Activity Duration: 3 days

Age appropriate: 3 – 7 years old

Introduction:

A child learns by the following factors: observing, listening, playing, exploring, questioning, experimenting, and stimulating all/most of his/her senses (touch, taste, smell, vision and hearing).

Purpose:

• Create a fun and explorative way of learning alphabets, names, or words
• Parent and child bonding session
• Incite Imagination
• Encourage Recycling

Materials Needed:

• A box
• Stickers
• Plastic animals, fishes, figurines (theme related)
• Scotch Tape
• Paint and brush
• Sand
• Ice cream sticks
• A backdrop drawing or picture
• Glue
• Colour Pencils

Day 1: Paint the Box & Learning Counting

Duration: 1 – 2 hours

• Together with your child, tape the edges of the box (This is to prevent the sand from spilling out of the box).

• Allow your child to paint the box with their favourite colours

• You can encourage your child to use their fingers or hands to make prints on the box. Also a great time to encourage your child to explore the mixing of different colours

• While your child is painting the box, write the numbers on the ice cream stick

• For younger children, you can introduce numbers 1 to 10

• For older children, you can introduce numbers in the multiplication order e.g. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

• After your child has painted their box, allow the painted to dry

• Using the numbered ice cream sticks, introduce the numbers to your child and allow them to stick the ice cream sticks on the box

• In this case, the theme of our box was going to the Zoo, so we used the ice cream sticks to represent the animal enclosure / fence

Day 2: Colouring the Zoo Backdrop

Duration: 1 hour

• Create a backdrop for your box
• This can be your own or your child’s drawing
• You can also search online for pictures and print them out (like what we did)

• Allow your child to colour the backdrop using colour pencils
• Talk to your child about the theme of your sandbox
• Ask them questions to describe what they might see or experience
• Or ask them to recall and describe their prior experience (e.g. their last trip to the zoo)
• You can also introduce letters and words relating to the theme

Day 3: It’s Play Time!

• Allow your child to pour sand into the box

• Together with the toy animals, allow the child to have fun with their sandbox
• For a sensorial learning experience, ask your child to write letters or spell words on the sand

Learning the letter Z. Z for Zebra!

By Poppletots

Poppletots was started in 2010 by a mom who left her job to spend more time with her child. Poppletots aims to provide unique, fun and useful children related products such as educational kits and apparels. Within 2 years, Poppletots has become a fun-going cosy community for reviews and parents to exchange ideas.

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