Cheap Activities to Do with Your Kids
by This is a piece for parents who have little to no money so spend on going places with their child. It focuses mostly on those children who aren’t quite toddlers but aren’t babies any more. The activities in this piece can be use for older children as well, it’s defiantly not limited to toddlers.
Playing hide-and-go-seek is a great game to get your child to take turns, wait patiently, to count, and to be able to search for something. They enjoy it as much as you do. Just do not be too hard on them, they are not experts like us, remember we have had years of hide-and-go-seek experience where they are just starting out.
Listening to child appropriate music and songs is a great way to get them to think about playing instruments or singing. This is a great way to get your children involved in school. Music is also a great stress reliever in high tension homes. Music can teach your child the nursery rhyme classics and how to count and teaches them their ABCs.
Reading books with your child is a great way to get them into reading books, learning new words, and learning about their world. Picture books are great for younger kids especially when they want to try to take over reading. Educators are encouraging parents to start reading chapter books earlier. You will have to read to your child for a while but eventually, they will want to read to you. They will want to read the same book over and over. Repetition is good. Let me repeat that: Repetition is good. The more your child sees a word, the more they will understand what that word means.
Do not ever dumb down your vocabulary for your child. Speak with their vernacular for sure, but never ever stop using big words and explaining the meaning of those words to your child. Even small babies will retain some of the information you give them. Doing this will increase their vocabulary and prepare them for school. They like to pretend to be adults just like you! If you are active in their learning process, they will want to learn more.
For holidays you and your child can make homemade gifts and decoration. As the holidays get closer I will try to post some ideas for decorations and activities.
There are many arts and crafts you and your child can do. Once a week we have a “color of the week”. We try to focus most of our coloring and finger-painting on that particular color. Say one week is yellow. We will use purple construction paper because it’s yellow’s complementary color with “YELLOW” written at the top of the paper in yellow. I will cut out different things in magazines, which I can get free at our local library, that are yellow. We will then get yellow paint, crayons, colored pencils or markers and write out what each thing is and he can draw something that is yellow. Say I cut out a yellow shirt, under the picture it will say ‘SHIRT’. My son can draw an apple, banana, or a flower, etc… Each picture has a name and he will trace each word by himself.
I will try to tell you of more activities as I discover them.
Thanks for reading and I hope you and your child will have a lot of fun discovering and learning about the world around you.
Jennifer Atha
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