Ways to learn from home

Whether you are homeschooling your children, teaching online, or sharing knowledge with family over Skype, now is the time to try a range of different activities. I have tried to include materials that you may already have in your home. These activities could be adapted for ESL and I will outline the key learning points or vocabulary as I go along.

1. Making candles – This is an ideal way to highlight states of matter, between liquid and solid. You could also teach cooking associated vocabulary and scales of measurements. Use up old or nearly empty candles, birthday candles etc and melt them in a tin can in a bowl or pan of water on the hob. Supervision is required for young children. Have a stick or old paintbrush for stirring. Once the wax is melted, decant into a clean glass jar or container. Set aside to cool away from tiny hands!
2. Baking- This activity makes use of kitchen/ cooking/ measuring vocabulary. When I taught baking lessons in Asia, it was a great chance to teach a variety of new verbs; sieving, shaking, stirring, rising etc. If you don’t have a lot of baking ingredients in your home, you can use up what you have by visiting this website; https://lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes?search_api_views_fulltext=baking
3. Painting- Using a paint by numbers or colouring book offers the chance to teach colours, numbers and offers a relaxing activity for a quite afternoon. For young learners, they may enjoy having their artwork displayed in the house, or you could post it to a family member. They could even have a go at writing the address o the envelope. It would surely bring joy to the recipient. If you don’t have paint at home you can use some making food colouring, water and flour.
4. Who am I? – Using an old magazine or newspaper, cut out a picture featuring a few people (they can be well – known or not it doesn’t matter). Make a photocopy if possible or display in front of both of you. Have the learner study this picture for a minute. Then get them to ask you questions to determine “who” you are. E.g. Are you wearing glasses? This is a good language based activity for young learners who will be using full sentences, and is also a great activity for the ESL classroom.
5. Sink or Float- This activity will foster a love of science. Gather a bowl of water and a variety of small objects, for example; a toy car, a pom pom, a pencil, a drawing pin, a rubber duck etc. Ask learners whether they will sink or float. For older children, you can ask them to describe the rationale behind their prediction and try to discover which objects are made of which materials. You could even draw a poster together to illustrate which items sunk or floated.

If you have any other ideas for homeschooling, I would love to read about them in the comments!