Many times throughout the day tasks need to be completed that are little or no interest to young children. Such times as homeschooling a sibling, making lunch, or completing chores are made so much easier if you are prepared with simple, fun, and educational activities a young child can do on her own. Bonus if the activities include simple items you already have around the house or dollar store items to store away in a box.
Silly Putty. Children love squeezing, squishing, and stretching silly putty. You can find silly putty at your local dollar store. It is just a fun and easy way to occupy idle hands.
Play Dough. Provide a few cans of play dough and allow your child’s imagination to soar. If you want to reinforce lessons, simply assign your child to create numbers or letters out of the play dough. A child can create a zoo, her own name, make pretend cookies, or whatever you or your child can come up with! It is a lovely thing when a young mind and hands are fully engaged.
Measuring Cups. Provide a few bowls, different sized measuring cups, and beads, rice or oatmeal. Pro tip, cover your table with a plastic table cover for a quick and easy clean up. Many children just enjoy scooping, however, you can add challenges to keep your child from becoming bored. For example, ask your child how many scoops of the 1/8 cup will fill up the 1 cup measuring cup.
Building Toys. Any type of blocks or building toy will work. Challenge your child to create a house, a car, or even a city.
Drawing a Story Game. Children love to hear and tell stories. Provide your child the story cubes in the activity pack. The child will roll the cube and the story begins! Have your child draw scenes from her story to “read” to you later.
Water Coloring. Kids love to paint! One drawback is the mess associated with painting. To minimize this, provide watercolor pencils or watercolor books that only require plain water and a paint brush.
Magnets. Magnets are not only fun but easy to clean up. However, this activity is NOT for children under the age of three or too young to understand that these items do not belong in her mouth. You can uses science magnet kits that you purchase or provide letter and number magnets.
Tangrams. Tangrams are expand a child’s creative instincts while teaching math concepts. They can also be used to create images such as houses, cats, and people. Provide paper or plastic tangrams and allow your child to simply create. However, you can find templates to keep your child busy as well.
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Giveaway
Another (home) school year is about to start! Many homeschool moms are busy preparing and finalizing curriculum choices for the upcoming school year. And many are trying to stick to their tight homeschool budget, hoping it will cover all the books and resources they will need.
Winning a gift card to a major online homeschool retailer would surely help you check some things off of your curriculum wish list. Well, I’ve gotten together with a great group of homeschool bloggers to bring you a chance to do just that! Three homeschool families will win a $200 gift card to Rainbow Resource Center!!
We know homeschooling can put financial strain on families – whether it’s from living on one-income or buying curriculum for multiple children – the financial aspect of it can be stressful. Our hope is that we can bless a few homeschool families (although we wish we could bless many more) so they can buy curriculum, books, games, puzzles, or whatever educational supplies they might need, with a little less stress.
To enter for your chance to win, simply use the Rafflecopter form below to enter. Now I know this is quite a few entries, but each of these bloggers has generously chipped in their own money to make this giveaway possible, so I hope you will take the time to do all of the entries. And hey, the more entries you do, the better your odds are of winning!
Giveaway ends July 30, 2021 at 11:59pm ET. Must be at least 18 years of age. Must be a resident of U.S. or Canada to enter. Selected winners will have 48 hours to respond to email notification to claim their prizes or another winner will be drawn. By entering this giveaway, you agree to be added to the email lists of the participating bloggers (see the Terms & Conditions on the Rafflecopter form for the complete list).