Everyday Learning Activities

Learning is everywhere! As you and your family relax, wonder, play, and work, learning happens. These everyday family-centred activities can enhance your child’s learning at home. Check for updates often.

Choose the activities that you and your child are most interested in, or what best fits with what your child is learning with their teacher. View parent guides and consider:


Activities for All Learners
Activities by Educational Stage

Activities for All Learners

Relax

Family Conversations

Literacy

  • Start a family book club. Share your thoughts about what you are reading. This supports your child’s interests and their love of reading. Your child can use the phone or face-to-face digital apps to talk about what they are reading with family and friends in other locations.
  • You and your child can share your favourite oral and written stories. Why do you enjoy them? What do they mean to you? How could these stories be shared or told in other ways?

Numeracy

  • Ask your child open-ended questions related to math, such as “How many items are in the fridge?” and “How much money would you have if you had saved a dollar every day since you were born?” These questions are open in process and in possible solutions.

Arts Education

  • Encourage your child to discuss the arts. You can talk about your
    • favourite pictures, paintings, statues, or designs
    • thoughts and feelings when listening to songs
    • dances you and your child know or want to learn
    • stand-out plays, movies, or TV shows and their characters.

French

  • Keep a simple journal en français to record the date, the weather, and write one or two sentences en français (expressing emotions, activities on that day, etc.).

Reflecting on Thoughts and Feelings

Physical Education/Health Education

  • Meditate with your child to unplug, learn to breathe and focus, and reduce stress and anxiety.

Literacy

  • Your child can write a daily journal and/or blog. They can put the date at the top of each page and write about the day’s events, including their thoughts and feelings about what is going on. They can also include a drawing of something special that stands out for that day.

Literacy with ICT

  • Create a visual of all the people you are missing each day. Who are you connected with? Think of ways to stay in touch with those with and without technology. From a distance, could you help a family member or friend learn about virtual meetings, so you can see them?

Numeracy

  • Your child can create sketches, paintings, sculptures, a dance routine, and other forms of art to enhance math concepts in number, geometry, shape and space, and reasoning. 

Wonder

Explore Curiosities

Literacy

  • Nurture your child’s curiosity. Help them love learning. What is your child wondering about? Is there a problem, issue, or big idea that they are curious about? What do you or your child know about it already? How can you find out more about it? What resources and sources can you use? How can your child share this information?

  • Watch television or listen to other media together. Discuss what is happening. Ask your child questions to find out what connections they are making. Do they see any biases?

  • Investigate words and phrases that you and your children hear and read. Create a word/phrase wall or word bank for discussions. Look for meaningful ways to use these new words with your child.

Numeracy

  • Invite your child to solve problems that happen during the day. This encourages thinking and problem solving. To support your child’s curiosity, use prompts such as “I wonder what else this could be used for,” or “I wonder how we can find out.” 

Play

Creative Play and Design

Literacy

  • Encourage your child to play using their imagination. Your child can complete design challenges based on need and/or interest.

Numeracy

  • Make a timeline or graph with your child about important moments in their lives. Begin your timelines from the day your child was born and include both the high and the low events.

Arts Education

  • Design your own musical instruments such as harmonicas, drums, rain-sticks, xylophones, and banjos. For ideas, check out the Learning Liftoff website for DIY instruments.

  • Do a jump dance. Put on some lively music and have your child jump in different ways to the music. All family members can join in for lots of fun and exercise.

  • Create a one-word story. Have each family member stand or sit in a circle and say one word at a time to create a story. Keep the story going until it comes to an end.

  • Dim the lights in the room and listen to music as a family. Concentrate on feeling the music. Stand up, open your eyes, and move the way the music makes you feel.

  • Play mirror partners. Two of you stand facing each other and Person A does slow moves while Person B copies them. After one minute, Person B does the movements and person A is the mirror.

  • Hold a paintbrush party. Write the names of different body parts on paper. Call out a body part and have your child and family members use the body part like a paintbrush to paint the floor or objects in the house.

Social Studies

  • You and your child can think about your “citizenship” identity. Who are you? What do you stand for as a citizen of Winnipeg, Canada, and the World? Create Citizen ID cards with drawings or avatars representing each other.

  • Make a map of your neighbourhood and include a “legend” of the citizens and how they relate to you and your child (ex. teachers, friends, family, frontline workers).

  • Encourage your child to write a public announcement about their rights and responsibilities at home. What positive contributions can they make as a family member and friend? For example, I have a right to be safe and I have a responsibility to not hurt others.

  • Create a song, short play, or video about rights and responsibilities in your community around topics such as social distancing. Think about all the people in your community, and your rights and responsibilities to them. What message do you want to send to the community?

Work

Scheduling and Planning

Literacy

  • Your child can create daily schedules that include schoolwork time, playtime, music, outdoor time, snack and meal times, family time, and bedtime.

  • Your child can discuss and write down personal and academic goals. Encourage them to think about what they need to know and do to reach those goals.

  • Involve your child in planning individual or family projects, including chores and other responsibilities. Your child can make a plan and outline steps to complete each task. If their plan isn’t working, they can revise it.

  • Your child can make a list of home safety tips for chores and other responsibilities around the house. This is a way to purposefully learn while helping everyone in the home.

Numeracy

  • Ask your child to draw up a list of groceries, calculating total costs and costs per meal. Think of ways to help your child use math in daily life.

Activities by Educational Stage

Preschool

Relax

Family Conversations

Physical / Education

  • Create gestures and movements as you and your child sing songs, recite rhymes, and perform finger plays.

Family Conversations

Literacy

  • Snuggle with your child as you read together. Children who feel safe and nurtured learn more easily. Books can help open and support conversations about positive feelings and difficult situations that your child or family may be experiencing.

  • Ask your child about the letters and numbers that they see all around them. Read an alphabet book or counting book. Discuss how letters and numbers are used every day.

  • Talk about the outdoors. Draw your child’s attention to the sensations they feel by asking how the wind feels on their face, how the grass smells, or what bird songs they hear.

  • Talk at bedtime about the day’s activities or about plans for the following day to help your child wind down.

Wonder

Explore Curiosities

Literacy

  • Help your child choose storybooks based on their interests and experiences, questions and wonderings, culture and language, and more. Stories can help your child understand the world and learn how others think, act, and feel.

Numeracy

  • Encourage your child to collect things to examine, count, trace, and order. Bring along a container or a bag to collect some special treasures outdoors (for example, seeds, leaves, and small rocks) and indoors (for example, old keys, corks, and buttons).

  • Your child can play with blocks, sand, water, and modelling clay to learn about volume, mass, spatial relations, and more.

  • Help your child use math language outdoors to support their wonderings. Look at geese flying overhead, rows of ants marching by, spots on ladybugs, and other things in nature.

Play

Creative Play and Design

Literacy

  • Notice your child’s play and think about how to add some literacy into it (for example, “You made a castle with your building blocks. Would you like to make a sign that says ‘Elsa and Anna’s castle?’”).

  • You and your child can play with sidewalk chalk by drawing pictures, tracing one another’s outline, writing the letters of your child’s name, or using simple words with huge importance like “mom,” “dad,” and “love.”

  • Try cutting short pieces of masking tape and line them up on the table edge so your child can stick them onto paper. This is great practice for developing hand-eye coordination. Older preschoolers can try cutting the tape themselves. Other things that are easy for your child to cut are straws and modelling clay.

Numeracy

  • Encourage your child to create with blocks, shoeboxes and cartons, or plastic building bricks. Your child can build anything they want. Some possibilities may include building a great city, a zoo for their stuffed animals, a robot, or a rocket ship!

  • Draw large shapes or numbers on paper and your child can line them with stickers.

  • Build a fort with your child. As you build, your child can count the sheets, blankets, sofa cushions, pillows, chairs, books, or other materials that you use. Throw a tablecloth over your kitchen table to create a cozy fort. You can even “camp out” indoors!

  • Use a deck of cards to help your child create patterns and sets. You can order the cards numerically and even build a simple house of cards.

Science

  • Experiment with writing in paint or water together. On a warm day, fill up a pail or even a large cup with water and give your child a brush or even a Q-tip to “paint” the sidewalk, trees, door, etc. Ask, “What happens to the water as the sun shines on it?” “Do you notice that the brushstrokes dry faster in sunny spots than in the shade?”

Arts Education

  • Encourage your child to reflect on their music, dance, drama, or visual art creations. This shows you support and recognize your child’s thoughts, feelings, and art inspirations. Ask your child the following questions:

    • “What gave you the idea for the art you created?”

    • “Is there anything you especially want me to notice or know about your art?”

  • Your child can keep an art journal to track their creations and save ideas for future art projects.

Games

Physical Education / Health Education

  • Take a blanket outside on the grass for your baby to lie on. Let toddlers and preschoolers run, roll down hills, and jump like kangaroos. Being active helps your child learn and grow.

  • Make a game of washing hands and brushing teeth. Try to make it fun by singing “Brush, brush, brush your teeth” to the tune of “Row, row, row your boat.”

Literacy

  • Play “I spy” with your child, keeping it simple (for example, “I spy something blue!”, “I spy something that moves!”).

  • Challenge your preschooler to name as many people, foods, toys, or household objects that begin with a given sound, such as sss (scissors, spaghetti, sweet grass…). This is an important step in learning to read. Try to say the sound the letter makes rather than the letter's name.

Numeracy

  • You can count with your child every day, adding on a number each day and working towards a count of 100 (for five-year-olds).

  • Play hopscotch with your child by creating a grid in your hallway using non-stick painters’ tape or sidewalk chalk if you are playing outside. Make the squares a little smaller for younger children. Count the numbers aloud as children hop.

  • You can place a sticker on a calendar, marbles in a jar, or add a small plastic brick to show the beginning or end of each day. This can become a new family ritual to enjoy together.

  • Play the “Same/Different” game with your child. Depending on your child’s age, the goal might be to find three things that are the same and one that is different. Ask your child about their choices. You might need to help them with language to describe treasures (for example, “Oh, so you brought me a set of three tiny wooden things and one long plastic thing!”).

Work

  • Provide some time for your child to play independently with you nearby. Play is the work of a young child.

Cleaning and Chores

Literacy

  • Your child can make signs for different items in your home, such as their bedroom door or a sign that says “fish” for the front of the fish tank.

  • Show your child the many ways that you use printed letters and words every day (for example, “I’m going grocery shopping later, so I wrote this list of the things I need to buy. Am I missing anything? Can you count how many things are on the list?”).

  • Your child could help with a toy washing station outside to learn about cooperation.

  • Your child can observe and model activities that their older siblings are doing. You can set up your kitchen table so your child can “make marks” on paper while their older siblings work on projects at the same time.

Numeracy

  • Your child can help clean up a closet by sorting objects or putting books back on the shelf by height or colour.

  • Your child can set the table (non-breakable things) and count aloud as they place forks or spoons on the table. Your child can learn about matching and sorting as they make sure each spot at the table has one fork, one spoon, one napkin, etc.

  • Your child can help with laundry by matching socks together. You can talk to your child about same/different and introduce language such as “two the same makes a pair”.

  • Your child can fold towels to give them a chance to fold a big rectangle into smaller and smaller rectangles.

Cooking, Baking, and Building

Physical Education / Health Education

  • Your child can help with washing fruit or vegetables before a snack. What kind of healthy food are we eating today?

Literacy

  • You and your child can talk about recipes and follow one together. Your child can mix ingredients and discuss what happens. Your child may feel proud to cook with others and to have family members try out the food you have made together. If your child is a picky eater, they may be more willing to try something that they helped make.

Numeracy

  • Use math language as you and your child cook together. Ask your child, “What do you think the first yummy thing we put in should be? Okay, what is the second thing we should add to the bowl?"

  • Encourage your child to put your measuring cups or spoons in order from biggest to smallest. Allow your child to experiment with these. How many little 1/4 cups of water do we need to fill up the big cup? How do you know?

  • Your child can count ingredients as both of you child bake. Children often love counting chocolate chips!

Planting and Gardening

Literacy

  • Try planting salad ingredients that can easily be grown in a child’s garden, a container pot, or a window box. You can even grow a “garden in a bag.” Use a cloth grocery bag and plant tomatoes or other vegetables. Each day, carry the bag out for sunshine and water, and bring it in at night to “sleep.”

  • Your child can make little signs that say “Lettuce” or “My Garden.”

Numeracy

  • Your child can measure how plants grow with a ruler, a shoelace, or even small blocks.

  • Your child can count the passing days until the first cherry tomato is ready to eat, or count the yellow flowers that will turn into cherry tomatoes.

Science

  • Plant a few seeds or beans with your child and watch them grow!

Early Years

Relax

Family Conversations

Literacy

  • Your child can share thoughts, ideas, and feelings about their day. Many things are changing. Ask your child if they have questions or concerns that they want to share and discuss.

  • Talk with your child about what they are viewing on television and other media. How does it make them feel? Why? What connections do they see and what do they think will happen next?

French

  • Encourage your child to be a weather reporter as part of your family’s daily routine. Use French expressions for the weather.

  • Listen to French songs and videos with your child. Many children in Early Years enjoy singing along with music by Alain le Lait, whose videos can be found on Youtube.

Wonder

Explore Curiosities

Literacy

  • Help your child explore their curiosities about the world around them. Support them in finding answers to questions and solutions to problems. The things your child is wondering about may come from play, their environment, books or media, and conversations.

Numeracy

  • Show your child a problem or image from something at home, or view Math Before Bed or Thinking Mathematically. Ask your child what they notice. Give them time to answer. You can extend their thinking by asking them if there is anything else they are wondering about.

French

  • Go on a treasure hunt inside your house, looking for different colours or shapes. Voici un rectangle. Le rectangle est rouge. Count the objects and sort by colour and/or shape. Il y a trois cercles jaunes.

  • Explore books together and read them several times for fun and comprehension. You could check out these digital books.

Play

Creative Play and Design

Literacy

  • Your child can make puppet shows, skits, and songs to perform in front of the family. Make them together for some family fun.

  • Your child can plan and create imaginary worlds and spaces, digitally or with recyclable materials. Give your child items from around the house and let the play begin.

  • You and your child can share and create family stories by looking at family videos, photographs, and artifacts. They can create captions for photos and more.

  • Your child can explore timelines from many sources to create their own photo timelines of themselves, family, friends, or a pet that highlight important events.

Numeracy

  • Encourage your child to role-play real-life situations, such as setting up a store or a restaurant. They can use real or play money to act out transactions for real items or for drawings of real items.

  • Your child can calculate distances and times for trips the family would like to take in the future. They can use maps to make a travel schedule and calculate costs for food, travel, and other expenses.

  • Infuse counting into your child’s play by having them count the number of steps from one area of the home to the other, or count the number of toys in a box or puzzle. They can also put toys back into a box to practise counting backwards.

French

  • Encourage your child to create a poster illustrating the French words they know.

Games

Literacy

  • Play games that involve listening and speaking, reading and writing, and viewing and representing. Your child can play games such as the alphabet game, Simon Says, charades, 20 questions, the telephone game, scavenger hunts, and more.

Numeracy

  • Go on a shape hunt with your child. Look for shapes in your home or yard. Use words that describe 2-D shapes or 3-D shapes, such as “the top of the coffee table is a square” and “the roof is a triangular prism.”

  • Make up games using dice and playing cards (when culturally appropriate). Your child can roll the dice and add or multiply the numbers that come up. They can add up the totals until they reach a target number, like 10 or 100. You can play this game backwards to practise subtraction.

French

  • Play a game with your child that involves movement and counting in French. Hopscotch and Simon Dit (Simon says) are fun and can be played indoors and outdoors.

  • Play a familiar board game with your child, such as Snakes and Ladders, to integrate counting in French. Try using the following French expressions while playing: C’est mon tour (It is my turn); Je roule le dé (I roll the dice); C’est le numéro… (It’s the number…).

Work

Cleaning and Chores

Literacy

  • Your child can create schedules for screen time, schoolwork, taking turns with electronic devices, and caring for pets.

  • Encourage your child to think about and investigate the best way to keep your home clean and the chores done well. Using what they learn, they can make signs for things like washing hands, saving electricity, five tips for a clean house, and more.

Numeracy

  • Your child can sort different items as they clean their room. This helps them with classifying and patterning. Discuss with your child possible ways of organizing their toys, books, games, and clothes. Ask how they grouped items and whether an item could fit into more than one category. How are items the same and different? Can the items be organized differently?

  • Your child can estimate the time it will take to clean a bedroom or toy box. Then, they can check if their time estimate was accurate.

  • You can use math language when talking with your child during daily routines, such as “Your favourite show starts at 6:00. How much time do you have left to play?” or “The temperature seems high. Can you please read the thermostat for me?”

Cooking, Baking, and Building

Literacy

  • Read and follow recipes together. Experiment with ingredients to create and record original recipes. Your child can display and take photos of their cooking to share with others. They can also create advertisements to persuade family members to try their food creations.

  • Encourage your child to think about and investigate the best way to keep your home clean and the chores done well. Using what they learn, they can make signs for things like washing hands, saving electricity, five tips for a clean house, and more.

Numeracy

  • Invite your child to measure and become more familiar with grams, kilograms, and litres to understand quantity. For older children, let them work out amounts, such as doubling or halving a recipe.

  • Encourage your child to make meaningful and helpful measurements around the house (for example, “How high is the sofa?”). Use both non-standard measurement (like a child’s footsteps or blocks) and standard measurement (like kilograms and metres).

Planting and Gardening

Literacy

  • Plant a butterfly or bumblebee garden! Your child can read about and select plants that attract butterflies and bees to your yard. Discuss why they are important in our world. Your child can monitor the kinds of insects that are visiting and think about how to improve the garden for butterflies and bees.

  • Look at the landscape from your window or go outside. Describe the land and research the plants that you see. Ask your child how they can nurture the land and how to share this message with others.

Numeracy

  • Your child can estimate how many plants might fit into your gardening space. Your child can work out accurate measurements. If you have seeds, your child can sort and count them. As the seeds germinate, your child can measure and record the length on a weekly graph.

  • Place a bean in a wet paper towel in a glass jar so your child can see the germination process. How much did the plant grow from last week? Ask your child to estimate how much it will grow in the next two weeks.

Middle Years

Relax

Family Conversations

Literacy

  • Encourage your child to share thoughts, ideas, and feelings about their day. They may be hearing and seeing things from the media, peers, or home that they are confused or concerned about.

  • Create a family question jar. Each child drops questions in the jar that they would like discussed or answered during family time.

  • Interview family members (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins can be interviewed over the phone or online) about their life, hopes, and dreams.

Numeracy

  • Have conversations with your child about how math connects to academic and home life. Ask your child what they are learning in mathematics with their teacher. Where do they see fractions or decimals? When do they count, calculate, or measure? How do they do it? Where do they use statistics, graphs, tables, or charts? When do they hear and use mathematical words and phrases? Why is math important?

  • Play music together. Count the measures and notes or compare the patterns.

  • Your child can find statistics or graphs given by media and scrutinize them together. Do you agree with them? Were they misrepresented in some way to prove their point? Is there bias in the way that the data was collected and displayed? Discuss.

French

  • Listen and discuss music en français (for example, you could listen to French music on the radio at ).

  • Read a simple book or poem en français to a parent or sibling. Look for les mots-amis—words that look the same in English and French and mean the same thing.

  • Watch and talk about a movie or TV show in French. Your child can watch a movie they know and change the language to French. Does your child recognize familiar words and names?

Wonder

Explore Curiosities

Literacy

  • Your child can create “what if…” questions and ask others to explain their thinking about them. Ask them: “What could you do with this information?” “How could you share what you create?”

Numeracy

  • Your child can ask “how many…” questions, and discuss the various ways something can be counted or calculated. Then, they can try to find a more efficient method.

Play

Creative Play and Design

Physical Education / Health Education

  • Your child can create some exercises for yourself and others involving activities like skipping, biking, playing hacky sack, riding a scooter, skateboarding, dribbling, etc., while maintaining physical distancing requirements.

Literacy

  • Encourage your child to design their ideal bedroom or room at home. They can decide on the placement of items and draw the design to scale. Ask your child to explain the reasons for their choices.

  • Your child can create factual and imaginative family stories by looking at videos, photographs, and artifacts. Your child can make guesses, interview people, or research these items to create their stories.

  • You and your child can share and create family stories by looking at family videos, photographs, and artifacts. They can create captions for photos and more.

  • Begin a creative building project using plastic building blocks or other small building materials. How did you decide what to build? Research with your child some careers that would provide them with an opportunity to create, design, and build.

Numeracy

  • Your child can estimate the chances of something happening, and then gather data to calculate experimental probabilities. For example, what is the probability that you will see a dog or a person walking by your home in the next 10 minutes?

  • Your child can design a room at home. They can measure existing items or research dimensions of 3-D objects. They can experiment with different ratios before drawing a 2-D floor plan for the room.

  • You and your child can dream about a trip you could take in the future. Estimate the costs, distances, time, carbon footprint, etc. Your child can do some research and calculate the totals. Display the information using a graph. What type of graph is best? Different trips could be compared using the same type of graph.

French

  • Encourage your child to design a “Who am I?” collage and then share it orally in French with as many details as possible.

  • Your child can create a crossword for a family member using French words. Think of weather words, food words, clothing, sports, pastimes, animals, and calendar words.

  • Make a recording while speaking en français about likes and dislikes, saying J’aime… and Je n’aime pas… (using food, sports, clothing, pastimes, seasons, weather, etc.), and share it.

  • Encourage your child to make visual art such as a poster about Francophone cultures that celebrates celebrities, food, holidays, street names, music, names of communities, and traditions.

Games

Literacy

  • Play board games or online games that involve strategy, problem solving, word puzzles, word play, questioning, drawing, solving clues or riddles, or dramatizing. This can be fun and engaging for Middle Years children.

Numeracy

  • Play board games and other games that involve numbers and strategic planning. Choose games that use number cubes (dice), card games, or dominoes.

  • Create new rules for familiar games and play the new variations, and then discuss the impact of these new rules.

French

  • Play a word game like Scrabble en français together or with a sibling. Use familiar words and try to use them in complete sentences (for example, froid / Il fait froid).

Work

Scheduling and Planning

Literacy

  • Encourage your child to create a journal to record the day’s events and their thoughts and feelings. Have them write the date at the top of each page and include a sketch or drawing of something that stands out for them about the day.

  • Your child can make a list of jobs you would like them to do to help around the house. Together, create a schedule and even a job contract that outlines expectations.

  • Your child can interview family members and friends about jobs they do and how they got their jobs. Find out what they like and don’t like about their jobs.

Numeracy

  • Your child can gather data on the amount of time that family members spent on daily activities. They can create various graphs and visuals to display the data and use that data to inform discussions for setting priorities and establishing future schedules.

  • Ask your child to draw up a list of groceries, calculating total costs and costs per meal. Your child can create visual displays to compare the value for grocery items of different sizes or brands. Meals can be compared using different graphs.

Cleaning and Chores

Literacy

  • Encourage your child to read clothing care labels and laundry product labels when doing laundry.

  • Negotiate with your child about them assuming weekly chores and responsibilities. Encourage your child to write a contract that outlines what was agreed upon. This may include when the tasks will be completed, what supplies are needed, or any other terms that were negotiated. Continue to revise this contract as needed.

  • Work as a team with your child to build and repair things around the home. Involve them in making a plan and problem solving if the plan does not work the first time.

Numeracy

  • Ask your child to estimate how much they think an average load of laundry will cost. What factors will be included (for example, detergent, water, electricity)? Then, use what they know about fractions or percentages to calculate the cost of one load of laundry.

  • Ask your child to keep track of what chores they have completed, to gather data on the time invested or the quality of work done, and to report that data using a graph. These graphs can be analyzed to discuss ways to improve for the next week.

Financial Capability

Numeracy

  • Your child can help with the household spending plan and brainstorm ways to save on expenses.

  • Your child can estimate the average cost for one load of laundry. Then, they can try to find out what information would help make a better estimate and calculate it again.

  • Your child can estimate the average cost for breakfast. Then, they can try to find out what information would help make a better estimate and calculate it again.

Cooking, Baking, and Building

Literacy

  • Your child can experiment and adapt recipes to create and record new versions. Explore the history of a favourite food. Is there a dish that is always served on special occasions? Write the story of what makes this a special food and publish the story with the written recipe.

  • Invite your child to create a survey for family members to find out what their favourite foods are. They can use these survey results to plan and prepare meals for the family.

  • Your child can design and create a baking show or cookbook for a particular audience, such as healthy food for teens or culturally diverse recipes for everyone in their community. As they design, they can consider ways to engage their audience.

Numeracy

  • Your child can try doubling or tripling a delicious recipe. They can half the recipe or rewrite it for various fractions or percentages of the original. How did this affect the quality? Why?

  • Your child can experiment and adapt recipes to create and record new versions. Using ratios, fractions, or percentages, they can describe what adaptations were made.

  • Invite your child to create a survey of family members to learn what their favourite foods are. Your child can then create a visual display of the survey results to justify choices for future meals.

Science

  • Encourage your child to research the science behind cooking methods and common ingredients used in baking, such as salt, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, flour, eggs, and sugar.

Planting and Gardening

Literacy

  • Your child can design and select plants for the garden or backyard. Discuss your child’s choices and preferences. They can consider many different materials to use and ways to design it. Invite them to share their design and reasons for their choices.

  • Your child can share their gardening experience in many ways, such as by taking photos and adding captions and emailing them to family members and friends.

Numeracy

  • Your child can estimate how much harvest is expected from the planned garden. They can calculate the money that has been saved by comparing the cost of growing to the cost of purchasing the produce.

Science

  • Your child can investigate the growing conditions of the plants in your garden or yard. They can inquire about the different growing conditions, varieties of plants, locations for planting, and costs.

Senior Years

Relax

Family Conversations

Literacy

  • Encourage your teen to share thoughts, ideas, and feelings about what is going on in the world today. Discuss different viewpoints and perspectives and the actions and decisions people are taking.

  • Discuss with your teen the personal impact COVID-19 is having on them, such as the loss of graduation ceremonies, sports events, family gatherings, and other social activities.

  • Discuss with your teen ways they can show kindness, appreciation, and gratitude toward others and themselves during this time. Encourage your teen to take action on some of these ideas.

  • Ask questions about what your teen is learning in their studies, and discuss how learning is transferred among the home, school, and into their future careers. Ask them how these connections could be stronger.

French

  • Your child can read and talk about French books to a younger sibling in French.

  • Your teen can read articles in French. Your teen can also justify their opinion of an article in writing and share it.

Numeracy

  • Math is everywhere! Make predictions about how long you think something will last…to the day, hour, or minute. Estimate when the river will peak, how much precipitation you will get this month, or how long it will take you to complete a task.

  • Your teen can find statistics or graphs given by media and you can scrutinize them together. Do you agree with them? Were they misrepresented in some way to prove their point? Is there bias in the way that the data was collected and displayed? Discuss.

Wonder

Explore Curiosities

Literacy

  • Your teen can explore their interests and curiosities about themselves, others, and the world around them. They can collect information from many sources, such as news broadcasts, websites, films, articles, and art, to inform their thinking.

French

  • Your teen can check out movies, TV shows, and documentaries to have a family movie night in French.

  • Your teen can listen to French radio on CKSB-10-FM (88.1 MHz), 89.9 FM for ICI Musique (Radio-Canada), or Envol 91.1 FM. Your teen can also listen to the daily French news broadcast (Le téléjournal) and watch a TV series on CBC-Radio Canada channel 10 or CBC Radio-Canada : ICI Manitoba.

Career Education

  • Your teen can explore careers, training paths, and career education. Discuss with them ways to reach out to people in their field of interest and enhance their knowledge and skills.

  • Discuss with your teen different careers they are curious about. How are these careers changing with technology? How do you think these careers can have a positive impact on the world? What education will they need to follow their career dreams?

Play

Creative Play and Design

Literacy

  • Your teen can think about creating an entrepreneurial business. What is the purpose of the business? Is there a need for that business in the community? How can they find out? What would they need to consider to develop the business?

  • Your teen can create family stories by looking at family videos, photographs, and/or artifacts. They can research their family’s genealogy, interview Elders/Knowledge Keepers and grandparents, and share their stories when appropriate.

Numeracy

  • Your teen can think about a future trip that requires a change of currency. What excursions would they do each day? They can create an itinerary and budget, including transportation, meals, excursions, currency exchange, and other miscellaneous costs.

Games

Literacy

  • Create engaging games with your teen for your family. What might these look like? What would the topic be? Your teen could create it and decide on how it should be played. These games could involve playing with words and language, problem solving, questioning, and more.

Numeracy

  • Play board games together. Have different people take on roles that involve mathematics, such as the banker in Monopoly.

  • Create an “answer” to a mathematics problem and have the audience members act or draw out what the question could be, just like on the TV game show Jeopardy. Have everyone guess what questions were drawn or acted out.

Work

Future Planning

Literacy

  • Your teen can create digital portfolios of their future career aspirations. Career portfolios can take many different forms. They are useful in many different ways (e.g., promoting self-awareness, life/career planning, post-secondary entrance, entry into apprenticeship, finding a job, etc.).

Numeracy

  • Your teen can learn about how to work with spreadsheets on the computer to calculate budgets, amortization sheets, work timesheets, or to reconcile receipts.

Financial Capability

Literacy

  • Model how to use financial words and phrases when talking to your teen about the family spending plan. What are the family needs and what are their wants? How do you decide where money is allocated? How might the family spending plan be changing at this time?

  • Guide your teen in creating budgets and managing their own finances using digital banking apps or other methods.

  • Encourage all family members to write down short-term (for present year) and long-term financial goals. What do they hope to have in five years? …in 10 years? …when they retire? What does financial independence look like?

Numeracy

  • Your teen can calculate a household budget. For older students, create a budget for when they want to leave home. Include savings (recommended 10 percent), transportation, housing and utilities, food, entertainment, and miscellaneous items in the budget. Check out this useful Budget Planner on the Government of Canada website.

Cooking and Baking

Literacy

  • Your teen can experiment and adapt recipes for healthy alternatives and lifestyle choices. They can explain their decision making and compare their findings with others. Encourage your teen to use many different sources and to consider the accuracy of information.

  • Your teen can create a podcast or blog to share their culinary expertise and cooking creations. They can research culinary trends and the interests of their audience.

Numeracy

  • Involve your teen in creating a weekly family meal plan based on a budget, health considerations, and family preferences, and list the groceries needed along with the cost per item.

  • Cook together. Numeracy skills can be developed by following procedures such as a recipe. Your teen can find one that you haven’t tried before and you can make it together.

  • Your teen can look at culinary ratios and how they can help chefs speed up and be more productive when they cook. Find out more about culinary ratios or “baker’s math” and test them out!

Gardening and Yard Work

Literacy

  • Ask your child to help design, create, and maintain your yard or garden. They can research, create, and apply environmentally friendly alternatives such as compost and organic pesticides.

  • Your teen can research, budget, and select appropriate plants and vegetables necessary to meet family needs. This is a great way for your teen to learn the environmental and financial impact of growing their own food.

Numeracy

  • Your teen can research how you can test your soil and determine what it needs to help your plants to grow. Fertile soil for growing plants and vegetables requires different ratios of nutrients and fertilizer to enhance its original soil composition. Manitoba soil is heavily clay-based.

  • Your teen can collect data on the growth of each plant and display it on a table of values or a graph. For added interest, grow the same plants in different locations that get different amounts of sunlight and compare the difference.