7 Fun Learning Activities for Children to Do At Home
Family bonding at home
Educational activities facilitate personal development and informal learning for children, making the learning process enjoyable and engaging. Besides improving your child’s physiological skills, they also aid in improved mental health, communication skills, and increased physical activity. As a parent, it’s important to find ways to keep your child engaged and learning during this long summer holiday. Below are 7 fun and learning activities that you can do with your child in the comfort of your own home.
1. Cooking / Baking
Photo from Pexels
Cooking is not only a fun and educational activity but also great for bonding. Through cooking, children learn about measurements, temperature, and different ingredients used in preparation. Cooking is also a fun way to teach your child about health and nutrition. Baking gives children a sense of amazement and joy as they create something delicious from scratch.
2. Playing Games That Stimulate The Brain Processes
CA students enjoying a game of chess
Playing educational games such as charades, crosswords, puzzles, jigsaw, and scrabble is a great way to help kids learn while having fun. Choose games that match your child’s interests and ability level. Such games help improve the child’s vocabulary, and critical thinking skills and aid in the development of cognitive growth.
3. Read Together
Photo from Pexels
One of the most amazing gifts you can offer your child is the ability to read. When parents read together with their children, it not only helps children develop a love for reading but also improves vocabulary and comprehension skills. Involve your child by allowing your child to pick their book of choice which spikes their interest.
4. Try A Fun Science Experiment At Home
Photo from Pexels
Experiments are an ideal way to bring out your child’s love for science. Simple scientific activities that don’t involve much work on your side are fun ways of learning. Children love creating volcanoes using simple ingredients found at home. Make simple experiments that require readily available materials.
5. Grow A Garden
Photo from Pexels
Gardens are lessons in science, nutrition, and patience all rolled into one plot of dirt in your backyard. A garden teaches children how plants come to life. They also learn about nutrition which could encourage them to eat more vegetables. Children can keep a gardening journal, learn the names of different plants and vegetables, plant their favorite vegetables, and study what it takes for them to grow.
6. Visit A Museum
CA students at a museum
Museums are great spots for fun and educational experiences for children of all ages. There’s a lot to learn at the museum such as different cultures, the history of people, extinct animals, and so much more. Museums are excellent places for both children and adults. Depending on your child’s interest, You could go to a science or art museum.
7. Have A Fun Time With Arts And Craft
mummy and daughter painting
Art is the best way for a child to express their individuality. Besides boosting creativity, Art and crafts is a fun activity to break the monotony. Provide materials such as crayons, canvas, and paint and let the children create anything from their imagination. You could also use readily accessible materials such as cartons and play dough for building and construction.
Read More
5 Things Coast Academy Does To Encourage Parent-Teacher Relationships
1. Regular Communication
Parent teacher conference
At Coast Academy, we believe in the key of Communication. We have open communication so that the parent can reach out to the school at any time. We also keep them in the know through newsletters, emails, and calls where need be.
2. Parent-Teacher Conference
Early years parents n book review
With regular Parent Teacher Conferences, parents get an opportunity to stay up to date on their child’s progress at school. It is also a great opportunity for both the teacher and parent to lay out any issues or questions they may have.
3. Taking Advantage Of Opportunities to Connect
Mother and child painting
Frequent class presentations, special performances by students is an excellent opportunity to invite parents to come and watch their children perform. Parents love getting opportunities to drop by their child’s class and relate to what the child does in school. This not only brings parents joy but also makes them feel included in their child’s life at school.
4. Build Confidentiality And Positivity
mother and daughter hugging
The basis of effective communication with parents also starts with trust. It’s essential for parents to trust their child’s teacher. When speaking to parents, any sensitive information shared between the teacher and parent remains confidential. Putting in a positive correspondence about the child goes a long way.
5. Being Friendly And Professional
Parents, teachers, and students at the Coast Academy
A little friendliness goes a long way, in terms of building relationships with parents, it is important to maintain professionalism to avoid overstepping on individual boundaries. At Coast Academy, we respect different cultures and family dynamics.
Read More
8 Ways to Support Your Child’s Mental Health and Well-Being
As parents and caregivers, there are ways we can support our children to give them the best chance to stay mentally healthy.
Parents play a huge role in teaching activities that promote good mental health. The ability to label and manage emotions, identify needs, and ask for support are worth building for everyone — especially since these skills may help protect against future mental health concerns. You can help a child to have good mental health
1. Listen to Your Children’s Concerns
It is essential to listen to your children’s concerns. Let them feel heard and understood. Have a one-to-one conversation with them and listen to any concerns that might have. Once your child feels safe with you, they learn to trust you in every situation which is essential for their mental health.
2. Encourage physical activity
Physical health and good mental health are strongly correlated. Encourage your child to get exercise regularly or engage in other physical activities such as swimming, cycling, or whichever activity they love doing. Such activities uplift their energy, mood, and mental health.
3. Teach Your Child The Art of Positive Self-Talk
Teach your child how to engage in positive self-talk with themselves. This changes how they view the situation and help manage their feelings and response behavior. For example, “Come down, It’s now worth getting into an argument over this.”, “I am going to relax and it will pass.” and “I can do this.”
4. Encourage Your Child to Build Meaningful Friendships
Encourage your child to make new friends at school and around the neighborhood. You could also enroll them in a summer camp or classes of activities that they enjoy such as skating and swimming. Meet their friends and get to know the kind of influence they will have on your child.
5. Discipline Without Labeling
Practice gentle parenting. When disciplining your child, avoid using mean words like stupid, dumb, or calling them bad. This leads to the child feeling like they can’t do anything right or that they are not good enough for you. Instead, correct your child’s wrong behavior by explaining why their action was inappropriate and encouraging them to give it another try when they feel ready. This gives them the push to want to correct their mistake and do better.
6. Be Generous With Praise
Make it a point to always praise good behavior. Praise your children more than you reprimand them. Constant criticism will only lower your child’s self-esteem and make them feel like they can’t get anything right which is detrimental to their mental health. Praising your child whenever they have done a good deed boosts mental health.
7. Journaling
Journaling is an excellent coping strategy when dealing with big emotions. It may also help improve your child’s social skills by encouraging self-reflection from a young age. It could be as simple as writing three things that they are grateful for at the end of each day.
8. Get Professional Help If Needed
It is very important to spend enough time with your child so that you can easily recognize when they need professional help. Most parents tend to shy off when they notice that their child might need more help than what they have to offer. Addressing mental health concerns earlier on in life is the best thing you can do for your child. Children who grew up with good mental health tend to become responsible adults who know how to manage their emotions well.
You can also read 7 Effective Classroom Management Strategies at Coast Academy
Read More
Cambridge Checkpoint Results For The Year 2023
7 Effective Classroom Management Strategies at Coast Academy
Managing a classroom requires skills. A good teacher needs to connect with kids and keep them focused on the lessons. Below are 8 habits for good classroom management to ensure that the class feels safe, comfortable, and pleasant place for everyone.
1. Build A Relationship With Each Student
Our teachers are required to get to know each student as an individual and to Identify and praise individual milestones. Days begin with a greeting and a reflection of the previous day and end with a wave of goodbye while they leave for home.
2. Establish the Rules
Each teacher has individual classroom protocols in place to handle routine issues that occur in every classroom. These involve how to raise concerns in class, how to ask for permission, and general dos and don’ts in class. All children are familiar with these rules and when a student breaks a rule, they own up to their mistakes and act accordingly. We maintain a light atmosphere where students feel free to work and thrive, to try, laugh, and learn.
3. Modeling Way Of Ideal Behavior
Our teachers act as the ideal model of what is expected of the learners. Children learn best through modeling or copying so they are most likely going to act as they see the adults close to them act. At Coast Academy, we encourage the students to:
- Maintain eye contact
- Let one another speak uninterrupted
- Raise concerns about one another’s statements in a respectful manner
4. Have A Plan
All our teachers have work plans that they share it with their students, too. A plan can be simple “You have 10 minutes to practice on your own, after which everyone will make a presentation.” Going through the day’s agenda hooks the students interest from the word go and lessens the chances of misbehavior.
5. Engaging The Learners
Good teachers are enthusiastic about the subjects they teach they encourage classroom participation by asking questions and giving them discussion topics. They walk around the class interacting with the children and offering assistance where needed.
6. Show Love and Kindness
Students are most successful when they feel liked. Our teachers show care and compassion towards the learners. A smile goes a long way. Good work is applauded and Children are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. This in turn improves academic and behavioral performance.
7. Be Fair and Just
Favoritism is completely forbidden at Coast Academy and all children are treated equally. In cases of behavioral issues, applicable disciplinary measures are applied that do not involve public shaming.
8. Hold Parties
Our termly classroom parties act as an acknowledgment o students’ hard work throughout the entire term, motivating them to keep it up, breaking classroom monotony, and creating room for the students to mingle, share and bond and have fun.
Read More
IS IGCSE THE EASIER OPTION? DEBUNKING THE MYTH
IGCSE exams can be easy or difficult based on the aptitude of the child.
With many parents withdrawing their children from the CBC and enrolling them into the Cambridge curriculum, the most frequently asked question is, is it going to be too basic for my child? For years, many people have believed that IGCSE is the easier option. Is this really the case?
1. The key difference is the lack of rigorous coursework in the GCSE qualification.
IGCSEs were made for international pupils and so they lack the intensive coursework that is found in other curriculums. They vary in content and mode of delivery. Cambridge is student-centered, meaning is not a one-size-fits-all. It gives a fighting chance for students of all levels as they can still complete practical and coursework elements and they gain an IGCSE grade that they would not be able to achieve under any other curriculum.
2. It requires active learning, recognition of student diversity in ability, and continuous assessments
IGCSE includes a mixture of exams, coursework, and practical assessments. Unlike in other curriculums where getting a good score requires memorization of concepts, the IGCSE exam is designed so that getting a score of 8-9 requires students to put in a lot of effort to understand the detailed knowledge content of each field. It also prepares students for a more intensive program.
Benefits of Acing the IGCSE
Have high job opportunities and expertise.
Ability to study abroad in countries with developed education.
Develop work skills to easily adapt to social life.
GCSEs are internationally recognized as highly-respected official high school qualifications and an entry standard for admission to further academic study in the UK and beyond.
Undergraduate courses at UK universities will specify that applicants need to meet certain requirements at the IGCSE level to receive an offer.
Many employers also require job applicants to meet their minimum requirements in Maths and English IGCSEs (or equivalent). From there, we can infer that the higher the IGCSE score, the more likely it is to succeed in life.
Read More7 Effective Classroom Management Strategies at Coast Academy
5 REASONS WHY PLAYGROUP IS IMPORTANT
First-time separation between a parent and child can be overwhelming for both but the benefits of enrolling your child in a playgroup are worth it. For most kids, it takes 2 weeks or even more to adjust and adapt to the new environment, but at Coast Academy, most children usually settle in within the first week. All children are respected and their individuality and differences are embraced. Here are 5 reasons why Playgroup is Important for your child’s overall growth.
1. DEVELOPS SOCIAL SKILLS
Statistics state that social skills development in children starts between the ages of 1-3. Most kids today spend the whole day with their nannies at home. This could slow down their growth and social skills. In playgroups, children get to socialize, which helps build life skills such as self-expression, sharing, cooperation, consideration, and mutual respect, which also add up as conflict resolution skills. Our very able and qualified team inspires the children to thrive and maximize their potential by exploring and discovering the world around them.
2. ENCOURAGES PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
While most children spend their entire day at home on screen time, playgroups offer an enabling environment for a variety of age-appropriate activities ranging from physical activities such as running, jumping, balance, and swimming to block play, painting, and molding which build the children’s gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and balance.
3. DEVELOPS CREATIVITY, IMAGINATION, AND MOTOR SKILLS
90% of Brain growth happens before kindergarten. Exposing your child to a playgroup environment will trigger their creativity and imagination through dress-up, role plays with the other children, music, puppet play, and other games. Storytime aids in speech, language, vocabulary development, auditory perception, and imagination whereas visual perceptions are developed through activities such as Identifying different shapes and colors and building puzzles.
4. BUILDS CONFIDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE
The warm and loving nature of our staff helps develop the child’s confidence and resilience. Children that go to playgroup turn out to be strong and independent individuals as they learn to take care of themselves and show a sense of responsibility and a desire to be competent. They learn how to manage separation anxiety, clean up after themselves after free play, make choices throughout the day, and adapt to a new environment.
5. PLATFORM FOR BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Playgroup is hugely beneficial in building trusted relationships with each other and with their teachers and helpers. Our small class sizes help in developing close, healthy, and positive relationships. It also serves as a base for parents to meet, make friends, learn parenting tips, and network. We pride ourselves in maintaining close, healthy, and positive relationships with our parents and most importantly, vibrant and happy children.
Read More
5 Benefits of Field Trips In A Child’s Education
Field trips offer children first-hand learning experiences. Giving equal weightage to both indoor as well as outdoor activities makes the children well-prepared for the outside world. Field trips not only expose the student to practical learning through sight, taste and smell but are undoubtedly one of the best ways to promote team spirit over several fun-filled knowledgeable activities. This term, the Coast Academy took different groups of students on different field trips applicable to their curriculum. Some of the most memorable moments in a person’s life are the field trips taken during school years. Below are 6 benefits of a field trip in a child’s education.
1. Academic growth
Students who go on field trips tend to perform better than students that are only limited to classroom learning. A child is most likely to remember something they saw rather than just sitting in class. These trips reinforce what the students learn in class which in turn makes it easier to understand better and remember.
2. Interactive Learning
In a classroom setting, engagement is usually lost through the memorization of materials. Field trips give more room for interacting with the subject of study thus making them more relevant and relatable. i.e. learning about rocks in a Geography class is not as relatable as seeing and feeling each type of rock which makes it easier for them to remember.
3. Feel of Real-world experience
This is especially when students visit historical sites that show the history of a people. Museums and Forts make the students gain historical empathy as they are taken around and get to see the way of life of the people of the past, rooms where freedom fighters were locked and the equipment used in historical wars. This in turn brings the history lessons to life. Students also get to see how class lessons are applied in real life.
4. Breaks Classroom monotony
Taking the students out on a field trip is an excellent way of breaking the daily classroom monotony. Lessons become more lively towards a trip as the students look forward to the “break”. They often serve as a powerful motivator for students.
5. Access to Different Environments
Going out on a field trip is an excellent exposure to a new environment different from the one at home. Taking children who have been born and raised in the city to the farm exposes them to an entirely different setup from what they have been accustomed to. Sometimes state exams include questions that do not bridge the gap between rural and urban students and fieldwork is a great way to build the bridge.
6. Social Interactions
Field trips create an opportunity for students to interact with fellow learners from different classes. They get to exchange ideas, learn from each other and make new friends. A timid child is also more likely to be more cheerful in such a setting than in the contained classroom setting.
Read More