If you are a working family, you too have special needs and concerns about your child after school. A steady diet of TV is bad for any of us, and there is not really much on television that is good for kids to be watching.
There are some things we can do with our children that will be useful to them, will enable us to have fun with our children, and not take all our energy and attention. The best news is that most of these ideas don’t involve much money or equipment and can be done even during parents’ busiest times.
When my children were small, we had “kitchen school” each day. The kitchen is a logical setting for many children’s activities as the mess can be easily cleaned up and contained to one area. We set aside a shelf in a cupboard where they kept their materials in a cat litter pan. Instead of throwing away interesting containers like paper towel rolls, small cans and bottles, we always had a collection for building contraptions. From this school have come many useful and interesting activities to do with children that will be fun and serve to increase your child’s thinking abilities as well.
The cat litter pan is a must. For almost any activity, keeping the mess contained is necessary for children to learn how to clean up after themselves. The pan can be used for many activities but we will start with one that is lots of fun — water play. Using water and an assortment of bottles, small jars, funnels, spoons, small pitchers, etc., can provide hours of fun and teach children many things they need to know about math, physics and science.
Young children enjoy pouring water (especially if you will color it a bit with food coloring) back and forth between containers and learn some useful hand and eye coordination skills as they do. The sensation of the water on the hands and hearing can be soothing for many children; as adults we all enjoy the sound of fountains.
Older children can use these same materials for learning to estimate how many of one size measuring device will fit into a container. For example, how many tops full of water will a shampoo bottle hold? How many spoons full of water will a measuring cup hold? Learning to guess and then check for the answer is a great math skill.
Comparing the sizes of containers with amounts they hold helps children learn that liquids may take the shape of different containers but remain the same amount. Haven’t we all been fooled into thinking one glass holds more than another because the shape differs, but found the glasses hold the same amount? Learning that our “best guess” answers can be wrong even though they look right helps children learn to check their own view with factual information.
In addition to using water and containers for pouring and measuring, young children enjoy getting objects out of water using tongs, strainers, dip nets and such. The challenge to a 3- or 4-year-old is to pick up the objects without using their hands. Older children can learn about which object will float and which will sink with a simple collection of items gathered about the house.
Children can develop the ability to then guess prior to putting things in the water to see what will float and which will sink. Keeping a record of how many right answers are and learning how much of the time they guess right is a reason for doing math.
We used to create boats from anything we thought would float — lids, small plastic bowls, boxes, etc., and then fill them with objects to make them sink. Counting how many bolts it takes to sink a butter tub is fun math. Guessing how many pennies will sink a tub and then learning you are right is discovery learning.
The materials in the kitchen school are simple, easy to find, and cost very little. What makes the learning exciting is that the parent can be in the same room to provide supervision and feedback, even at the busy times of meal preparation, and still give the child time and attention. Children learn with real materials, in real settings and with real activities. The kitchen school provides all of these plus Mom or Dad, and that is a hard combination to beat.
Darby Kethan has a master's degree in child development, and has experience as a social worker, educator of young children, educational consultant, and as a professional trainer for a national educational foundation providing professional development to teachers. Visit her website at darbykethan.com.
