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5 Novel at-Home Play-based Learning Activities You Should Try

Helene Cue

Writer , New York , New York

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Feb 4, 2022 Young children learn 24/7. Everything they do, see, hear, or try is a form of learning. From listening to their parents talk to climbing the stairs in their house, they’re always learning something new or perfecting the skills they’ve already acquired. This is why it’s important to take an active part in their learning activities, even at home.

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Play-Doh & Props

When it comes to learning through play, you don’t want to use any spreadsheets or set any rules. Your job as a parent is to set the scene, give them the materials to use, and let them handle the rest.

Play-doh is one of the best materials to help children learn through play. Give your child some play-doh and props such as marbles, beads, dried spaghetti, or anything else they could use to create better shapes.

Play-doh activities will help them:

Develop their creativity
Improve their motor skills and coordination

If your children need an extra challenge, get involved by assigning them new shapes to make. Help them learn new vocabulary by talking about structure, shape, colors, and the end result.

The Pouring Station

Water is an amazing resource for helping children learn through play. It fascinates children in a way that makes them want to play with it for hours.

The pouring station game is a super-fun and easy-to-set-up activity all parents should try out.

Here’s what you’ll need:

One large storage container or a bathtub,
Different kinds of dishes, cups, jars, and scoops,
Some food coloring if you want to make it more fun.

Place all the smaller dishes into the storage container. Fill them up with water and add a few drops of food coloring into each one. Leave some of them empty.

Now, let the children start their experiment. Your kids will:

Pour water from one container to the other
Mix different colors
Learn how to handle dishes
Learn about water volume and dish capacity

Kids will literally learn hands-on as they experiment with water in a fun and engaging way. They won’t even need you to navigate the activity, which will make room for your other obligations such as work from home, cleaning the house, or making lunch.

Wall-Art

Children need to play in an open-ended way and not be limited by rules, guidelines, or strict instructions. Wall-art is one of the best ways to let your children play and learn while feeling free and creative.

All you need to set up a wall-art activity is:

Thick Kraft paper
Scotch or masking tape
Watercolors and brushes

Use the tape to stick the Kraft paper to the wall. Decide with what you want to challenge your children. For example, you could draw overlapping shapes or animals all over the Kraft paper and ask them to color it.

Your kids will practice finger coordination, fine motor skills, express their creativity, and turn the Kraft paper into their own little world.

This is especially fun if two children are playing together, so they can talk to each other, share ideas, and create together.

If this activity works for you, share your experience with other parents. You could write a blog post about it. A writing service that gives help writing a personal statement could help you write it, and you can use Canva or Pixabay to make it more visually appealing.

Building Words

Building Words is a great way to teach your children the ABC and improve their reading skills through play. The game is simple and can be adjusted based on the age and the level of knowledge of the child.

Here’s how to play the building words game:

Choose a word to play with (e.g., birthday).
Spell it out fully on the Kraft paper you taped to the wall or a play board.
Rewrite the word over again, leaving out different letters each time (_irthday, bir_hd_y…).
Write the missing letters on post-it notes and ask your child to fill out the blank spots.

You can start by leaving out a single letter and slowly progress to leaving out several letters in the word.

Your kids will love to take the post-it notes and find the right spot for them. Make sure to choose a word they’ll love learning how to spell, such as their name, favorite animal, or cartoon character.

Matching Pairs

To develop your child’s cognitive skills through play, you could set up a playing field with matching pairs for them to put together.

There are different versions of this play-learn activity for kids you could use:

Take some Kraft paper and put it on the floor. Write some words on it (dog, man, shoe, pen, etc.). Find matching objects (a stuffed dog, a Lego man, someone’s shoe) and ask the child to match them by placing them on the written word.
Use a smaller bin or a storage container and fill it out with rice. Then, find matching pairs of objects around the house (e.g., cars, action figures, colorful hair clips, etc.) and bury them in the rice. Ask your child to dig up all the objects and find the matching pairs.
Take small dishes of different colors. Take some pom poms or colorful alphabet letters and put them all in one separate dish, Ask your child to match the color of the pom-poms or the alphabet letters to the color of the dish, and sort it all accordingly.

Your kids will love to place their hands on the objects, mix them, match them, and use their logics to complete the challenge. They’ll be learning about spelling, shapes, colors, textures, as well as improve their motor skills and cognition.

Final Thoughts

Helping your children learn and grow is something every parent wants to do. And, there’s no better way for doing it than by allowing your kids to play, experiment, and learn on the go.

Use the fun activities we’ve shared above to keep your kids active, busy, interested. They’ll love these play-learn activates and will ask for more every day.

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40 likes

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Helene Cue

Writer , New York , New York