Homeschooling is a difficult process for many parents, as well as their kids. A lot of parents don’t feel like forcing worksheets on their kids, because they can learn much more naturally through developing everyday skills. These 5 activities will help your children develop the cognitive skills that they need to help them throughout their life, while teaching them math, vocabulary, science, and even reading.

 

Baking

Baking is a skill that can help kids learn math in an incredibly fun way. You’d be surprised how quickly kids will catch on to fractions if the fruits of their labor are edible.
 

Alphabet Search

The Alphabet Search game can be played anywhere, and is easy to create yourself. Start with drawing any letter on a piece of paper, and then the kids can search for objects they use at home that begin with that letter. Pretty simple, but very fun. Your kids will be able to recognize the sounds letters make by using items that they are more familiar with.
 

Planting flowers or a vegetable garden

Planting flowers seems like an innocent enough task, but let your kids help you for a great at-home science lesson. Not only will your kids have a blast playing in the dirt and planting seeds, but you will be able to explain to them in detail how their actions are helping create a brand new life.
 

Pony Bead bracelets

Acrylic pony beads are so bright and colorful that kids are immediately drawn to them. Your kids can practice making a bracelet out of the pony beads, and they can create a cool pattern with the different colors. Pattern recognition is one of the most basic math necessities for kids to learn, so making bracelets can be very rewarding.
 

Sing songs like “Down By the Bay…”?

“Down By the Bay…” is a rhyming song that has been keeping kids having fun, while learning rhyming skills, for years. The lyrics are easy to follow, and kids can easily insert any two words into the blanks that rhyme. When the kids complete their verse, then they can start the song all over again with two new words that rhyme. The best part about the song is that the kids get to create their own verses.

 
Down by the bay

Where the watermelons grow

Back to my home

I dare not go

For if I do

My mother would say,

“Have you ever seen a ____

Wearing a ____?”

 

Learning at home can bore kids if parents don’t sneak in their lessons, like some parents have to sneak vegetables into their kids’ dinner. It doesn’t have to be a difficult process, however. Most kids are more than willing to soak up knowledge if it is done in a fun way.

 

Travis Newville

Breckenridge, Michigan