Here are some ideas for you to do at home.
1. Interview a family member.
Taking the time out to learn more about the people in your family might surprise your children. Get them to dig deep and think about their questions and their responses. Save these interviews so you can read them again.
2. Measure the area and perimeter of each room in your home. What could you use to measure?
This is a math skill everyone needs to know how to do. Bonus points if they do the windows too so they’ll know what size curtains would work!
3. Graph the types of birds that you see outside your house or through the window. Tips for Identifying birds Once you’ve tracked your birds, make a graph to show how many of each kind were in your backyard during a certain period of time.
4. Be completely silent for 60 minutes, then write about the experience.
In a world where there are so many distractions, it’s amazing what we notice when we’re silent.
5. Write and mail a [real] letter to your teacher or principal or classroom peer. Address the envelope yourself.
Learning to write a letter and address an envelope is important even in the age of email. The thrill of getting a letter in the mail cannot be overestimated.
6. Build a hut out of blankets and chairs. Camp in it all day while you create stories to tell your family over dinner.
Human beings love telling stories. What’s a fable? Learn about them and read some here.
7. Learn Morse Code and use it to communicate with your whanau through walls and floors.
It’s pretty fun (and clever) to use Morse Code as a way to keep messages hidden.
8. Alphabetize the spices in your kitchen. What else could you put in alphabetical order?
Think only books can be alphabetised? The cook in your family will appreciate an organized spice cabinet.
9. Stay up late and stargaze.
When you don’t have to go to school in the morning, it can be okay to stay up late once in a while. Stretch out and watch the stars. If kids are curious about them, show them how to learn more.
10. Call a grandparent or older member of your whanau. Ask them to teach you the words to a song from their childhood days.
Just like #1, this is something that can really help kids learn more about the people in their lives.
11. Using household materials, build a working rain gauge, barometer, and wind vane.
Use this quiet time to tinker and consider how things are made.
12. Determine and chart the times that different liquids require to turn solid in the freezer.
You know that game where kids blindfold each other and then do taste tests with things like hot sauce and lemon juice? This one is less messy, or likely to start sibling arguments.
13. Design and build puppets that perform a show (Try a shadow puppet show!)
14. Construct a family tree.
Make this one wide-open and out of the box. Challenge your kids to create any kind of tree they want and include anyone who they consider to be family.
15. Learn new big words. Can you write them into a story? What other genre could you write? Meanwhile, yay for big words like: ubiquitous, onomatopoeia and ambiguous, immiscible etc.
16. Draw a map of your home and neighborhood.
In addition to being an important part of understanding how maps work, this activity helps kids define their world. Bonus tip: choose a safe place near your home on the map to meet family members in an emergency.
17. Sit silently for 15 minutes while you write down every sound you hear. When you are done, classify the sounds (high/low pitch, high/low volume, manmade v. naturally occurring, etc.).
Number 4 started kids off paying attention to silence. In this activity, let’s get kids making comparisons.
18. Create a Venn Diagram that compares and contrasts two people connected to you in any way.
Understanding that people who seem very different may have a lot of similarities shifts our perspective and creates room for kindness and understanding.
19. Learn, practice, and perform a magic trick.
From the bendable spoon to the floating card trick, learning magic tricks takes practice. But, when magic works, it’s the best.
20 Learn, practice, and tell three new jokes.
Everyone is going to need to laugh in the coming days of social distancing. Here are some jokes to get them started.
21. Use household materials to make and play stringed, percussion, and wind instruments.
Making instruments can be as easy as banging on a pot with a spoon, or you can try out these other ways to make instruments out of household goods.
22. Learn to shine a pair of shoes.
Shining shoes used to be more common when people wore sneakers only to do exercise, but it’s important to take care of the things you own.
23. Look, draw, look.
Find something that you can sketch. Use the look, draw, look method and remember your whispering, talking and shouting skills.
24. Think, notice and wonder. Look out of the window or in your driveway or garden. Observe carefully, what do you notice? What do you think? What do you wonder??
25. Make a rainbow for your window. Go for a walk and see how many rainbows you can see in windows.
