Ideas for Mums (or Dads!) and their Boys
At Highbury Preparatory School, they know boys and celebrate all that it means to be a boy. Highbury’s three Grade R teachers have nearly 50 years of teaching experience between them. They know how to be both forthright and caring, and they love the exuberant energy of Grade R boys. They know that boys who are 5 or 6 years old still love to play, and often they are not very interested in desk-based learning yet. That’s why their whole Grade R programme at Highbury is designed around the concept of learning through play or ‘play with a purpose’.
The Grade R teachers at Highbury share their ideas that can empower parents to play purposefully with their boys at home too. Here are ten fun ideas that will feel like ‘play’ but will also reinforce what is being learnt at school:
Jumping numbers: Get chalk and write numbers onto your trampoline or driveway. Make up sequences of numbers that your son needs to remember and then jump on those numbers in that order. Start easy and make it harder and harder!
Logrolling after bath time: For a fun way to dry your son, wrap him into a log with a towel, lie him on a carpet and whip out the towel so he log rolls across the room. Your son is strengthening his core, getting dry and having fun all at once.
Pom-pom ball race: Use droppers or syringes to blow a few little pom-poms from one side of a table to the other using only the ‘air’ produced. Playing with droppers and syringes builds finger and hand muscles that are needed for learning to write.
Art in the shower: Spray shaving cream onto the shower wall and enjoy spreading it out and then making finger drawings – shower art that’s easy to clean up.
Hedgehog countdown: Make a potato into a hedgehog by getting your son to stick as many toothpicks into it as there are days before a big event. Count down to the event pulling one toothpick out each day.
Timer games: Get a 5-minute timer and make parts of the daily routine into a fun challenge “Right – 5 minutes to get ready for bed! Ready, steady, go!”
Giant shoelaces! Make learning to tie shoelaces easier and more fun by starting with a skipping rope. Sit your son on a small chair with his legs together and feet on the floor. Put the skipping rope under his thighs and teach him to tie his legs together with a bow.
Earn your treats: Have fun while developing your son’s mouth muscles for improved speech! Get some jellybeans and a straw and get your son to suck hard on the straw to pick up the jellybean and move it. Or play table soccer by blowing jellybeans through straws.
Spray watering: Get your son to help with watering your veggie garden with water in a spray bottle. The pump action is great for hand muscle development and he can practice with both right and left hands, which is very important.
Indoor fishing: Make a fishing rod together using a cardboard tube with a rope wound around the middle of it and a magnet hanging off the end. Have fun learning about what the magnet can and can’t pick up, while twisting the rope up and down each time for fine motor finger development.
Play is the language of learning, have fun! Research shows the crucial years for learning are the early years and that academic performance is set between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. At Highbury, they strive to enable every boy to fulfil his potential, while having a lot of active fun and learning through play.
Knowing Boys. Since 1903.
Contact the school on the details below if you would like to book a tour of Highbury, or join our Open Day on Friday 8th March from 8.30am to 10.30am to discover all that Highbury has to offer your son.