If you have a toddler or a preschooler, you know how important it is to keep them busy. A bored child is capable of turning your house upside down in just a couple of minutes. At the same time, grabbing their interest with some DIY activities not only helps you to avoid mental breakdown but also develops their talents and skills. Not to mention, these family activities can really strengthen parent-child bonds. Simple learning activities at home can sometimes replace tutors in terms of their effectiveness and contribution to a child’s cognitive development. They learn from a hands-on component that each activity has. Moreover, you do not have to buy or prepare special items to engage your kid; most DIY activities require stuff that you can easily find around the house.
So, if we persuaded you and you want to try DIY learning for kids at home, this article will help you decide which activity you want to do first.

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1) Sunflower Word Family

Teaching kids to read and expanding their vocabulary are important for their success at school. What if you could turn learning into a fun and interesting activity? Sunflower Word Family is something that could help you with that.

All you need to have at hand is a piece of paper, some glue, a marker, scissors, and a paper plate. The latter will be the center of your sunflower where you should write all the letters of the alphabet. The paper petals will contain word endings. Whenever your kid spins the plate, they will explore a different sound combination.

Joining both DIY and educational aspects helps you to involve your child and turn learning into a game. Kids look at the world from a different angle, so you need to apply some creativity and entertainment each time you want to teach them something.

2) Fraction Flowers

Many kids find fractions and equivalents difficult to learn. Remember your school times: we bet fractions were difficult to figure out for you, too. However, some DIY activities are there to help your kid become a guru in this field.

All you need to have is a few paper plates and colored pieces of paper to print out fraction pies. When you are done printing, glue paper with fractions into the center of the paper plates. That’s all you need to do to have a few colorful flowers with fraction pies on them.

Once the glue dries, try cutting the pie pieces on the plates apart. As soon as you have lots of different colorful pieces with fractions printed on them, it becomes easier for a kid to see that two one-eighth petals are of the same size as a one-fourth petal. This is when learning starts.

3) Decoder Wheel

If you are raising a young adventurer who is a fan of cryptography and riddles, the Decoder Wheel is something you need to keep them engaged in the game.

You can create a decoder wheel on your own and encrypt a few words for your child to decipher. Doesn’t it sound fun? At the same time, you’ll be training your kid to apply their math, spelling, and writing skills altogether.

To create a wheel, you need to cut out three paper circles of different sizes. Put letters in the alphabet order on the biggest one. The next one will have both letters and numbers on it. The smallest circle will be a decoder circle with no letters and numbers but a small window to allow decoding.

Two circles with letters are needed to make the process of decoding more complex. For example, you can develop the key that will require to include letters from the inner wheel and outer wheel in the given order.

4) Sight Word Puzzles

If your kid is only learning to read, practicing sight words is a necessary step. Kindergartens pay lots of attention to this activity, as it significantly improves the reading speed. The good news is that you can help your child excel in this activity.

All you need to do is to create colored puzzles using popsicle sticks. The more of them you have, the more effective the tactics will prove to be. Every word will require two of those sticks. With a black marker, you write each sight word so that it occupies both sticks. To make it easier, find a table with those words online.

The goal is to make your kid recognize the word, having only one stick out of two, and then seek a pair for each of them. Colors will help, too. The more combinations they find, the better they learn sight words.

5) Pasta World Map

To make your kid aware of the world we all live in, try to engage them in map-making. Such a DIY activity will definitely be more effective in terms of learning geography than some boring theoretical information at school. In the end, you’ll get a fabulous decoration for your home.

All you need to have for this activity is a large coffee filter, watercolors, brushes, dyed pasta, glue, and a blue crayon. The latter you’ll use to paint continents on the coffee filter. This step is probably the most difficult, so take more responsibility for it and help your kids.

The next step is to paint the water on the map. Watercolors will help you paint the oceans and seas. Even if you missed a blue crayon line here and there, do not worry. The coffee filter you used is great for the color mixing experiment.

As soon as you are finished with coloring, outline continents with glue. Do not use too much but make sure your colored pasta sticks to the coffee filter well. Based on how precise you were with the continent shapes, this is the time when you can finally recognize our planet in your craft.

Final Words

DIY activities are great for learning and entertaining your kid. However, it is also a way to spend quality family time. Children especially appreciate the moments when they work on something together with their parents.

Also, such activities prove that you don’t need lots of money to engage your kid in something. Stuff as simple as popsicle sticks, colored pasta, and coffee filter can bring as much fun and joy to your kid as the latest gadget.