Kids activities at home: a weekly planner with one activity a day. Plan with the kid for the week, learn and have fun!
Book: 50+ activities for kids at home!
Download ebook with Playful, Screen-free, Engaging and Fun- keep these little-ones busy!
Prioritizing one thing a day has become my go-to mantra for planning anything. As discussed in the book, essentialism, prioritizing can be liberating and clears the mental space to explore more (you may read the book takeaways and actionable items in this post).
Although the book might be addressing people-at-work, surprisingly, even for my three-year-old, this prioritizing ‘an activity a day’ is working great! Therefore, I wanted to write and share a post about it.
In this post, you may download the weekly-activity template that I follow or make one yourself. For kids’ activities and updates, please follow me on Instagram or Facebook. Now, let’s dive in.
As for us: every weekend, we (including my son) brainstorm the themes for every weekday and stick it on the wall. Yes, we brainstorm – It is more fun than it sounds! Then, the day before, I think about a couple of activities under that theme and our son refers to it when he wakes up and is excited to engage in it.
You may use the planner to give the child options in a category. Paste on the wall and let the child see it every day. At the least, he gets to keep track of the days of the week. The activity could take 5 minutes or 50 minutes, depending upon you and your child that day. However, structure and planning is something we want the child to take away.
(a) It provides some structure, be it just for an hour.
(b) It can keep the kid motivated to plan himself with the parent(s).
(c) Week-by-week can provide a sense of going forward, similar to having a syllabus at school, just that this is more fun and states only one activity for the day.
(d) One-activity planner’s benefit is that we feel we did what we set out for – rest all is a bonus.
(e) Also, even if we don’t end up doing that activity that day, still carving out her/his planner can give the child a sense of ownership to manage time!
Now, there are plenty more things that we do every day, and there is TV time as well, but this planner gives one activity that the child himself contributed to the plan.
Your wish! You could fill in different activities under the same category for a month and change the categories every month or change them every week! Again, the goal is to teach the child to prioritize and provide some guidelines while learning and having fun.
These activities are more for learning fun and not being rigid about completing them that day. It is perfectly okay if the child doesn’t want to engage immediately or even that day. Pushing her/him defeats the purpose, and it is okay to revisit the activity later.
We want the child to imbibe the joy of learning at this age. While these activities provide a broad structure, by no means they are syllabi for the child.
Week 1
Day 1:
Theme: Science/Wonder
Activity: Arrange different sized balls at home into the solar system. If you get a red ball, nothing like it, we labeled it Mars! Also, cut out pieces of paper and let the child write down the planets’ names and guide her along, hold a hand if needed.
Day 2:
Theme: Activity sheets
Activity: Complete the letters, numbers using dotted lines, or write yourself, match the shapes and more!
Day 3:
Theme: The Alphabet
Activity: Cut out letters and let the child arrange them
Day 4:
Theme: Nature
Activity: Draw a garden, paint stones with acrylic
Day 5:
Theme: Draw what you observed that day
Activity: Draw sun, a car, road, construction vehicle, trees, bees, describe what you saw, and draw it.
