Five activities that keep your kid engaged at home

Are you a parent and worried about keeping your kid engaged and also in developing his/ her skills? During this lockdown phase every parent is thinking about utilizing this time in a productive way for kids. Schools are closed, offices are closed with limited work, and parents are at home, which means they have plenty of time.

Here we are to help you, we have listed out some of the activities that will help you in keeping your kid busy, assist your child in developing his/her motor skills, benefits the child in enhancing vocabulary and also in refining their numeracy part.

Test your vocabulary

Trust me, kids find this activity very interesting and also keeps them engage. Here is how you can play with your kids

• Take a bowl/ basket, whatever you have at home. Prepare alphabet chits, fold it and put it in your basket. Ask your kid to pick up chit from the basket. Then check the alphabet, written on that chit. Say for an example, the chit has written ‘C’ on it.

Figure 1 Bowl with alphabet slips

• Now your kid, needs to find the object starting with ‘C’ and the object must be there in the home. The kid needs to reach there and speak out the word. For example the kid can bring his/her toy car. And then the kid will say C for CAR.

Figure 2 Kid showing the object starting with C

• .Repeat this game with your kid. You and your kid will surely find it beneficial and interesting.

Learning outcome:

This activity will help in refining your kid’s vocabulary, speech and also his/ her motor skills.

Shapes Tambola (Indian Bingo)

This activity is good for your kid in recognizing shapes, colours and numbers. Here is how you will be able to play.

• Prepare a Bingo ticket as shown in the image below. I have used MS PowerPoint to prepare it you can use it too. Here are the steps:

a.       Prepare a grid of 5 rows and 6 columns.

b.      Download 5 or 6 shapes with different colours. (I have used circle, rectangle, triangle, oval/ egg, heart, moon (crescent)).

c.       Place them randomly in each grids

d.      Put a random number on top of each shape

Figure 3 Shapes Tambola ticket 

•  Now, you are ready with your tickets. And here comes the real game. Call out any shape with colour, (for example White Star).
• Now, ask your child to locate it and speak out the number written in the same grid. (for example the answer in this case is 66)

Learning outcome:

This activity will help in refining your kid’s numeracy, recognizing shapes and colors.

Add/ subtract me

If you ask your kid in doing maths exercises, he/ she will probably refuse it. But here is an interesting way to convince the kid.

• Take 2 bowl/ basket, whatever you have at home. In one bowl prepare number chits, fold it and put it in the bowl. In another bowl, prepare slips with minus (-) or plus (+) sign written in it, fold it and put it in the bowl.

Figure 4 Number slips (bowl 1)

Figure 5 Addition and subtraction slips (bowl 2)

•  Ask your child to pick 2 number slips (means from bowl 1) and 1 slip from bowl 2. Check the numbers he/she has picked from bowl 1 and mathematical operator (means ‘+’ or ‘-’) from bowl 2.
•  Ask the child to do the problem. (For example, let’s say the kid got 3 and 2 from bowl 1 and ‘-’ from bowl 2.
•  The kid needs to say the answer 1. (as 3-2=1)

Learning outcome:

This activity will help in refining your kid’s numeracy, counting and basic mathematical operations (i.e. addition and subtraction)

Link the words

‘Link the words’ is an exciting way to boost up your kid’s vocabulary, also enhances his memory skills. Here is how you can play it with your kid.

• Choose a category (e.g. fruits, vegetables, trees, house etc.) in which you and your child is comfortable. Let’s assume you choose fruit as the category.
• Then start with your kid to name a fruit. Let’s say the kid says ‘Mango’.
• Next is your turn you will have to add another fruit name (for example Apple), and then you have to form the chain and say ‘Mango Apple’.
• Then next is your kid’s turn which means, the kid will have to add another fruit name and continue the chain (which means the kid may say ‘Mango Apple Pineapple’.
• Keep the chain going and observe, how many fruits the kid can remember. Try to teach the kid at least 1 or 2 vocabulary words like this.

Learning outcome:

This activity will help in refining your kid’s numeracy, counting and basic mathematical operations (i.e. addition and subtraction)

Guess the object

‘Guess the object’ will definitely benefit you in spending quality time with your kid. This will improves your child’s intelligence, knowledge and understanding of the world. Let’s check how we can play this:

• Pick an object you want your child to guess (Let’s assume you choose APPLE)
• Hide it behind your back, such that your child should not be able to see the object
• Give the child clues about the object. For example you can say:

a.       It’s a fruit and red in colour

b.      This fruit is sweet in taste

c.       An ‘……’ a day keeps the doctor away

d.      This fruit starts with ‘A’

e.       And so on. Continue till the kid answers

• Next would be your kid’s turn to hide the object and you’ll be guessing the object
• Keep playing and keep your child engaged J

Learning outcome:

This activity will help in developing your child’s memory skill.

I hope you all find these activities interesting. Comment in the section below if you want any help or if you have any suggestions.