I spent 11 years as a child care provider in my home. I took care of kids from 4 weeks of age up to the age of 10. One thing I learned was that giving the children in my care early learning skills helped most of them when they entered kindergarten. They knew their numbers up to 50, could write their own names, read up to 100 words and knew the whole alphabet. They could cut with scissors, color within the lines, knew all their colors and even tell you the names of the planets in our solar system. I taught them these skills with simple house hold items.
When SHTF you are going to become your child's teacher. Starting them off early will help them learn better when its time to graduate them to kindergarten skill sets.
Here is a simple list of common house old items you can use and how to use them to help your child learn at a early age. You might be surprised at some of them.
1. What kid over the age of two doesn't know what a cookie looks like or how about a apple? Using thin cardboard, 3 shower curtain rings and pictures in magazines of items that your child recognizes you can make a simple word book that will teach them reading skills. Cut a picture of an item out of a magazine and glue it to a book size piece of cardboard. Under the picture, using a black marker write the name of the item under the picture. Do this with up to 25 items. Once you have your pages done clip them together with the curtain rings and help the child the first few times to go through the book, pointing to the words as they see them. Once you think they have a grasp of seeing the words use some simple slips of paper and write one of the words you used in the book. Ask the child what the word is and they will be able to tell you. This is their first reading skill. Once they have those words down pat make another book with more words in it. The list is endless. You can do books on different animals, different colors, different kinds of transportation and so on.
2. Use several types of buttons to make patterns for the children to follow. Make sure to have at least 8 of each type of button and use buttons of different colors. Line up a pattern of buttons with no more than 5 buttons. Give your child the same amount , types and colors as you used in your pattern. Tell them to make their buttons lay in the same line as you did. Once they have achieved the same pattern that you made help them count the buttons in their pattern. These are early math skills that help them to learn. Once they learn to count to five, line up 2 buttons of one color and 3 buttons of another color. Have them count the buttons of each color. Once they have done that have them count the total of the buttons. Then remove one or two and have them count them again. Repeated use of this simple task helps them to learn math patterning, counting and subtracting and adding. You can increase the amount of buttons as they advance in learning.
Other items you can use instead of buttons are milk caps with stickers on them. Change such as dimes, nickles, pennies and even quarters. Dried beans of different varieties or beads from old jewelry.
3. Using strips of paper label things around you house and attach the words for the items to them using paper clips or even tape. Kids will see the words when they look at an item and in time learn to reconize the word without seeing item. Label simple things like a lamp, a chair, a picture, the tv and even pictures of loved ones with their names on them such as mom, dad, grandpa and grandma.
4. Cook with your kids. Cooking is a good way to teach math skills. They can count the number of potatoes you will be using for a meal or when they have learned to count to ten and know what it means, have them get you just so many potatoes from the bag. Baking together and helping the kids to measure the ingredients helps them to learn fractions, adding and subtracting. Cooking together also teaches them early science skills such as what happens when yeast gets warm.
5. Felt boards are another great teaching item. Cut out felt pieces to go with your childs favorite story book. The first couple of times you read the book to the child after you have made felt pieces have them lay out the pieces according to how the story is going. After a couple of times have them tell you the story using the felt pieces. Even encourage them to make up their own stories using the felt pieces.
It will encourage their love of learning to read, patterning, math skills and even help their speech and vocabulary.
6. Teaching can help improve their fine motor skills. Give them scissors and scrap paper to cut, a muffin tin and beads to sort into the cups, bits of bread dough when you are making bread for them to knead. Big bolts and nuts for them to screw on and off. Give them a plastic knife to cut dough with, a spoon to scoop dried beans, uncooked rice or even beads from one bowl to another.
7. Teach hand and eye coordination by rolling up some old socks into balls and giving the kids a cardboard box or laundry baskets to throw them at. See how many "baskets" they can make.
Using these simple house hold items will help your child a long way on the road to learning while creating many. many hours of fun for them and you. :)
Prepping Granny