Get in the game with play based learning!
Play Based Learning is an amazing way to connect and learn with your kiddos. Most, not all, but most, learning can and should be fun! We all learn more when we enjoy the process, take the pressure off and love the journey! It goes beyond homeschooling with littles too! When play based learning is done with intention and leaves room for creative exploration, beautiful things happen in your homeschool! I was really good at this when the kids were little, little. At some point I lost my way and we were having much less fun. Then, I found Never Board Learning and My Little Poppies through the Homeschool Sisters Podcast. These resources changed the way I homeschooled for the better. Now, with my oldest being almost 10 years old, we are still using play based learning every day. Yes, he has things that are less fun that he has to do as he gets older. However, that doesn’t mean all of the fun has to leave our lives! You never have to stop playing!
When my kiddos were little I made a point of not putting all the toys away for what we called, “learning time.” I didn’t want to make them stop playing to do school with me. Making use of what was already out or dramatically entering the room with a big bucket of toys and making a show of dumping them out on the hardwood floor worked so well! I made up a game out of whatever they were playing with, or other toys I knew they loved.
Cars, Cars, and more Cars
For play based learning in the beginning I used cars to work on motor skills, numbers, colors, parts of speech, prepositions, and math for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division!
Parking Lot Numbers (and colors)! Check out Little Family Fun for ideas! I took it a step further and I think in the moment I thought I made this up on my own, ha! First, I took a big plastic bucket, 2 pieces of cardboard, a white board and some colorful dry erase markers. Then, I put up a chart on the board that showed a color and the name of the color and a parking spot number. I drew out a parking lot on the carboard and taped it to the top of the turned over plastic bin. Then, I made a ramp going down the side of the bin with the other piece of cardboard. Sometimes, I added some extra fun by using paper towel rolls to make tunnels too. The kids were asked to drive a car up the ramp that was the color green, for example, and park it in a certain spot number based on the chart. They would park the car and check it off on the chart. Once the lot was full they could drive them all down the ramp and if they wanted to we would start again.
What did they learn from this?
- Colors (identification)
- Numbers (counting and identification)
- Color names (spelling)
- Using charts to organize information
- Delayed gratification and patience (they really wanted to send those cars down the ramp sooner!)
Dinosaurs Galore!
Dino Fun! My kids love dinosaurs! They love watching shows like Dinosaur Train, Dino Dana, and T-Rex Ranch. Pinterest boards go above and beyond using dinos for history and science lessons! Check out Pocket of Preschool for some fun ideas! I enjoyed using dinos to teach early math. Making up songs and games to go with dinosaur math was my jam! This allowed me to stretch my creative brain and make learning fun through the use of some of the kids favorite toys.
They loved it! We pretended the dinos were at a park, some leave, how many are left? Then some more come along, how many are there now? We ALSO pretended they were on a bus. After we set up the pretend bus using a box, or a table, anything really, then the kids were asked to put them in front of, next to, and behind other dinos. There were even times when the dinos got really crazy and started climbing on things, under things and hiding next to other things. So fun! These activities provided an opportunity to learn through music, movement, imagination, and most importantly PLAY!
What did they learn?
- Prepositions
- Basic Math
- Creativity
- How fun it is to learn with music and movement!
*Check back here for more with homeschooling with littles through play based learning!
