ask your child to make sentences with them, such as “she is happy”. Make sure they can do it on their own and help out along the process.
Then, hand them a sheet and a pencil and ask them to write the same sentence assembled with the cards. Thus, they will train their writing skills and begin to familiarize themselves with the literacy stage.
6. Cheating
Board games are excellent for cognitive, social and emotional, and even motor development. At about 5 years old, your child probably has the attention span and concentration skills needed for these games. So they are welcome to learn rules.
First step is to choose a board game suitable for children of this age group. Before starting the game, explain the rules, making sure they are clear to your child.
Ask them questions to make sure they understand, and tell them they will have to pay close attention to everyone following them. Then just call the whole family to play and have fun!
However, at some point, break the rules of the game and see if your little one notices and says something. Take the opportunity to reinforce the importance of following rules. This is also important to introduce them to school life, as it will help them understand the need for respecting guidelines given by authorities, such as teachers and principals.
After reading about our learning activities, you already have good material to boost your child’s educational skills. As you have seen, they are great allies of child development, for they enhance the processes of discovery and knowledge acquisition, as they are directed towards specific learning goals.
Have you enjoyed the recommendations? On Kinedu, you will find many other suggestions for learning activities for children aged 0 to 6 years old. Download the app for FREE here!
