Your child’s education doesn’t stop when the last bell rings at the end of the day. Learning opportunities abound everywhere your child goes, whether they’re at school, home, or playing in the great outdoors. As a parent, part of your job involves harnessing those learning opportunities and fostering your child’s curiosity, and MMGuardian wants you to be able to do so safely and effectively.
How? Here’s everything you need to know about taking your child’s education outside of the classroom.
Why learn outside the classroom?
Learning outside the classroom doesn’t just make education fun for kids. It also uses real-world applications to deepen children’s understanding and develops soft skills like teamwork, leadership, and problem solving.
For children who struggle in traditional classroom environments, learning outside the classroom is especially beneficial. When kids learn in a low-pressure environment where they can have fun and play to their strengths, they build self-esteem that serves them inside the classroom and out.
6 ways to learn outside the classroom
It’s clear that youth have a lot to gain from learning outside the classroom, but where can you start? Here are six ideas to help you take your child’s education beyond school’s four walls.
Put Math to Work
If you’ve heard your child ask, “When will I ever use this?” you know that connecting math to the real world can be a problem for kids.
Practice fractions in the kitchen
Cooking helps kids wrap their head around fractions and measurements and is a great activity for kids of all ages. Find kid-friendly recipes you can cook together and ask kids to halve, double, or quadruple a recipe for an added challenge.
Split the bill
You probably don’t divvy costs when dining out as a family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take the opportunity to practice splitting the bill! Having kids calculate their “share” of a dinner bill or tip reinforces lessons in percentages, addition, and subtraction.
Dive Deep Into History
If history seems like nothing but a string of dates and names to your young learner, make it your goal to connect history to the modern day.
Explore your genealogy
History is more interesting when it’s your own. Equip your child with a tablet and an Ancestry.com membership to explore your family history. Watching relevant documentaries and films, learning the language, or researching your family’s country of origin takes this genealogy lesson even further.
Read historical fiction
If you have an avid reader at home, use historical fiction to get them engaged in history. The best historical fiction draws upon facts and authentic details to deepen a child’s understanding of a time period or topic. Scholastic offers several historical fiction recommendations for kids, like In America by Marissa Moss and Seminole Diary: Remembrances of a Slave by Dolores Johnson.
Get Hands On with Technology
Want to raise a future tech wizard? Don’t wait to start fostering a love of technology in your child.
Download educational apps
Screen time isn’t all bad. High-quality educational apps are a great self-directed learning option for kids, not to mention a smart hands-off solution for parents. Rather than handing your pricey tablet over to the kids, buy a child-friendly computer that’s durable enough to stand up to heavy use.
In addition to durability, consider battery life and parental controls when buying a tablet for kids. Also for safety’s sake, be alert to the signs that your child might be dealing with an online predator.
Learn to code
Older kids and teens will relish the opportunity to build their own apps and games using apps that teach them to code. Coding apps for kids gamify coding to keep kids engaged in the learning process. In addition to teaching fundamental coding concepts, some apps teach coding languages like Python and Javascript.
These six activities are just the tip of the real-world learning iceberg. Use these ideas as starting point for your child’s hands-on education and keep looking for learning opportunities wherever you go. Whether it’s making change in the grocery store, reading a map, or building a treehouse, there’s always a way to keep learning outside the classroom.
Make sure your child stays safe online by making MMGuardian part of your parenting strategies. By installing MMGuardian on a child’s device, parents can monitor texts and phone activity and receive alerts to help ensure their child is safe and learning positive habits. To try out MMGuardian and receive a 14 day free trial, just click the button below!
Consider also joining our Facebook group “Tech-Savvy Parenting” to discuss raising kids in the 21st century with other parents.
This article was written by Laura Pearson. If you have any questions or would like to reach out to her, you can email her at laura@edutude.net or visit her website.
