Creative Ways to Teach Your Kids Math and Life Skills Without Worksheets

Whether your kids attend school or are homeschooled, it’s essential to eliminate the dull and boring activities and make them fun and productive instead.  

Why not learn math and other skills through hands-on projects? This can be done as a family, or your child can do it alone.

I see a lot of parents focusing on getting their kids to do math packages for homework. While you do have to complete them for regular school teachers, there are actually endless, interesting ways for kids to learn without doing worksheets.   

Just sitting and doing worksheets and packages won’t provide the depth of knowledge that alternative activities provide your kids. Packages are a big yawn. Be warned: you will probably end up forcing your kids to finish them.

A much more effective learning tool is to allow your kids follow their interests and explore some great project-based learning activities. We all have access to many resources on the Internet.

So much can be learned hands-on, led by their interests in different things. One key is to make it real – how does it apply to their real life? Worksheets generally don’t seem worth doing for that very reason.

Here are some ways to make this fun, (and oh, let’s not forget about the learning):

• Go on a recipe hunt to find interesting ideas for meals. The added bonus is that your family gets to try new foods! Yum. (reading, research, nutrition)
• Let younger kids measure out the ingredients during food prep. Put on music – make it fun! (fractions, proportions, reading, following directions)
• Let older kids follow the recipe and prepare the meal themselves. Assist as needed but beware of micromanaging the process. That’s a no-no. (independent thinking, cooking skills, following directions, math)
• Let all the kids help with serving, including such things as setting the table, lighting candles, and cleaning up afterwards. (life skills, managing a household)
• Do crafts. Let their interests dictate the kind of crafts. Crafts are an excellent way to develop fine and gross motor skills. Plus, they are fun. (creative thinking, math, problem-solving)
• Gardening is another great skill to teach your kids. Plant vegetables or grow flowers. The seeds they sow won’t grow overnight and gardens require regular tending. Gardening teaches responsibility and patience, as well as being a superior life skill. (life skills, research)
• Experiments are a great way to teach skills such as collecting data and representing the findings on graphs or other visual formats. There are bunches of cool science experiments online. Let your kids pick one that looks fun and try it. (science, research, logical thinking)

As you can see, project-based or inquiry-based learning is much more powerful than… yawn… always doing worksheets. It provides an opportunity for kids to learn by doing. Plus, these activities are great for bonding the whole family.

If you need any resources or ideas for project-based learning, let me know in the comment section below.

The added bonus? You can learn something new with your kids!