Learning through COVID-19

By Freeda Thong - Speech Pathologist & Director

5 things you can do at home during COVID-19 with your children

Are you finding it difficult finding things to keep you and your children occupied at home, and ensuring it is fun and education? We know in amidst this confusing time, it is a real adjustment moving everything to home schooling. We want to be able to help you in some way, so here are 5 ideas of things you could be doing at home today with your child that is fun and still educational! Better yet, they require really minimal equipment or resources!

1.       Create a home story book or video! Story telling is a really powerful, and evidence based approach to building language. You may like to write a story with your child, and have the create the characters and settings. You can use PowerPoint to create a book, print it out and have your child draw the pictures in it. Alternatively, try acting this out with toys or figurines, and even recording it into a software on your electronic device to share with other friends and families. Make sure your story has a start, middle and end. You might like to include the following:

o   Character

o   Setting

o   Problem

o   Solution

o   Feelings/moral 

2.       Bring your books to life! Reading with your child is one of the most important things you can do from a young age.  When reading to your child, engage them in the story and pictures as much as you can. You might like to ask questions throughout the story, have them guess the ending, or guess what a sequel to the story might be. Taking this to the next level, you might act these out. Get your dress-up on, and become these characters, and put a movie night on for your friends and family via video call. You might even do this as a class, and have a family recreate a story book each week! A mimed story could be really fun too, and have your audience guess what it is!

3.       Get your children involved with chores and tasks around the house. If you have a project that has been sitting and still hasn’t gotten done, this could be the perfect time to get start or pick it back up! Is there painting or pasting that needs to be done? You could be teaching your child a new skill such as origami, sewing, building, cooking and learning about food and nutrition. In any of these, have them get involved and make sure you speak about what each item or tool is. The richer of a language environment you can provide to your child, the more they will be able to learn!  

4.       Bring out the old board games! Some really fun and education board games that you can bring out might include:

o   Scrabble

o   Scattergories

o   Bananagrams

o   Taboo

o   Zingo

o   Guess Who

5.       Ok let’s be real. Your kids are probably wanting some time on the screen as well! While there is a lot of stigma around screen time for children having a negative impact on their learning, it is absolutely undeniable that technology is an integral part of our society and vastly embedded into our culture. Similarly to anything else in life, screen time for children can actually be part of a healthy lifestyle for your child if set in moderation and with the encouragement of purposeful, educational and quality content. There is now a multitude of quality educational apps, programs and tools that can promote learning in a positive, multimodal and interactive way that you can feel comfortable and confident in allowing your child to engage with! When considering screen time for your children, make sure you consider how old your child is, what the guidelines for recommended daily screen times are, and think about rules/expectations of use that might work for your family. Some games that are fun and encourage learning might include:

o   Articulation Station

o   Baby Sign & Learn

o   ABC Alphabet phonics

o   Speech with Milo

o   Splingo’s Language Universe

o   My PlayHome

o   WordJong

o   The Book of Treasures

o   Semantic Wars

o   Kick the Word

o   Word Connect

6.       Games not needing resources! Oldies, but goodies! These games can really be played and transformed into your own personalised game with things around your house.

o   Eye spy

o   Spot the difference – you could even do this with things around your house, or items outside of your house. Imagine using twigs, grass clippings and bark!

o   Simon says

o   Colour hunt – have everyone close their eyes, and the leader name a colour, when everyone opens their eyes, they have to touch 3 items in the house that is that colour and name it!

o   I went shopping – this one can also be adapted to ‘I went travelling’, or to whatever topic you and your child like! The aim of this game is to add on as many items to the list and remember them all… “I went shopping and I bought an apple”, the next person has to remember every item, and add to the list.

o   Silly fact contest

o   A-Z word chain  - think of a category and have each person take turns to add a word starting with the next letter. E.g. if this were

o   Charades

o   Word chain – this one is where you have to think about a word that starts with the last letter, e.g. banana, apple, eggplant, tomato. You might like to limit it to a category, or expand it to a place.

We hope these are helpful tips, but most of all it is so important to have fun with your children! Let us know if you have any other games!