Children can get bored and restless when they are stuck inside because of cold, rainy weather or a hot summer’s day. But there’s a world of colorful images and activities on the internet and also in your child’s imagination.
Cold weather is a good time to kick off your family’s shoes and discover the world of learning that is available right at your computer or right in the toy chest.
Crafts cause learning
The best kind of learning is the kind that doesn’t feel like work. Fortunately for children and their parents, children learn from almost any new activity. Creating art, in particular, is a good way to learn spatial relationships, color, textures, eye-hand coordination, relationships between materials, etc.
The good people at EarthScienceJr.com have assembled a list of great projects you can do to educate your children while also keeping them amused. These products enable your children to do a variety of visual activities, like assembling building blocks, doing glitter art, establishing color patterns, and putting together magnetized tiles.
Dog-themed lesson plans
If your children love dogs (and what child doesn’t?), you can organize wholistic learning around canines. Use Google to research the many things that service dogs can do, from finding criminals to identifying rooms with bed bugs. Learn how dogs can tell if a child is having a diabetic attack and how they predict seizures. Rover.com offers some great dog-themed lesson plans for kids of all ages.
Then do some research on the anatomy of the dog’s nose and its ability to detect things the human nose can never detect. Some experts, like Alexandra Horowitz, think that dogs can teach humans how to reconnect with their sense of smell.
Look into real life hero dogs like Shana, the half wolf, half dog who dug an elderly couple out of a snowstorm that had trapped them. And Moti, the German Shepherd who diverted an armed home intruder and took a bullet for his family.
Finally, you can research the evolution of dogs from wolves to working animals to pets. By making dogs the fun focus of your day’s learning, you can fit in social science, history, biology, and zoology.
See it and do it with online tutorials
Online tutorials are a great way for you and your children to learn new things. If you and the kids have been sitting still too long, get them up and moving with a Youtube guided exercise video. There are plenty of options that are targeted to children. And you can find exercise sets for specific age groups. That way, you’re not asking your child to do an exercise that is too hard or too easy.
Or get your children drawing with an online drawing tutorial. Drawingcoach.com promises to teach your youngster everything from drawing his own cartoon animal to drawing designs for tattoos. If your child is new to drawing, get him or her started on a cartoon fish.
There are a number of ways to learn music without leaving the comfort and warmth of your home. With Live Music Tutor, you can look up a teacher who has exactly the skill set you want to learn and then learn from that musician remotely.
Alternatively, you can watch pre-recorded Youtube videos that show you how to get started with almost any instrument. Youtube is particularly useful for people who want to learn to read music and those who are beginners on an instrument.
In conclusion, it’s not your father’s winter anymore. The world of learning on the internet is vast and ever expanding. It’s just a matter of deciding what you want to learn today. Then go for it.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.
Written by: Jenny Wise
When you give to variety, you give directly to children in need in your local community.
