Great ways to help your Primary school child learn

I have compiled here a collection of great ways to help your primary school child learn. Fun activity’s and easy to make aides which are as fun to use as they are useful to help them learn.

Having children with learning difficulties I keep coming across great ideas for helping children to learn and then losing them!

Therefore I have decided to compile them in one place where they are easy to find. As a result, I hope that when the time comes I need them here they will be waiting.

How about some great ways to help your child to learn…….

None of the following images is ours, I have tried to attach the Website they came from in the descriptions but unfortunately, as I got most from Pinterest sometimes it is impossible to find the original website for all of them. If you see an image and know where it came from let me know and I will attach the correct link.

English:

Below are some great ways to help your child learn their English from spellings and reading skills:

Spellings using scrabble tiles.

Scrabble tiles are a fantastic way to help your child the learnt o spell. you don’t need to waste your scrabble tiles the game Bananagrams (yellow bag pictured above) is full of everything you need on the tile front. then with a little help from Microsoft Publisher* you can quickly make your own sheets and then adapt these sheets with the words needed.

*2021 update: Microsoft Word has been updated and can now be used to produce these, there is also a wide range of open-source free to use alternatives now too

Painting sample Spellings and synonyms

What a great way to help children expand their vocabulary! could also be used for spellings by writing one word down with one letter on each colour cut and then see what other words they can make! also, use to make sense of Couldn’t Shouldn’t etc

Red Dot Trick

Did you know that placing a red dot in the middle of words can help children see the whole word? Try it for students who just look at the beginning of words and then guess.

Bubble wrap tracker

write sight words on the flat part of the bubblewrap and when they read the word correctly, they got to pop the bubble! It was sight word recognition and an occupational therapy/finger strengthening activity. You could do letter recognition, number recognition, math facts, etc.

Magic Spoon

Magic Spoon couldn’t be more simple you have a Magic spoon/s with a consonant on it and a sheet with ending blends on. the child then moves the spoon to make as many correct matches as they can. for example in the photo above the child could move the spoon from where it is making the word man down the list to make lots of other words med, mop, mat, men, mog, mug, mam, met, min, map and again Mat. More great ideas can be found here.

Trampoline Blends

This game just requires chalk and somewhere to write down different blends and vowels. we don’t just play it on the trampoline but also inside with help of print outs and blue tack (attach the sheets to different objects around a room ie door, sofa seat, dinning room table leg etc) say a word and they have to run around and either stand at the different sounds or gather them up and bring them to you or touch them in the right order.

I will warn you this comes complete with a lot of running around and can become very loud!

Zip lock Writing tablets

a creative and pretty way to practice letters & numbers. Things you need – Gallon size Ziploc bag, glitter (optional), food colouring, hair gel (£1land store)

Sticker match letter recognition

Write letters on the tube and on stickers; kids have to match the stickers to the letters on the tube.

Alphabet Hunting game

So simple small foam Alphabet puzzle (could use any alphabet puzzle) fill a container with rice, beans, sand etc and hide in the puzzle pieces leave the puzzle board next to it and they have to hunt to find the pieces and then place them in the right place.

Making words Egg style

Making words great activity the simple version the child simply spins the two egg halves to create new words and helps them learn their words the compound words version allows them to break apart the compound words to create new ones. These little eggs are often sold cheaply in packs.

Sight Word Sundaes

Unfortunately, the website that used to have the template for these for free is no longer working but you could easily adapt to make your own.

Science:

Glow stick Xylophone

This sound experiment Glow stick xylophone is great fun and one of my children’s favourite sensory play.
You simply put the glow sticks in cups of water and an aura comes off in the dark when you tap them.

Plant Maze Experiment

This experiment is a great one to teach children to understand how plants grow toward the light. Simply get your child to turn a shoebox into a plant maze cutting a hole as pictured. place the lid on and watch as your plant grows to make its way through the maze and towards the hole.

Elephant Toothpaste Experiment

All the details of this experiment can be found here.

Walking Water Experiment

To learn all about this experiment check out this link.

Arts and Crafts:

Great ways to help them engage in Arts and Crafts many adaptable to help teach many subjects in a fun way.

 Melting Crayon Arts

This sort of art is great fun and a great way to use up old wax crayons. We use my Crafting heat gun but it is possible with a hair drier but takes a little longer.

Growing Paint

My children loved doing these we would do them on Cooking Parchment sheet (reusable ones) as temporary pieces of art.

• Mix 1 cup flour,
• 3 tsp baking powder,
• 1 tsp salt, and
• water

Method:

Firstly Add your dry ingredients into a bowl. Second, slowly stir in water until it is the consistency of an American pancake batter.

After you have the right consistency divide your batter into 4 snack-size Ziploc bags along with a little food colouring.

Squish it around within the sealed bag to mix up the colours.

Lastly, cut the corner of the bag off to make a tiny hole (to be used like an icing bag) and Squeeze to paint.

Once the painting is finished carefully pop paper in the microwave for 30-45 seconds and watch the paint puff up and grow.

Raised salt Painting

This is so simple to do all you need is

• PVA glue
• Table Salt
• Watercolour/water-soluble paint.

Allow the child to draw with the glue (we refill a small bottle with a pointed applicator top). Next cover the glue with table salt. Lastly touch watercolour brush to the salt carefully, without smearing and watch the colour be absorbed by the salt. Let dry. This looks fantastic.

Magnetic Sensory Fun

For this you simply need:

• Pipe Cleaners
• Clean and Dry empty plastic bottle with lid
• Magnet

First, you simply cut up the pipe-cleaners and place them in the bottle. Make sure the lid is done uptight. Lastly use a magnet to manipulate them. This keeps My children busy for hours.

Numbers:

Number recognition Loo rolls

Number each loo roll with a number on one side and the same number of dots on the other, you can make them more appealing by adding eyes and colouring them with bright paint first. Practice lining them up in order. This one seemed like a good idea but mine were not really interested I tried painting them giving them extra numbers and + = – % signs too so they could use them for basic maths

Maths:

How about some great ways to help your child to learn Maths.

Lorax Inspired seed growing

These little guys make a great way to help bring reading to life and with the help of some sunflower seeds also help you introduce them to measurements!

Lollipop and Peg Maths

 Maths made fun and so simply. All that is required is some lollipop sticks, wooden pegs and a sharpie!

Trampoline Time telling

This couldn’t be any easier Simply make the trampoline into a clock face adding the numbers and a center mark (ours already has a convenient circle for the center point).

I have three children so we use the 2 “spare” kids as hands of the clock tallest is always the minute hand and the shortest the hour. However, you could substitute a child for Skipping rope, broom handle etc as needed. One will be given a time and then directs their siblings into the correct places to make that time. (always pass on the required time without the other two knowing or they tend to position themselves!). Once happy the “hands” are placed in the correct places they say out loud the time and the “Hands” check if they think they are in the right place. My Three Love this game.

Geography:

Fun ways to brighten up Geography?

Milk bottle Igloo.

What a fantastic way to get children to have an experience of life in an Igloo without the need for snow this has to be a must-do in the garage once moved (not sure when though)

Music:

How about some great ways to help your child to learn to make music.

Junk Instruments

Not only did these spark their imagination but they also had great fun making them. As you can see they came up with some fantastic ideas to accompany their box guitar (the Box Guitar was from an activity sheet). You can let them make music with anything lying around the house.

Cookery: 

How about some great ways to help your child to learn to cook

Ziploc bag Ice-cream.

Ice Cream in a Bag This is SOOO easy… and delicious!

In a small Ziploc bag,

• 1/2 Cup of milk
• 1 Tbps.
• sugar 1 tsp.
• vanilla

Next Insert that bag into a larger, one gallon Ziploc bag filled with ice and salt.

Finally Shake the bag for five minutes. Kids love that part!

Then, remove the smaller bag which should have turned into ice cream.

Hope you have found these great ways to help your child to learn Activities and aides useful. If you would like to find more useful resources then please check out this link here.