Think of these as starter family home activities to get your ideas going. There are opportunities everywhere for teaching and learning.

Toddler and Elementary Reading Program

  1. Read to your child often. Make a pleasant experience of the event, being sure the session is relaxed and unhurried. Let your child choose a favorite story and explain pictures and answer questions about it.
  2. Begin talking to your child from infancy. Make sounds, call attention to sounds and connect them with objects and events. Listen and encourage conversation. Answer questions patiently and as promptly as possible.
  3. Encourage the reading of signs, posters—everything. 
  4. Read aloud from ordinary books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements. Your child will begin to recognize the fact that the printed word is a part of everyday life that conveys useful, interesting and amusing information. Set a good example by reading yourself in the child’s presence. 
  5. Introduce your child to the wonders of the public library at an early age. Subscribe to a children’s magazine. Children love the idea of having their very own periodical. 
  6. Make certain the reading area is comfortable and well lit. 
  7. Search out the better television programs for children. Take the opportunity to watch and discuss some of them with your child. When words are shown, ask that they be read to you or you read them to the child. 
  8. Hang up a large chalkboard on which to write messages. Have a family bulletin board, too, and occasionally pin up cartoons and short magazine articles you think your child will enjoy. 
  9. Encourage the writing and addressing of personal greeting cards, invitations and thank-you notes, writing your grocery lists, putting names in your address book. Suggest a backyard “mailbox” for exchanging regular letters with the child next door. Write notes and letters to your children. 
  10. Word games like “Scrabble” can help increase your child’s vocabulary and improve spelling. 
  11. If at any age your child seems “turned off” by reading, don’t make an issue of it. Casually leave “irresistible” books around-–books on whatever the child’s current interests are.

Preschool Math Activities

  1. Give your child practical experience in using mathematics at home. Mention the size of containers, such as pints of cream and half-gallons of milk. Encourage help when you bake, lay carpet or tile, or seed or fertilize the lawn, and allow your child actually to measure ingredients, areas or quantities of material. 
  2. Before a shopping trip, have your child read newspaper ads and price the cost of items to be purchased. 
  3. Encourage comparison of prices and quantities marked on containers to determine the best buys. Allow the child to purchase an item and figure out the change to be received. Bingo, dominoes, toy telephones, card games, board games, calendars and clocks with large numbers all can help familiarize your child with the world of numbers. 
  4. Put your preschool child’s counting ability to work. In preparation for meals, let the child count out forks for the table, dinner napkins, pieces of cake or any other quantity. 
  5. If your child is having difficulty with multiplication tables, buy or make flash cards and use them on a regular basis. Children will enjoy giving answers they know and will learn more complex problems through drill.

Encouraging Creative Arts Activities

  1. Keep your child supplied with sheets of paper, crayons, finger paints, modeling clay, burlap, paste, marking pens, scraps of cloth, Styrofoam, yarn, scraps of wood and water colors. Provide work space for the child and encourage the creation of works of art. 
  2. Proudly display your child’s best creations on the wall, door or bulletin board. 
  3. Encourage musical activity in the home or on family trips. Family songs are fun for everyone. 
  4. Let the child be a music maker as well as a listener. A toy piano, drum, tonette, tuned bells or mouth organ can help teach the rudiments of rhythm and tone. 
  5. If your child plays an instrument, help budget practice time and make uninterrupted practice time available. Listen to those tunes the child thinks are good. Encourage your child to perform. Genuine praise does wonders. 
  6. To encourage creative writing, jot down stories your child tells, songs “made up.” Show them to the child later. Suggest they be illustrated and “published”for grandparents or other relatives at Christmas. 
  7. Be subtle in helping your child learn. Keep things light-hearted and fun, never grim or tense. Make learning fun for both of you. And remember, listen to your child. Don’t stifle curiosity. Don’t brush off questions, or after a while you won’t be asked.

Improve Grades in Social Studies 

  1. Help your child learn all that is possible about the natural world in which we live. Encourage curiosity in the area of geography, land formations, climate and weather. Discuss current events; encourage the reading of newspapers and periodicals and the watching of local and national news telecasts. 
  2. Provide your child with social studies research materials, including a dictionary, atlas, globe and almanac. Road maps are excellent for plotting trips and helping the child understand geographic relationships. 
  3. Widen your child’s horizons with visits to the airport, the courthouse, a museum, a historic landmark, a factory, a newspaper-—whatever is available in your community. Some television stations and local newspapers schedule guided tours. 
  4. On trips, provide your youngster with notebooks and pencils. 
  5. Encourage the child to draw pictures and make notes of things of interest along the way. Help with the collection of samples to take back to the classroom. 
  6. Discuss the world of work with your child, including the demands of various jobs and professions and the work and training necessary to qualify. Stress the idea that training can begin at an early age and that attention to school work is vital for future success. 
  7. Teach your child the importance of being a good citizen by discussing at the dinner table local candidates for public office, issues and problems of the community. Help your child focus on judging each person individually rather than by race, creed or color. Don’t be afraid to guide talk with your teenagers into the fascinating realm of ideas. Junior high and high school students love “bull sessions” on serious topics.

Getting Ready for Science in K-12 Grades

  1. Stimulate your child to make use of all senses in discovering the surrounding world. Encourage curiosity about the feel of textures and materials, characteristic smells, sounds, tastes, weights and sizes of things. 
  2. Children are normally curious and should be encouraged to find answers to questions by patient observation and through the use of references, either at home or in libraries and museums. Let the child manipulate and learn about familiar objects: a dripping faucet, the household water system, a nutcracker, an old doorbell, discarded appliances, locks and door hinges, household plants and gardens. When making household repairs, servicing the family car or other domestic equipment, include your child as an observer. 
  3. Work with your child on projects such as making bird feeders, caring for pets, setting up a home weather station, observing the night sky and preparing a family vegetable or flower garden. Encourage your child to be a “collector.” Provide a place for collections, even if it is just a dresser drawer, a soapbox or a shelf in the bookcase.

Health, Safety, and Physical Fitness for Children

  1. Your child’s health is reflected in most areas of schooling and should be cared for by you and your physician and dentist. Any condition of a serious nature should be reported to the school. You should continue to emphasize personal hygiene and cleanliness. Diet is of prime importance. A good breakfast to start off each day is important. Follow through on eye and ear screenings and routine immunizations. 
  2. See to it that your child has enough sleep each night and is properly dressed for weather conditions. The child should be kept home from school if definite signs of illness such as a rise in temperature, a suspicious rash or a severe cough are noted. 
  3. Encourage the habit of vigorous daily activity. Active play builds strong muscles, which are basic to good health and posture. Join your child in active games and stress good sportsmanship. 
  4. Children should be taught their full addresses and telephone numbers at an early age. Select the safest, most direct walking route to school and check to see that your child uses it. Explain any traffic hazards along the way. Teach your child to stop at the curb or at the side of the road; to look in both directions to be sure there is no traffic or that traffic has stopped before crossing to WALK across the road in the crosswalk, and to obey a student patrol or adult crossing guard if there is one. Warn your child never to get into a car or accept a ride with a stranger. 
  5. If your child has to travel to and from school on a bus, emphasize the fundamentals of bus safety: Stand well back from the road while waiting for the bus. Always remain seated while the bus is moving. Keep head and arms inside the bus at all times. When it is necessary to cross the street to board the bus, teach your child to STOP, LOOK and then WALK across the street to the bus only after the bus driver has signaled that it is safe.

Does your child “hate” a certain subject? Find out why. Your child may need extra help. Maybe your own aversion to a certain subject has caused it. Seek the reason behind the dislike, then enlist the teacher’s help so that you can work together to conquer this.


Source:

Adapted from the Arizona Education Association.