Hello,

I work at home and have two daughters 3 & 4 yrs old. They stay home with me instead of going to a daycare to save us money. Lately I’m concern that my 3 and 4 yrs old are spending too much time in front of the laptop or television when I’m busy with work or in a meeting. Is there any other activities I can get them to do?

I think the major educational activity is reading! Read books to them.
Make sure they have many puzzles, building blocks, and other educational/developmental toys.
Do art and craft projects with them. Anything from play dough to painting. For project ideas check this website: http://www.toddler-net.com/Games_art_crafts.html
Learn and sing songs with them.

The kids are all 3-5 years old, but very intelligent, cute little things! Please just give me a variety of things, considering all things disney related from Bambi, Belle, to Goofy, and whatever else you adore or can think of! Anything under the sun!

Hey

This sounds like a fab idea and I’m sure the kids will enjoy lots.
The obvious thing is to either read disney books or watch a disney movie, but other ideas I can think of are these:

*Make it a fancy dress for the children
* Get a disney pinata
* Pirates of the Caribbean or Captain Hook Treasure Hunt -make up some easy clues to find sweets or trinkets
* Disney Princess Mix-Up - Help the Princess or Prince get a message to the King and Queen. Seat your guests in a circle. The child thinks of the message that she would like to send to the king or queen (parents work great for this role) and whispers it to the person next to her. The person receiving the message tells the next in the circle and so on until the message reaches the last person in the circle. The king or queen tells the message out loud and then the child tells the original message.
* Have a tea party like out of Alice in Wonderland with oddly coloured plastic teacups.
* Let them decorate and make crowns for princes and princesses
* Snow White’s Poison Apple Game: The kids sit in a circle and pass around an apple while music is played. Once the music stopped whoever has the apple takes a bite and pretends to be asleep for the rest of the game. The last person holding the apple wins.
* Disney Karaoke and Disco
* Disney Wordsearch
* Disney Movie Quiz/Trivia
* Beauty and the Beast’s Rose Petal Game - Scatter rose petals outside but put number stickers on a few. Let them go and find the rose petals with stickers on and then they win the prize with the corresponding number.
* Mary Poppins themed "Let’s Go Fly a Kite."
* Pin the Tail on Eeyore
* Tigger Bouncing
* Disney Face Paints

Hope this helps you and good luck with the day!

I could really use some help here.
I need to think of a 50 minute fun and educational program for children that focuses on one of these values: individuality, curiosity, having fun, love, teamwork, acceptance, good manners.
If anyone can think of a fun and detailed children s activity I would appreciate it.
this is for young underprivileged kids, ranging from first grade to fifth grade.

Board games like Trivial Pursuit, and Scrabble can be fun.
Have a old fashioned "games party", each person bring a game that doesn’t use electricity or batteries, and see what happens.

Children can work in pairs, against another pair, with winners having most points as a "team effort".

Chess and Checkers are old favorites too.
Problem with many of the Electronic TV games is that there often is NO human interaction, you play against a computer. That’s no fun, lol.

And, what adults present should strive for is teaching how to be a good loser, as well as a winner. Winners should be encouraged to shake hands with the loser.
Some youth sports teams also encourage sportsmanship too.

I homeschool my two teens, ages 12 and 14, one boy and one girl. What are some good educational activities that I can do for them? TV shows, sites, things to do, all are welcome.

Thanks
My daughter plans to attend Veternary School. She is 15.

My son, who is 13, wants to go to college and "wants to learn everything" but he is currently leaning toward computer programming and software development, perhaps even video games. This is what he tells me anyway, He is extremely intelligent and is my "million question guy."

My oldest son is 17 and is asking me to homeschool him. He is a little behind, but it very bright. He has a passion for welding and building things so he is planning to attend a vocational college. He is recognizing now, though, that the public school that he attends is sorely lacking in preparing him to this type of school. He has told me that his public school really lacks the mathematical portion, especially, of his education. He is afraid that if he does not withdraw and let me homeschool him for at least a year, he will be lost when he gets to voc school.

http://www.webmonkey.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/html/

check PBS, Discovery and the History Channel, they have some good educational programming.

Also, check out Good Eats on the food channel. Alton Brown, the host, is very entertaining, but also explains the chemistry behind cooking and nutrition. cooking’s also involves math if you have the kids calculate the calories and nutrients in each ingredient and divide by the number of servings to determine the nutritional breakdown for the recipe.

Sounds like someone is trying to get us to do his homework for him ….

I was wondering if anyone could think of any fun, semi-educational, wholesome activities for campers from grades 4-9 for a one-hour session. Low-budget ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

create a trivia gameshow with a prize for the winner. i always find it fun to play a game, and a great way to do it is to add something educational to it. giving out a prize will be a great incentive for campers to try hard.

Under 45 min, no huge mess, make it fun and educational.

Anything with bugs and insects is a plus for a terrarium. And as someone also stated earlier, a venus fly trap is big for terrariums as well.

I am currently teaching in a third grade classroom where the children are a handful (some are on IEPs, some have ADD/ADHD, and some have behavioral issues) A lot of the students love to draw so I was to pull from that interest. I am looking for activities that involve and link drawing to an educational activity. Any suggestions will be much appreciated!!!

Grade 3 was awesome for me.

Hmm, let’s see… what do third graders like..

Maybe you could do like projects where they have to draw a poster.. or make a movie.

I will be taking care of children in my home and I need ideas for activities I can do with them and how much should I charge per week, should I make contracts? I want to watch children that are 2 to 4 years old, because I have a two year old that is home with me and I want children that are close to his age. I want to provide them with educational activities that will be fun but inexpensive. Anything else I should consider?

Check the home daycare laws with your local OCFS (Office of Children and Family Services) . Check with your homeowners Insurance company about any additional coverage you should consider adding to your policy. Check with a lawyer about any legal issues you should be concerned about. GET CERTIFIED IN INFANT/CHILD CPR and FIRST AID. Take a course on child abuse identification. As far as educational activities and things like that, I would suggest getting some simple crafts, books, videos and things like that. Also, outdoor recreation is a big plus. Have a safe outdoor swingset or other play items for kids in your yard. Check out these web sites: www.orientaltrading.com; www.kidsdomain.com. As far as "what to charge" for your services, I’d say call some local daycares in your area and ask what they charge, then you can get an Idea of what people are paying. Do you want to charge a flat daily rate, or an hourly rate? Good luck.

This would be for college freshman. I need to come up with actvities for them other than lectures and videos. Need some interactive things for them to do and learn at the same time.

As an educator myself, I would encourage you to spend some time online finding practices of other educators. Teachers are amazingly generous with their work, and there are so many sites that have ‘packaged, tested’ lessons as well as great ideas other educators have used (like group projects that can be ongoing thru the semester as their knowledge base increases, case studies are great, etc).

I spent so much time trying to recreate the wheel when I first began teaching, and each time I got assigned a new course! I got fabulous ideas by attending teaching conferences (1-3 days) and by cruising websites of other instructors of my subject.

As a microbiologist, I can highly recommend the Winogradsky column (watch them change colors over the course of a semester and have students test pH, have students collect original samples from different ecosystems to start column, etc….http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/winograd.htm).

Check into the many national chem and bio teachers orgs. They are very motivated in new methodologies of teaching (not just for high school teachers, either).

I congratulate you on your search for new methods of teaching!