Keep your children busy with an activity from The Busy Siblings Book

 

Busy Siblings Corner: Cool School Days

By Heather Kempskie & Lisa Hanson

Materials         

Chalkboard     

Chalk              

Books             

Bag                 

Ruler               

Paper              

Crayons          

Create a space in your home to serve as a classroom. Set up a few work stations (chairs with coloring books, paper, crayons, and books). You can even put up a small chalkboard. Your children can take turns as the teacher or student.

Baby

Babies sometimes make the perfect students; they are both observant and curious. Your baby’s siblings can entice her senses by sharing colorful pages from a book or by singing songs to her.

Toddler

When it’s your toddler’s turn to be the teacher, help her get into character by giving her a bag to carry some books. She may want to pass out paper and crayons to her students. What does she want them to try to draw? She may call out ideas like, “Bird or tree.”

Preschooler

A great way for your preschooler to practice his letters is for him to teach his siblings the alphabet. Have him draw the letters in his name on the chalkboard. Give him a ruler to point to each letter as he recites them to his students. Take this time to teach him how to spell simple words such as[I]cat[I] or [I]dog[I].

School-Age Child

Your school-age child can take attendance when he is the teacher.. Have him call each sibling’s name. Siblings can respond, “Here!” To practice reading out loud, he can read a story to his students. Encourage him to ask them about the book. Who was in it? How did it end? Were there any silly parts in the story?

Excerpted from The Siblings Busy Book. Copyright 2008 by Heather Kempskie and Lisa Hanson. Reprinted with permission of Meadowbrook Press, www.meadowbrookpress.com. Available in bookstores nationwide.