This is a strange and unprecedented situation many of us find ourselves in right now. And many of us are trying to juggle childcare with learning and paid employment, at the same time. We hear you, tired and frazzled parents!

 So here are 6 ideas to help encourage learning in your young child whilst we are in lockdown:

1. MOVEMENT

I don’t have to prod my son to get him moving his body, but I do have trouble when encouraging some focus. I have found that Cosmic Kids Yoga has been able to hold his attention for at least ten minutes. They have been making yoga and mindfulness videos for a number of years, so there’s plenty of content to choose from. Dance Parent 101 has been useful for us, too, as has some indoor soccer skills with Little Kickers. There’s also a really quick one to try (which is perfect for short attention spans) with 5-Minute Move.

I’ve also recently discovered some online music and movement classes, like this one with Lindsay that has movement-based activities, and Miss Katie Sings. 

2. VIRTUAL STORYTIME

There’s a whole bunch of authors and celebrities reading stories online, and publishing houses that have released activity pages that can help your toddler learn and play. 

New York Public Library has archived online storytimes, as does San Francisco Public Library. PBS Kids (US) has managed to get Michelle Obama hosting a Read Along series, which is phenomenal. Many local libraries are also participating, so google your local library to find your favourite librarian hosting their own storytime from home. 

The BBC has a page dedicated to their guest story readers, so you can find them all in one place. Here’s a good list of some of the celebrities like Sir Patrick Stewart, Constance Wu, and Dolly Parton reading stories, too. And a personal favourite of mine, Sam Neill reads ‘Hairy Maclary: Scattercat’ by Lynley Dodd (starts about 1:11 into the video). 

The publisher DK has developed a toddler activity kit which is a great resource, even if you don’t have their 100 First Words book.

 3. INDOOR PLAY

There’s a lot of parents who have been blogging about this sort of thing for years, so that means that plenty of content readily available at your fingertips. 

The Montessori Notebook has a great list for practical life activities that your toddler can learn and help you with (and your chores get done! It’s a win-win). And there’s some good tips in here about how to get your toddler interested in helping from the Kavanaugh Report.

This list from Kids Activity Blog that has 80 different activities to do with your 2-year-old that look like fun and use some of the mountains of recycling we have. And some rainy day activities from Mommy Poppins and Hands On As We Grow.

4. DANCE PARTY

Bust out your favourite moves to some of your all-time favourite tunes. Or, if that doesn’t work, try some kid-approved tunes. The favourites in our house at the moment are Teeny Tiny Stevies, the Wiggles, and some Annika Moa’s ‘Songs for Bubbas‘ 1, 2, and  3’.

We have done one of Dance Parent 101 classes where we also learned about shapes, and for more organised dance classes, there’s Sam Cam’s Frozen Dance Class, Forest Friends Ballet Class.

5. GO EXPLORING

An enormous number of museum and art galleries have ready-made museum tours to help inspire and entertain. Notable institutions such as the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre, and the National Gallery of Victoria. have online tours. Each varies the way they display their works, so I recommend having a look first to see the varied way they display everything. 

One great thing about introducing your child to modern art is asking them what they think of the work, and what it looks like to them. There’s no wrong answer! The Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) are good ones to pick. 

For those tours outside art, there’s Yosemite National Park, Farm 360 (where you learn about life on different type of farms), the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the San Diego Zoo, Mars with NASA’s Curiosity Rover, the Shedd Aquarium, NASA Langley Research Centre,  NASA Glenn Research Centre, Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and even LEGOLand Florida, and Walt Disney World.  

There’s also a good list of virtual tours from the Educators’ Spin On It. that includes colouring pages, more space-centric ideas, as well as some webcams from around the world. 

6. LEARN SOMETHING NEW

We have a few favourites in our house of what we loosely call ‘educational learning’. These include things like Blippi, the ABC compilation from Cocomelon (I love the different ways they sing the ABC song!) and Super Simple Songs. 

Obviously, this is also a good opportunity to mention WordsWorth Vocabulary here to help your child develop a basic vocabulary and build the confidence to try new words. I love it and, yes, I am biased, but that’s to be expected when you put your heart into something you really believe in ☺️. 

These ideas are by no means exhaustive, but a good starting point for you and your family.

I’d love to hear if you tried any of these and what you thought! 

Images:
[Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash] // [PBS] // [The Kavanaugh Report] // [MOMA]

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