Learning Activities For Children

I am amazed at how many educational websites will give parents and teachers ideas about teaching preschool children to safely cross the road by themselves!!!! Most children are simply not mature enough to cross the road by themselves before the age of 10, I would say 8 at the very youngest.

I believe that the most important traffic safety we can teach our young children is to hold their parent’s or caregivers hands while crossing the street. I have a two year old who often refuses to hold my hand while crossing the street so I know this can be a hard concept to teach! Children at this age crave independence and often act on impulse. And they simply do not understand the consequence of being hit by a car.

One activity that is likely to be helpful in teaching your child this concept is to gather up toys such as cars, little people and traffic lights and signs. If you do not have these types of toys draw or print off clip arts of these objects.

Choose a time when your child is relaxed and playful and set up your traffic scene together. Talk about the cars driving on the road, the cars stopping at a stop sign or light and then have your ‘people’ walk across the ’street’ holding hands. Be sure to emphasize that you and your child walk across the street it is important that he holds your hand.

Play this game often to help your children remember to hold a grownups hand while crossing the street.

Bookmark to:

Filed under: *Early Elementary, *Preschool, *Toddler, Social Development | No Comments »

My two year old daughter loves to count to 10 but sometimes along the way she gets all the numbers mixed up. So we make up some fun ways to count to 10 together such as clap our hands 10 times, spin around in circles 10 times, hop 10 times etc…

I would love to hear about other fun ways to count. Leave a comment!

Bookmark to:

Filed under: *Preschool, *Toddler, Math and Matching | No Comments »

                                                         Obtain a variety of pictures from magazines or look online for clipart that can be matched to form rhyming pairs. For example, pictures of a ‘mouse’ and a ‘house’.

Tape or glue the pictures to squares of cardstock and use the cards to play a memory type game. For younger children have the pictures faced up and have the children point to the rhyme matches. Once that skill is aquired try playing the game with the pictures faced down!

Bookmark to:

Filed under: *Early Elementary, *Preschool, Literacy, Math and Matching | No Comments »

Here is a great activity you can do with those plastic easter eggs that you have left over from your egg hunts:

Aquire a variety of different coloured eggs and scatter all the halves on the floor or table and have your children match the colours together. For children who have not yet learned how to match colours just start out with a few colours and put the matching colours close to eachother. As your childs matching skills advance add more colours and mix the eggs up more. For older toddlers and preschoolers you may want to try plastic eggs with patterns.

My little girl who just turned two loves this game. After she makes a match we yell out what the egg colour is. 

Bookmark to:

Filed under: *Preschool, *Toddler, Math and Matching, Miscellaneous | No Comments »