What skills to learn this winter - 7 years old

[Mart987]

What can your 7 years old learn on his own while you work from home?
Touch typing - Will he actually learn?
A new language - French/how will he do it on his own?
Any other ideas, I can't sit by him the whole time

A few basic first aid skills?

Useful for life!

firstaidchampions.redcross.org.uk/primary/first-aid-skills/

How about a few “life skills” such as prep of low risk lunches (sandwiches, salad, child-friendly knife etc), changing own bed linen (at least taking it off), loading and setting away the washing machine and dishwasher. Hoovering if you have a light hoover. Bit of dusting. Payment in return perhaps.

My DD got better at typing through a game on the BBC website last summer, and had a bit of fun on Duolingo (there's probably better language programmes if you pay)

Times tables... TTRockstars doesn't seem too expensive.

Making a 'factfile' on his favourite thing... My younger DD did one on dinosaurs in the summer. (She was Yr2). I came up with a list of questions, and she searched her books/dinosaur website I found for the answers) and drew a picture.

Drawing... I got DD the Draw with Rob book for Christmas, it looks like it can be done alone.

Duolingo is excellent for languages. And easy for them to do by themselves.

I made mine learn all the European countries on a map.
How to shuffle cards
How to change sheets
Making bread then he could do that every day!
There are lots of drawing,tutorials on YouTube

Knitting?

Musical instrument of some kind?
How to pair socks
Washing lettuce etc for salad
How to address an envelope
Flags of different countries

Yoyo?

The Oak National Academy is adding KS2 modern foreign languages for the start of term. There's loads of stuff on there, all free too. www.thenational.academy

DD was learning Spanish at school and on Oak before the summer, so we're going to pick that up again.

Typing is very useful and doesn’t need too much supervision.

Pairing socks is a good one, mentioned above
Making his own bed
Making own breakfast and lunch
Tidying his room

Maybe one of those big book of Lego builds?

Khan Academy is useful for all kinds of things, and free.

DS1 likes coding websites set up for kids to follow.

Duolingo isn't great for actually understanding the language, iits fine for rote learning but not for the grammatical basis of a language

Coding for kids, my 6yr old loves it

Make sure he can spell all the words he should be able to at this age.
I got all the words that my DS should be able to spell on magnets, and put them on the fridge.
When he could spell the word for me he got to throw it in the bin.

What a great thread. Loads of good ideas here that i will use for my 7 yo DS. Can anyone link to some coding sites they would recommend?

Agree about the language learning.

Being on time is something children need to get into the habit of, and boundaries between work (for a seven year old, school work) and home. So asking him to be responsible for coming and telling you at certain times when you should stop work for a break (be it a coffee, a meal or something else) is something to learn.

Duolingo has started 2 of my kids off with a wider interest in languages.

Spellingframe.co.uk and mathframe.co.uk have games which have turned my 9 year old from being extremely reluctant to do any homework to actually volunteering to do it. (Only some of the games are free but a year's subscription is only £10)

Dd has expanded her geography knowledge by challenging herself with quizzes on name the countries of the world/American states/counties.

Scratch for coding has also been popular.

Last time round we also did lots of documentaries on iplayer. The royal instutute christmas lectures should be on and are aimed at kids.

studio.code.org/courses

How to stay alive in 100 days of hardcore survival mode in minecraft.

At that age my son had a sticker book of all the flags of the world and he learnt to identify them and it became his party trick to be shown a flag and say which country it represented!

He was also able to name every single Pokemon!

For general life skills you could check out the Cubs and Beaver badges and see if the is anything you could do. I found them helpful to give ideas as they do not necessarily just have to be done in a group.

Telling the time? DS mastered this in the first lockdown and now we're going to start on the 24 hour clock

Tying shoe laces - this is my new goal for him now schools aren't going back yet

Handwriting. Sounds daft, but he probably isn’t doing much and it’s a muscle skill that will deteriorate if not used. Ten minutes a day.

New skills, simple baking, coding, observational drawing, chess.

Geography - matching flags with countries on a map?
Learning the basics of music theory
Do they have a special interest - cooking, aviation, dinosaurs, coding?

Not necessarily skills but if you’re looking for stuff they can do on their own, we had success with the below.

Oak academy
Maths factor
Drawing/art (mine has a how to draw book and an usborne art ideas book)
Read along on YouTube. (There are Roald dahl and David Williams books on there as well as lots of others at all levels)
Documentaries
Scratch for coding
If you have a tablet, animation making app. Mine made some fab short films.
Look on national geographic for kids, nasa, zoos and aquarium sites for lots of learning activities.