Preschool and Kindergarten

Edible Counting: Use cereal, raisins, or chocolate chips to teach your child how to count. Have him count aloud each time he takes a bite. Continue to add more treats as he learns to count higher. Counting will be fun—and yummy—as he eats his way through the numbers.

Walk the Line: Take a roll of paper towels and spread it on the floor, leaving the paper towels all connected. Then write alphabet letters or numbers in order on each square. Let your child walk on the line to learn the order, then split the paper towels up and let him put them in order.

Play with Magnets: Fridge magnets are a fun, visual trick to help your child practice his numbers, letters, and even spelling! Ask your child to place specific magnetic alphabet letters or numbers on the refrigerator to aid recognition. You can even spell out some of his spelling words on the fridge so they are front of mind before his test.

Connect-the-dots: Use dot-to-dot pictures to help children count as they connect the dots.

Tell Me a Story: Have your child tell you a story that you write down. Encourage creativity, whether it’s about real events or make-believe. Then, ask them to draw pictures to illustrate the story. This helps develop their storytelling, creativity, and fine motor skills. Finally, read the story together and talk about their drawings to make the activity more fun and meaningful.

Hands-on Math Skills: Let children practice addition and subtraction skills while playing. They can count Legos as they build or subtract candy from a bowl during snack time. Their limitless imaginations can provide hours of addition and subtraction fun.

Tower of Words: Use magnetic words or word cards to create fun poetry and silly sentences that help increase your child’s ability to construct sentences on her own.

Creating Classmates: Let your child bring a doll or stuffed animal to reading class. Then ask her to read to this new “classmate.”

Visualize It: As you read a story aloud, encourage your child to listen carefully and draw a picture of what’s happening in the story. This helps them connect with the characters and events and strengthens their listening and comprehension skills. Afterward, talk about their drawing together and compare it to the story—this makes reading more interactive and fun.

Finding the Order: Ask your children to do a simple task, such as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with step-by-step directions. Then take pictures of them doing each step and print the pictures. Ask your children to paste the photos in order and write directions that go with each step. This shows your child how a process is needed to accomplish a task.

Grade 4–6

Coupon Counting: Let your children clip a coupon and figure out how much money they would save if the coupon were used. Couponing teaches math skills and how to budget money at the same time. You can even let them use a coupon at the grocery store to buy a snack or special treat.

Storyboard Fun: Ask your child to choose a favorite topic that he enjoys. Then give him a stack of 3×5″ cards to use for creating storyboards or word clusters. In no time, he will learn to brainstorm and organize thoughts for his writing.

Be a Reporter: Let your child create her own newspaper. She can interview family members or friends for stories. After writing the stories, she can glue pictures next to each article.

Nature Scrapbook: Help your child scrapbook the natural habitat in your area. Include leaves, twigs, flowers, nuts, seeds, and bird feathers found on nature walks. After pasting each piece on a page of a notebook, let your child research and write about what he finds.

Dress Up Fun: Pick a day of the week and have children dress up like a person from history. That day’s lesson can be focused on a specific time period and how people lived during that era.

Grades 7–9

Time for the News: Record your children pretending to be anchors for the evening news. They can find stories their history or science books for the newscast. Make it even more fun by showing the newscast to the entire family!

Baking with Math: Let your children choose a recipe from a cookbook. Then tell them to double or half the recipe. They have to figure out how to adjust the recipe to the correct measurements. You can also give them 1 or 2 measuring cups (½ and ¼ work well) and tell them to measure everything with those cups to improve their understanding of fractions.

Taste of Culture: Choose a foreign country to study and let students make a dish from that country. As they share the dish with the family, they can share facts about the country. This helps them learn the culture of the country through the food.

Build a Diorama: As part of a book report assignment, ask your student to create a diorama of his favorite scene in the book. Use shoeboxes, cereal boxes, play dough, and other small pieces to create the scene.

The Play’s the Thing: Help children stage a play, based on a book they’ve read, for family members and friends.

Keeping your homeschool days engaging doesn’t have to be a challenge. With a little creativity and these fun, hands-on activities, you can spark your child’s curiosity and make learning an exciting adventure. Try mixing and matching these ideas to find what works best for your family, and watch your children stay motivated and eager to learn every day!

Looking for more ideas? Check out Abekas Charts and Games.