School learning doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s something you have to support and supplement in the hometime hours as well. And when you do, your child will often find it a lot easier and simpler to pick up the subjects and topics they’re being taught. After all, you’ve helped to reinforce the cognitive pathways!
But you don’t want your child to feel like they’re always in school, so let’s keep this short and sweet. In fact, you only need 10 minutes for a quick activity that’ll help to keep the cogs whirling.
Whether your child has just started school or they’re about to move up a grade, these activities will help to reinforce their learning and help it take root. The tasks will even feel like fun, so the kids might not even realise they’re secretly becoming smarter!
Write Letters to Each Other
This can be quite an unusual and ‘novel’ thing to do for a kid, as writing letters is so last century! But if you start a little routine activity where you and your child take 10 minutes to scribble out things about your day, or a little story you’ve made up, on a piece of paper, you can help to build a variety of comprehension and cognition skills.
You’re helping them to find their feet with writing, on a very basic level. They’re getting more practice, holding a pencil and getting used to using it, etc. But you’re also helping them develop thinking skills, as well as active recall skills, and those will help tremendously on their schooling journey.
Read Out Loud as a Group
Grab a book – and maybe even an educational one that delves into the Science of Reading – and take 10 minutes to flick through the pages. You take one line, your child takes the other. Or you try one word, your child says the next.
Remember, even when your child isn’t the one reading, they’re still listening to you read (and the way you read), and that can teach them a lot. Keep going like this until the 10 minutes is up and then pop the book down!
Get Them to Add Up Their Pocket Money
This is a great mental maths exercise (for adults as well) that can be snuck into the usual day to day family bustle.
If your child has a penny jar, or you give them a little bit of an allowance per week, just casually ask them to run and get their money and add it up for you. You just want to check what they’ve got, and they’ll usually be quite happy to oblige.
This mini activity works on both their math skills and their financial literacy (which is a pretty big concept for a kid!). But you can make the latter much more accessible for them, and reinforce their school work, all in one.
Support education in 10 minute bursts; it’s the best way to reinforce school learning in everyday life!
