LEARNING ACTIVITIES
For Children And Adolescents
Below is a list of Learning Activities that will be put on this website as downloads. Each one is independent of the others and can be done separately. Each activity covers important topics to discuss and / or things to do with children and adolescents. To help you do an activity, there is reference information for it in the topic categories of the book Topics to Discuss with Children and Adolescents.
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General Instructions for doing the Learning Activities are given below after the List of Learning Activities. These should be read before doing your first Learning Activity.
To order any Learning Activities, go to the Order page shown on the toolbar.
LIST OF LEARNING ACTIVITIES
INTERESTS AND SKILLS (Topic Categories 3 and 8 )
This activity helps a child identify his current interests and skills. A list of common interests and skills is provided. The child is then challenged to broaden his interests and develop more skills in the future. Specific skills are identified to work on.
NEEDS AND WANTS ( Topic Category 3 )
The child learns the difference between needs and wants. He identifies his current needs and wants and finds appropriate ways to satisfy them. He learns in the process to keep his wants limited based on the resources available to him and his family.
SETTING AND ACHIEVING GOALS ( Topic Category 4)
The child learns to set realistic goals for himself and achieve them in a reasonable period of time. With age, goals become more complex and cover a longer time period.
PRINCIPLES TO LIVE BY ( Topic Category 6 )
This activity demonstrates the need of having principles to live by in daily life. Some examples are given and the parent can add to these. The child is then challenged to select specific principles and more fully incorporate them into his life.
YOUR OWN SET OF VALUES ( Topic Category 7 )
A list of common values is provided. This helps the child identify his current values. He is then challenged to develop values which are in harmony with his goals and the principles he should live by.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES ( Topic Category 9 )
Some common strengths and weaknesses are described in this activity. This helps the child identify his own strengths and weaknesses. He then selects a few strengths to develop further and some weaknesses to overcome.
PERSONAL HISTORY ( Topic Category 10 )
Some forms are provided for recording personal information on the child. In addition, he is asked to do some writing about himself and important events in his life. This helps him see the progress he is making over time.
SUCCESS STORIES OF MY LIFE ( Topic Category 20 )
The child is taught how to identify the success stories of his life. These stories are evaluated so the child understands what he did right and wrong. This helps him have more success stories in the future and be more of a winner in life.
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GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR DOING LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Each activitiy is an exercise done by your child outside of Parent-Child Discussions or Meetings. These activities supplement the discussion of topics and provide another way to challenge your children.
To become familiar with the Learning Activities, read these instructions. Then share this information with your child when you help him do his first activity.
After his first Learning Activity, encourage the child to do other ones. He should do all of them with time. He’ll learn to do a good job with them as he does more of them. As he gets older, he'll appreciate their real value.
GENERAL FEATURES
Each Learning Activity stresses a specific theme, which is expressed in its title. Each activity is tied to the topic category that has material related to it. The activities can be used with most age groups.
Now look at some Learning Activities. They share the same features:
• To The Parent - There is reading for you to do and suggestions for helping your child with the activity.
• Objectives - There are objectives for the child to meet.
• Information And Instructions - Be familiar with this material so you can discuss it with your child.
• Examples - Generally, there are illustrations to clarify the information and instructions. They also help your child identify incidents or situations in his life that are related to the activity’s objectives.
• Work Sheet - There is usually a work sheet to do. It will help your child identify things he wants to accomplish and monitor his progress in achieving them. A sample copy of each activity’s work sheet is provided at the end of the Learning Activity. It is filled in with typical answers or information to illustrate how to use the form. There is also a blank copy of the work sheet. Since each Learning Activity is a download, you can make multiple copies of its blank work sheet. This permits each
child to have sufficient copies of the work sheet whenever he does the activity.
PURPOSES OF LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Learning Activities serve three general purposes.
1. Supplement Topics - Each activity covers a topic or topic(s) in the Topics of Discussion. It provides additional material on the topic(s).
2. Provide Challenges - Learning Activities offer many challenges. These supplement the ones you come up with on your own.
3. Evaluate Outcomes - Learning Activities are tools that parent and child can use to see how specific topics of discussion are being utilized in the child's life. Because these activities involve written records, they provide another way to verify the outcome of your child's efforts.
Each Learning Activity will stimulate thinking and motivate your child to take action. It helps him in a specific way. Let your child know why he should do an activity. Teach him the main ideas behind it. Doing these activities will help the child learn to run his life more effectively.
Through Learning Activities you can determine more accurately how well your child is living the things taught at home. Also, you actually receive feedback on what he’s learning outside the home. Both types of information help you to understand the child better and be more effective in helping him. It's easier to evaluate and assess the child's progress and make any necessary adjustments so he's more successful in his endeavors.
USING LEARNING ACTIVITIES
It's easy to use these activities. Simply select one and help your child do it in a satisfactory manner.
Select An Activity And Read It - There is no order in which these activities should be done because each can be done independent of the others. Normally a Learning Activity is done when you discuss the topics related to it. However, some activities should be done at an older age due to the nature of their content. A child should do an activity the first time when he becomes capable of doing it.
Your child may volunteer to do a Learning Activity, or you can ask him to do one. Solicit his input, especially if he’s an older child.
Read through the activity selected so you’re familiar with it. It’s best to have your child read the activity too, if he has the reading skills. Then you’re ready to discuss and do it.
Offer Parental Support - Your support is needed to help your child do Learning Activities and get the most out of them.
Review the activity with your child. Adapt it to his age and level of development. Use it to address his needs. Offer suggestions to help him do it. Younger children will need help to understand the activity, and they'll need more instructions and assistance to complete it. For youths, parental discussion adds depth to a Learning Activity. This makes it more of a challenge for them and helps them get more out of it. After giving instructions and answering any questions that come up, challenge your child to
complete the activity with minimal help. Allow sufficient time for him to do this.
You can vary the approach used with an activity. For example:
• Supplement the material in the Learning Activity. As you discuss the activity, offer some of your own thoughts about the material. Share some of your personal experiences related to it. Give examples or tell a story to illustrate the main ideas.
• Some activities, like Strengths and Weaknesses, have many examples. Your child will need help to understand some of these. Also, he cannot work on too many of them at once. Have him limit how many things he tries to do. One suggestion is to work on one strength or weakness each month. With time, he could cover many of them.
• Besides the work sheet, there are other things to do for an activity. The child could do some writing related to it. He could set some goals and work towards them. He could start a hobby. He could do a poster to highlight something about the activity.
For each activity, it's good to have some performance standards or criteria for measuring results. Then it's more clear to the child what he’s striving for and what he should expect from his efforts. Most standards should involve improvement in behavior in some way. Some could involve a minimum skill level to be developed or a minimum achievement level in an endeavor. Clear expectations help the child to achieve. Avoid too high of standards. They lead to discouragement, or set the child up for failure.
Your child may need assistance so be willing to offer it.
• If the child is young, he may lack the skills to read the activity. If so, explain it to him. If he can’t write well yet, help him complete the work sheet. Let him express his thoughts and you write his answers.
• A young child will not understand all the terms on the list provided with some Learning Activities. Explain what various terms mean.
• At times children get in a hurry and don’t do a good job. They'll write the first things that come to mind, rather than ponder a while and put down their best thoughts. Encourage your child to think and then give his most honest and best responses.
• Your child’s quality of work depends a lot on the encouragement and support you offer. So provide positive feedback and the support he needs.
• A sibling can help a child do a Learning Activity. The sibling may be older or have experience with it. Also, siblings have ideas that the child and his parents do not think of, and they have observations about the child that parents are not fully aware of.
• Your child may complete only part of an activity because this is all he's capable of doing or interested in at this point in his life. By doing the activity again when he's older, the child will complete it more fully.
Upon Completion Of Activity - After your child has done the Learning Activity, discuss it. You can add your own inputs and further clarify the material covered. This helps the child understand it better and apply it more fully in his life.
Keep completed Learning Activities for future reference. They contain valuable personal information and make an excellent addition to your child's personal history (see the topic category on this).
Some periodic follow-up for Learning Activities is helpful. This allows you and your child to assess how well he’s doing the things he committed to do. Since this can take him weeks or months, periodic reviews serve as reminders and help him stay on course until he accomplishes everything.
Redo Activities As Child Gets Older - Your child changes with age, so it's worthwhile to redo Learning Activities periodically. Some like the one for goals can be done yearly, while others can be redone every two to three years. Each time the child repeats an activity, he'll do a better job and require less help. He'll look at things from a more mature perspective, so many of his answers will be different. He'll get more out of the activity.
When an activity is redone, your child can begin where he left off last time. The work sheet done previously becomes the starting point for doing the activity now. As he goes through the activity, he can refer to the old sheet. This helps him to fill in the new work sheet with updated information. He can add new items and retain some old ones, provide more detailed responses and give better descriptions. These things reflect the changes in his life.
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Copyright 2004-2010 Leland Pulley
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