12 Best Learning Activities For Kids

Play is one of the most effective ways where children can learn. Not only does it strengthen a child’s concentration, but it is also vital for preparing them for school as it underpins everything from the start of scientific thinking to learning social norms and interactions. Play offers a fun way to learn and it is incredibly essential for a young child. Play offers building blocks for childhood development as far as emotional intelligence, language, creativity, intellectual reasoning, and regulation are concerned.

The success of play as a learning activity is broken into five essential elements:

• Involving and element of make-believe
• Not having any set goals
• Must be enjoyable and fun
• Entailing active engagement
• Be voluntary and spontaneous

Here are some of the best learning activities for kids that are easy to do and fun.

12 Best Learning Activities For Kids

Sand Play

All kids love to lay in the sand. Sand play offers an excellent opportunity to strengthen the foundation of scientific learning, physical development, and developing self-confidence. Sifting, digging, pouring, and scooping teaches kids how things work, plus it builds coordination and muscles. When playing in the sand with friends, it also promotes teamwork, social dexterities, and sharing.

Solar System Activities

Kids love to learn about space. Nothing spells fun like planets, aliens from afar galaxies, and astronauts exploring the unknown. Some fun solar system projects that your kids will love involve solar system scavenger hunts, making their own planets with craft supplies, making their own planet mini books, making scale models of the solar systems, and more.

Water Play

Just like sand, kids can keep themselves busy for hours when engaging in water play. This activity allows them to experiment with simple concepts like volume in a safe space. Water play also teaches consequences of actions, strengthens hand-eye coordination as well as physical strength.

Role-Play And Dress-Up

Set aside a corner in your home for dress-up. You can place a box filled with old clothes, dress-up costumes, and toys like doctor’s kits for them to play with. This is bound to keep them busy for hours, plus it is loads of fun. Dress up assists kids with making sense of life as an adult.  It boosts their interests, social interaction, and playing different roles. It also reinforces vital self-care aspects of dressing themselves which is a vital part of primary school life.

Imaginative Play

All play must be imaginative which is the kind of play that comes naturally to most kids. Just leave your child in a space with a random selection of items and watch them play and dream up different scenarios. It is essential to give them time and a space for imaginative play where they can escape to a world of make-believe. Imaginative play is essential for intellectual reasoning and literacy skills. Plus, it boosts their sense of self and helps them with making sense of the world around them.

Play Dough

Play dough offers enormous potential for learning since it strengthens little fingers and helps prepare them for writing, it develops fine motor skills, and promotes hand-eye coordination and creativity. You can make it even more fun by adding beads and different lengths of dried spaghetti to help them mould fun characters or objects.

Play With Action Figures and Dolls

Providing them with characters in the form of dolls and action figurines offers an excellent opportunity for girls and boys to engage in social play. It also boosts imagination and labelling of feelings.

Nature Play

Kids love to play outdoors. Not only does it teach them respect for nature and the environment it also allows them to explore and come across new things. They can collect leaves, flowers, and sticks to create nature artworks, or collect interesting pebbles or rocks. Nature play also helps them to be more inquisitive and independent.

The Humble Cardboard Box

Very few children can resist the urge to play with a cardboard box. They can use it to build a car, a house for their dolls, or a garage for their toy cars. For added fun, you can give them craft supplies, scraps of fabric, buttons, and whatever you can find to decorate their creations. This is another great opportunity to use their imagination and creativity.

Singing, Dancing, And Music

Singing and music form the foundation for literacy skills and mathematical concepts like counting. It also promotes language development through nursery rhymes. Music and dancing helps them to develop rhythm while finetuning their listening skills. Dancing is excellent for coordination, strength building, and flexibility.

Shape Sorters, Building Blocks, And Jigsaws

Playing with jigsaws, shape sorters, and building blocks is useful for all kinds of developmental skills, including spatial thinking, recognising different shapes, colours, and sizes, social play and logical reasoning.

Painting And Drawing

All kids love painting and drawing because it is fun and it offers opportunities for sensory development, self-expression, exploring different colours, pre-writing skills, and tidying-up afterwards.

Conclusion

We hope you have found these 12 best learning activities for kids insightful and that it has given you some ideas on how you can help your child with learning through play. After all, one of the best learning opportunities for kids is through play. It is also more effective because they are having fun while learning about new things.