Stay-Home Activity: 3 DIY Resources to Enliven Your Child’s Learning

With extended periods of home-based learning, parents may have run out of ideas to keep their children engaged at home. Besides entertaining them with YouTube videos or video games, you can try your hand at making some DIY learning resources to keep your child meaningfully engaged at home. Let our teachers at the SPD Building Bridges EIPIC Centres show you how.

DIY Light Box

Light box with translucent paper of different colours on it

What you need:

An A4 size box file
Aluminium paper
LED fairy light
Translucent paper

The light box provides an inviting surface for children to engage in activities such as writing. As children are attracted to the light glow from the box, it can help to calm them down while they do their work on the light box. For children with visual difficulties, a light box can help them to focus and motivate them to use their sense of sight. It also helps children to become more aware of light, colours and objects. Our teacher from SPD@Jurong explains more in this video.

DIY Fire Truck

Small cardboard buildings on a table, standing beside is a child wearing a firefighter's uniform in a cardboard fire truck

What you need:

Big cardboard box
Paint, glue, scissors

Engage in pretend play with your child through the DIY fire truck. With the truck, your child can pretend to be a firefighter, drive the fire truck into the city and help save lives! This helps them to connect with real-world jobs, practise their directions and coordination, as well as balancing and gross motor skills. Just open up the base of the box, paint the truck, and you’re good to go. Watch the video below to see how our teachers use the truck to engage our children.

DIY Theatre

A teacher with 2 paper puppets behind a theatre set-up

What you need:

Big cardboard box (we used a smart TV box for this, but if you do not have a big box, see below for some alternatives you can do with common household items)
Paper
Paint, glue, scissors

The DIY process of the theatre provides a fun opportunity to engage your child in the building process from the start to finish. For a start, get your child to paint dark and light shades of brown on rectangular pieces of paper. Next, get them to paste the painted paper on the cardboard box to give it a brick-walled effect. At the back of the box, you can cut out an opening which serves as a door for children to enter and exit the performance space.

The theatre on the left is transformed into an aquarium filled with paper craft fish with one child watching, the theatre on the right is transformed into a stall with one child handing a paper bag to another — *With some creativity, the theatre is transformed into an aquarium (left) or a supermarket (right)*

Once the theatre is completed, you can start to use it as a stage for dramatic play. Besides story-telling and puppet play, you can also engage your child in pretend play by transforming the space into a fast-food restaurant, supermarket, or an aquarium, just to name a few. The options are endless.

Don’t have a big cardboard box to build a theatre? Improvise by using the sofa or two chairs placed side by side with a blanket or curtain draped over them to create a similar theatre effect! You can also use old socks to make hand puppets.

Add these resources to your list of stay-home activities and have a fun and fulfilling June holidays with your child!