Learning During Lockdown
Reuben started nursery in September and is doing awesome, and the school has really stepped up to this whole lockdown thing and the remote learning. Huge thank you to his school for making the lockdown education so much easier.
He has really taken to his whole learning journey, and has now started watching educational videos on YouTube and just loves his Maths and his Phonics (Alphabet), he has always preferred maths but as he has started nursery he is really taking to the other core subjects.
Maths and Phonics
He is currently doing Phonics as part of his education and is really loving it, ad now knows his alphabet and I am so proud and as he already loves maths he is a proper super star.
This got me thinking, he has a love of cars and we play car challenges and other cool adventures with all of his cars. So how can we combine his love of cars with education….Then it stuck me lets make a game out of it.
The Car Game
Reuben loves his car mat which has real roads on it and signs and all that good stuff. So I thought maybe this would be a great idea for the new game.
So we got some pieces of A4 paper and drew our own road layouts, with the first sheet leading to the next sheet and so on. The layout has junctions and roadabouts and all the normal cool car stuff. However the difference is…
As you may be able to see from the photo above, the layouts are marked with letters and numbers. So here is how to set it up.
The Setup and Layout
- Take a few pieces of paper (A4 is perfect any colour you like), and a selection of cars (you need as many cars as you will have junctions)
- Draw a road layout starting on one of the pieces of paper. Making sure to leave a empty road to join to the next screen.
- Continue this process on all the sheets, you can go sideways too and not just straight ahead.
- Next starting on the first piece of paper label the junctions with random letters or numbers (you choose).
- Continue on the next sheets and as you get further along add both letter and number to the junction i.e E6, I9 and so on.
- Now draw a picture (yes it can be a rubbish picture) of each car that you picked at the beginning at the end of each junction.
- Now layout your track starting at your first one and ending at your last one. Like in the picture below
The Rules
- Starting at the beginning select a car to start.
- Then get your child to pick a junction to go down by saying either the letter or number of the junction. (this is a great way to get your child to recognise letters and numbers without even thinking its education).
- When they reach a junction with a picture of a car (7 in the picture is meant to be a picture of Reubens green sports car) they swap cars and continue on their journey. Each time selecting a junction by the letter or number or both to try to get to the car rewards.
Reuben loves this game and he doesn’t even think of it as education, and as you play more you can add other locations to the track like parks, beaches, trees so instead of getting cars they can head to the beach or the park.
So go and give it a try and let me know in the comments what you think. Most of all have fun.