Since the pandemic of 2020 has forced the majority of the world into lock down, this has resulted in many parents having to take the reigns from teachers and begin leading lessons at home. Teaching your children new skills is part of a parent’s responsibility, but it isn’t easy to turn your home into a classroom, especially if you have no experience as a teacher. Not to mention the fact that kids all have individual learning needs and that different methods of teaching work for some better than others.
If you’re worried about how to keep your kids engaged with their learning, trying to teach them using arts and crafts projects could be a good idea, especially with younger children. Here are some examples of what you can do.
In This Article
Wordplay
For young children who are just learning how to read, write, and string sentences together, some simple wordplay could be a fun activity for them. It’s very easy to do, simply provide them with colorful pens and use alphabet stencils to write sentences, create word jumbles, or simply create a colorful poster of the alphabet itself.
History Timelines
Sometimes having a visual representation of the order in which events happened can help your child retain that information. If they are learning about a certain period in history, for example, the Victorian era, why not create a beautiful timeline of key events? You can incorporate text and images of famous historical figures, all the while allowing your children to let their creative side out by decorating the timeline as they please.
Maths
Arts and crafts are a great way to teach your children all about math, too. For example, shapes are a very easy subject to cover when using crafts as a learning tool. You can build 3D shapes and draw 2D versions in bright, bold colors, creating images out of them. You could also create a times-table chart, and addition and subtraction resources for them to refer to during their lessons.
Poetry and Literature
A great way to use arts and crafts when discussing literature is by getting your kids to recreate a scene from a book or poem. They can also incorporate the text into their work somewhere so they can remember what scene their project is referencing. Alternatively, they could do profiles on the authors of the work to help them learn about the context of the story and the inspiration behind it. They could do this for the characters in the book or poem, too.
Science
Finally, you can use crafts as a form of an experiment to help your children learn a bit more about science. For example, making snowflakes, building a model solar system, creating fossils, or making a terrarium. These are all great examples of crafty experiments that your kids will love to do.
It’s not easy to keep children engaged in their lessons all the time. However, the act of getting them to make an object and be creative in their learning could be a great way to keep them interested. If you think your children will respond well to this, give it a go—you’ll have fun, too!
