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Five Ways to Spice Up Your Daily Walks
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Apr 30, 2020 | Motor Skills
As we continue to learn and adapt during our time spent working and learning from home, it's important to establish a workable daily routine. For instance, taking a walk as part of your daily schedule is a great way to reconnect with nature and get a little much-needed exercise. However, walking around the same neighborhood streets, while necessary at the moment, might get a little boring after a while. If that happens, check out these fun, easy recommendations for adding a little curiosity and excitement to your everyday strolls.
Scavenger Hunts!
With a little planning beforehand, turning your walks into a mini-scavenger hunt can be an easy way to keep kids interested and engaged. Before you leave the house, draw up a short list of items and sights you expect to find on your walk; ideally, there will be a mix of easy (pebbles! sticks!) and more difficult (a house painted yellow! an alley cat!) items on your list. As you walk, have your kids keep track of all the things they spot. If you want to keep the fun going, draw up a long list and make it an ongoing project, or add new items every few days!
Letter Lookout
As far as prep goes, this one's even easier: at the beginning of every walk, pick a letter of the alphabet. As you proceed on your stroll, have your kids call out the names of items and sights that begin with the letter of the day. With 26 letters to choose from, you're good for almost a whole month of walks with just this game alone!
Avoid the Cracks!
This one's a classic. When you're out for your walk, see if you and your kids can avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk or other natural roadblocks. Whoever can avoid the cracks the longest wins! In addition to adding a little whimsical competition to your walks, this one's also a great way to work on balance and coordination!
Nature Identification
This option will probably be educational for both you and your kids. As you go for your walks, take pictures of the trees, flowers, and animals that you see as you go. When you get home, try to match the pictures with examples you find online. As you go, share some fun facts about each sample with the family. This is a great way to become more familiar with your natural surroundings, and to teach your kids about the plants and animals that live close by!
Walking Storytime
In addition to the natural wonders of your neighborhood, there are plenty of creatures living nearby inside your imagination! As you walk, look for interesting natural sights, from gnarled old trees to fragrant flower gardens to small streams. When you see one, have your kids make up a story about gnomes, fairies, or other fantasy creatures who might live there. If you want to get them started, feel free to make up a story or two of your own. When you're playing pretend, there are no wrong answers, so get as funky as you'd like!
At Learning Resources, we’re here to help you make the best of this challenging time. Stay safe and healthy, and check back with our blog for more tips and learning ideas as the situation unfolds.
Making Financial Literacy Fun at Home!
Money Recognition
The road to financial literacy begins with the basics: money recognition! For this lesson, gather as many different examples of your chosen currency as you can find around the house, and set it out on the table. With your kids, identify each coin and bill by name, as well as monetary value. If you're in the mood for history, you can even explain the stories behind the people and landmarks that appear on your money!Counting With Cash
Once you've introduced all of your coins and bills, it's time to start counting with cash! To start, have your kids count up to 100 using only one kind of coin, then repeat with the others. Keep each set of stacks, then compare them at the end to explain the value relationships between each coin. For an added greater-than/less-than challenge, make two random piles of coins, and have your kids figure out which one has the higher value. This activity works best with lots of coins; if you don't have real coins around the house, play money is a fine substitute.Set Up Shop
This one's a great imaginative activity for older kids. Have your kids select some toys or other household objects as stock for their pretend shop. Once they've selected their stock, have them set prices for each item. Then, playing the part of the customer, make a few different purchases totaling different amounts of money, and have your kids make change for your payments. If you have the Calculator Cash Register, this is a great opportunity to see it in action!
International Adventure
Financial literacy is important all over the world. For a fun introduction to other cultures, explore the money of another country with your kids. Whether you're looking at actual leftover currency from an international vacation or just an online article with plenty of pictures, use this time to talk about how money is similar and different in other parts of the world. If you've got older kids, you could even introduce the concepts of relative value and exchange rates! How much would their allowance be worth in British pounds? How about Japanese yen?
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School Break Trips from Home!
[Updated on 3/17/21] Even though we're staying inside these days, we've still got ways to explore the wide world from home! Add some extra fun to your spring break plans with these virtual field trip ideas, which let you and your kids travel to museums, zoos, and even outer space from the comfort of your living room.
Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems
It's not every day that you get the chance to take a drawing lesson from one of the world's most beloved children's book authors. Usually, that is. With kids out of school, author Mo Willems (creator of the Pigeon series, Elephant and Piggie, and more) is hosting a lunchtime drawing program on YouTube that connects kids with their artsy side every afternoon.
Virtual Museum Tours
Have you ever wanted to take your kids to the world's great museums and architectural sites? Thanks to Google Arts & Culture, you can do with without ever leaving the house! Their Museum Views collection lets you take virtual tours of more than 3,400 sites across the United States and around the world. You can even treat your little learners to a trip to the Boston Children's Museum!
Story Time with Michael Chabon
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon knows that what the world needs now is a good bedtime story. That's why he's spending his evenings at home reading the classics of children's literature, voices and all. Available on Youtube, the author's series updates every evening; past selections include Olivia, The Story of Ferdinand, and Harry the Dirty Dog.
Cincinnati Zoo Home Safaris
Although we can't go to the zoo right now, we can bring the zoo home online! At the Cincinnati Zoo, keepers are hosting daily Home Safaris to introduce viewers to the wild, wooly worlds of their animal residents. Tune in on Facebook Live each day, and you might meet hippos, cheetahs, rhinoceroses, and more!
Dutch Hollow Dairy Farm
A trip to the farm is always enlightening, even from the comfort of your home! Take your kids on this virtual tour of New York's Dutch Hollow Dairy Farm for an inside look at the secret lives of cows. Produced in cooperation with the American Dairy Association, the tour is geared for kids in grades K-4.
Ellis Island
As America faces its current challenges, we can take this opportunity to reflect on the nation's status as the world's melting pot. With Immigration: Stories of Yesterday and Today, the folks at Scholastic have put together a virtual tour of Ellis Island, the immigration station that welcomed more than 12 million future Americans between 1892 and 1954.
International Space Station
When it comes to virtual field trips, you're not limited to places here on Earth! Led by the astronauts stationed there, these virtual tours of the International Space Station give you and your kids an inside look at the scientific goings-on happening far above the planet.
Yellowstone National Park
It's springtime, which means our national parks are waking up from their long winter slumbers. Thanks to the National Parks Service, you can take a virtual visit to the country's oldest park. The tour takes you to seven different sites around the park, including the Mud Volcano, the Mammoth Geyser, and the Flower Paint Pot.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Adventure under the sea with this virtual visit to one of America's premiere aquariums. Thanks to the live cams set up around the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you can catch glimpses of animals from jellyfish and penguins to sharks and sea otters. There's even a feed that shows you the open waters of the bay itself!
Discover Ancient Egypt
As you explore these virtual field trips, don't miss the opportunity to travel back in time! Discover Ancient Egypt brings one of humanity's most storied societies back to life with cool interactive online recreations. Explore 3D temples, learn about the pyramids, or even study hieroglyphics!
At Learning Resources, we're here to help you make the best of this challenging time. Stay safe and healthy, and check back with our blog for more tips and learning ideas as the situation unfolds.
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