Ways to engage learners at home

Jayshree Guha Thakurta

A very important area is to keep little children constructively engaged at home especially when parents are busy with their professional commitments. How do we best engage our kids to ensure their growth and readiness?

Large Motor Development:

1.Encourage your child to participate in dancing and singing activities.  Have a dance session with them. Sing and Dance along with them.

  2.Make your own Hopscotch on the floor-

Parents can create a simple hopscotch of colours or shapes. Grab your roll of tape and carefully begin placing the tape onto the hard floor. Or you can use sketch pens or chalk to draw on the floor.

 Finish the hopscotchshape by placing the tape.

This activity helps develop immense pre-math and large motor skills.

 3.Make play dough at home and let the learners discover their world for hours.

Fine Motor Development:

1.Let them roll and crush paper, foil etc into balls. Help them count and enjoy.

 2.Tearing and pasting

 3.Sorting of grains in a bowl

4. Peeling groundnuts or pea pods.

5.Clay moulding.

6.Watering plants using a sprinkler.

Language Development: 

Story Time:

-Narrate simple stories to your child; share and ask to recall some characters and incidents of the story that interested your child the most.

- Ask them to draw their favourite character from the story and

-Do ‘shared writing’ on their free expression drawings. This goes a long way in developing creativity, confidence and language skills.

Show and Tell: Let the children select an object from their surroundings every day and speak a few lines on it. 

Rhyme Time: Recite a rhyme using actions and voice modulation.

Logical Development: 

1. Take a shoebox and decorate it with paper tearing and pasting. Use this box to help them to collect one or two small things daily (Anything which fascinates them) like a pencil, pebbles, bottle caps, ice cream sticks, etc. in the shoe box.

2. Every week help them check and count their collection. Help them to quantify and sort the things they have collected.

Life Skills:

1.Buttoning his/her shirt  

2.Zipping and unzipping  

3.Tying his/her shoelaces, Buckling and unbuckling.  

4.Turning pages of a book  

5.Winding up their toys/Packing toys in a bag for playing in the balcony/lawns or terrace.

6.Laying spoons and bowls on the table for dinner  

7.Keeping back his/her utensils.

8.Proper toilet training  

9.Arranging clothes, shoes in the shoe rack in their own little way.

Social Development:

1.Sitting at the dining table with the family to eat the meals, using proper table manners.

2.Do not watch television while having meals with the family.

3.Always share things with others in the presence of the child to set an example. 

4.Talk to your child about the importance of keeping our surroundings clean. 

 5.Encourage your child to water the plants. 

 6.Encourage your child to respect and help the elders at home. 

 7.Encourage your child to develop the habit of taking care of his/her belongings. 

 8.Encourage them to use magic words like ‘thank you’, ‘please’, ‘excuse me’ and ‘sorry’.

The last word: Never give all the options to explore in one go. Children love surprises. Change the resources every few days.

Suggested Story Book Publications & Series: 

• Dr Seuss
• Sesame street
• Eklavya
• Tulika
• Pratham

For more information on Vega Schools, please visit, www.vega.edu.in OR write in to us at info@vega.edu.in.