Connect with Your Children: 4 Fun Activities You Can Do at Home to Encourage Learning

With the ever-changing landscape of working and learning environments, families are finding themselves with more time at home – a valuable time that offers opportunities to bond with your kids.

Living in a digital world, it’s easy to keep them occupied with screen time especially during peak working hours, but it’s crucial to spend some time offline with your little ones.

Through daily activities together, you can positively build your child’s self-esteem, strengthen family bonds, encourage communication and of course, fuel their knowledge.  However, the type of kid activity you choose plays a part in strengthening those factors during these bonding sessions.

Tactile learning through experience

HP’s New Asian Learning Experience Study (NALE) revealed 92.7 percent of Malaysian parents value experiential learning as an opportunity to nurture their child’s creative and critical thinking. 

The study found that 83 percent of these parents believed bonding with their children through learning activities is a great way to develop interpersonal skills – printed materials, such as worksheets, were the most effective format for learning and writing new words.

With hands-on activities that promote tactile education, children are able to build their physical, cognitive and language skills. This is also especially important for their childhood development, which includes growth from a social and emotional standpoint.

 So, choose activities that encourage them to explore their senses such as drawing, writing and expressing actions or emotions.

 Here are four fun activities you can try at home.

1.  Story time

Stories are much-loved by children, it drives their brain development and imagination. Through storylines, children can be taught a valuable lesson, as well as pick up language, communication and social skills.

 Here are some ideas:

• Daily reading: Help your kid build their literacy skills by allocating a period of time daily to read to them. Use sounds or acting to associate words to keep the session engaging and ask questions in between to ensure they understand the plot. You can also discuss the moral of the story or encourage them to have their own alternate endings or get them to do a book review! Here is a free printable book review template. 
• Create their own story: Write an opening storyline or a topic and let them continue their own adventure. You can even print out a picture or a character (here is a free robot and superhero printable!) and let them build a story around this. This allows them to explore their own creativity in story-telling skills and writing. Parents then can read the story together and ask questions on points in their story, or offer a different perspective to showcase the various ways a story can develop.

2.  A scavenger hunt

A fun time for the entire family, a scavenger hunt is an easy way to educate your kids. Parents can customise this and use themes to challenge their kids. You can also have additional rules, such as allowing one hint which they have to use wisely. One of the easiest rewards when completing the treasure hunt can be their favourite snack! Larger families can even split into teams.

 Here are some ideas:

• Things around the house: This can teach them about items around the house. Clues can include where a certain chore or action is done daily such as “where dinner is made” to lead to the kitchen. Additionally, you can challenge them with uncommon items such as a painting in the house through an imaginative description, or which country a certain souvenir is from.
• Alphabets: Create a worksheet with all alphabets and add columns to each letter. Ask your kids to find something that begins with every alphabet and write it down.  

 3. DIY study charts

Rather than using pre-made study charts, get your child to make their own – this lets them learn as they create! You can hang up their masterpieces in their rooms or around the house to encourage them to continuously learn.

Here are some ideas:

• Math charts: This can be an addition, subtraction or a multiplication table. Just create and print a template with the equation numbers and leave the answers blank. Get them to decorate the entire chart with funky lettering, colouring and more!
• Alphabet charts: Create boxes for every letter and ask them to fill in an animal that starts with each letter. You can even print out animal illustrations for them to colour and match with the correct alphabet.  
• Print & Play with HP: Suitable for kids aged between two and 12, HP offers free various printable worksheets and crafts activities for your little ones! These include colouring, puzzles, mazes, dot-to-dots, drawing, paper crafts and more. You can feed your kids with snippets of information or help them count as they go along with the worksheets. Get your printables here! 

 4. Join HP’s Little Makers & stand a chance to win up to RM30,000 worth of merchandise!

Here’s a chance to have fun and win exclusive HP merchandise! HP’s Little Makers contest offers four fun printable challenges for your kids to do. 

 These are the four challenges:

• Paper Building Blocks: Let your child explore their creativity and decorate the individual strips before cutting them out to form paper blocks. Your child will have to arrange them according to the instructions and make sure their building is not collapsible!
• Make Your Own Brain: Educate your kids on how the brain functions! Just print out the template and get them to colour each section to form a paper hat that labels brain parts.
• Layers of the Earth: Explain the structure of the earth to your kids as this template forms a pinwheel that labels each layer.
• Building 3-D Shapes: Teach your kids how 2-D shapes can become 3-D! They can decorate these cubes and pyramids as they play along.

Once your kids have completed the four challenges, get them to pose with their paper creations and post the photo up on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtags #HPMY, #HPLittleMakers and #ReinventingLearning.

 You can also upload them on the Little Makers site if you can’t post on social media! Start your challenges now and visit HP Little Maker’s official website.

Reinvent learning with HP

In a bid to inspire students and evolve the educational landscape, HP aims to equip young children and students alike with adequate information, technology, as well as learning experiences that can offer insight into future workplaces.

With that, HP’s Reinvent Learning narrative addresses these concerns with focus on the importance of tactile learning, especially print-based education. 

Printed materials are considered a powerful tool to strengthen the relationship between a parent and child – it encourages active participation from both sides, compared to digital platforms or video-based learning.

According to HP’s NALE study, young Malaysian parents viewed printed materials as an effective tool to nurture their child’s comprehension skills and vocabulary, especially when supplemented with digital platforms that facilitate creative and critical thinking.

Moreover, children who used both tablets and printed worksheets were more engaged – it was found that 12 percent spent longer time on their tasks without signs of distraction or boredom and were more likely to ask questions.

Print with HP DeskJet Ink Advantage 4729

With a library of printable worksheets online and e-learning projects or homework, a printer is an important tool to support your child’s educational needs at home.

The HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 4729 is great for this – it can handle large print jobs with ultra-high-yield Original HP ink cartridges for less. Furthermore, it has wireless connection that can be linked to smartphones or tablets for on-the-spot printing. 

If your child uses a tablet, they are able to print their worksheets right away and efficiently – it is also designed for sharper lines, graphics, text and can produce high-quality prints for photos.

Its features include:

• Able to print up to 1,500 pages with black ink
• Wireless printing with the HP Smart app for users to link to their smartphones or tablet – users can print from anywhere with the remote printing setup
• Low-cost ink cartridge
• Supports borderless printing

For more information, visit HP’s official website, or check out their HP Malaysia’s Facebook and Instagram @HP_Malaysia.

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