Providing Enrichment Activities
The best academic enrichment activities make learning fun. Play games, encourage hobbies, and support projects involving each of your child's subjects in school. Send him onto the information highway to play his way to a better education. Tutoring another student can help solidify his academic gains.
Writing PracticeA great way to encourage children to practice written self-expression is through letter writing. Before mailing a card or letter to a relative or friend, have your tween add a few lines of his own. Don't edit! Relatives will appreciate the personal touch of your son's jumbled sentences and misspelled words. Third graders should write their own thank-you notes for gifts and create their own greeting cards and party invitations. Have your fourth grader address your family's holiday greeting cards.
Help your tween find a pen pal. A correspondent living in very different circumstances helps fire a junior writer's imagination, while writing to a friend who has moved away provides a productive way to reach out and touch the special someone he has been missing.
Kids of all ages learn the true joy of letter writing when the long-awaited day arrives and they open the mailbox to find a letter addressed to them. If necessary, send your child a postcard.
The following activities can help your tween progress academically:
Reading: The single most important educational skill is reading. Have your child read the recipe when you cook. Ask him to help you find a particular brand when you shop. Give him a magazine subscription for his birthday. Take him to the library regularly. When you drive, have him read the map and direct the driver. Encourage him to play computer games that involve reading. When you hike a nature trail, have your child serve as the guide by reading the brochure aloud to you.
Vocabulary: Take turns presenting a word-of-the-day at the start of dinner. Make a game of having everyone slip it into the conversation by using it in a sentence.
Spelling: Play password, Scrabble, and slap card. For slap card: Write spelling words on individual cards or scraps of paper. One person calls out a word. The first person to slap it claims it and tries to spell it without looking at the card. If he succeeds, he keeps it. Whoever gets the most cards wins.
Math: To practice counting, let your child keep score whenever you play cards. When you play Monopoly, let your child be the banker. Play slap card by writing math facts on one side of some cards and the answers on the backsides. Place the cards with the problems facing up. One person calls out an answer. The first person to slap the correct problem gets to keep it. If two problems have the same answers, they can both be slapped and won. Games of logic build the skills needed for higher-level math, so play board games such as Clue, chess, Connect Four, Battleship, Othello, and Pente.
Social Studies: Discuss current events at dinner, check out historical or current-events movies, and visit museums. Take advantage of Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving to teach your child what these holidays signify. Stop at every historical landmark in town and on vacations to read the plaques.
Speech: Take turns telling stories. Ask your child to tell you about the movie that he saw or the book he read.
Science: Buy a book about constellations so you can stargaze in the backyard. Visit local museums. Give your child broken appliances to disassemble. Buy a book of science experiments he can do at home.
If you're bored with your child's board games and there's a shortage of siblings and neighborhood children to take up the slack, the computer software version of Monopoly and Scrabble are available from
Thousands of games are available at
