Tell Mega Bloks the ways you make learning fun for your children - £300 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

There’s no doubt that your children think playing is great fun, but they might not always feel quite the same about learning. Mega Bloks would like to hear about the games you play with your children that might sneakily teach them things they’ll need to know in the future, or the techniques you’ve developed to make learning fun for your children.

Here’s what Mega Bloks have to say: “Every parent wants what’s best for their children. They want to build them up, and so do we at Mega Bloks. The block scooping wagon helps your DC reach important physical milestones, such as developing balance, co-ordination and motor skills. In stacking tall towers, children learn to develop their creativity. In telling stories with characters, they’re exploring their imaginations. And in building make-believe worlds where they can be the hero, they’re also building up the confidence to be anything!”

See the Mega Bloks block scooping wagon in action below:

So, whether you pretend to be at the supermarket and teach them how to count change or get them to learn about road signs while playing with cars, share your ways of getting your child to enjoy learning, or to make playing educational for their future.

All those who post a comment below will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 Toys R Us voucher.

Thanks, and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

We read lots! We both read a book each to our DD every night and her vocabulary is quite advanced for her age. She loves the juliette donaldson books and this makes it fun for us all.

We used to do simple maths when we were out and about. Counting red cars, counting people in X football shirts, adding up items on a menu. As DS got older he spent hours with DH reading the football league tables - goals scored, goal difference, what will happen if Y wins and Z loses...

I still think that the more you can help children to see why maths is useful the more likely they are to be interested.

I find that playing and competition helps my daughter learn

I think that everyday is a learning day, constantly talking and singing to my children helped them to talk, and giving them pens and pencils from an early age with lots of crafting activities helped with colours and numbers. Really all about finding fun in everything

Simple things like counting bricks as we are building them and asking what colours they are. We play at drawing different shapes and naming the shapes.

I think it's exploring the outdoors we literally count the birds count the trees count steps I think it's important to use nature as much as possible

Counting and spotting letters

We just turn everything in our house into a game. Even it is just putting the toys away or hanging up the laundry.

I think being led by their interests is a great way to make learning fun. Both my DC like to experiment so, within reason, I say yes if they want to try something out. It can be simple, like will a rock/leaf/stick float or sink in water or slightly more complicated like "how do we make water freeze really quickly?"

A recent fun learning was when I was chiselling the frost off our very old freezer. My DC had never seen it before and asked what I was doing. I got to explain the different states of water/frost/steam and they got to play with the frost/ice and boil the kettle ;-)

Medication, my bed and disney films

Mega blocks and lego, in particular, have been great for maths especially times tables and fractions.

The rest of learning?

Post it notes with spellings on walls, treasure hunts, the game where you put post it notes on your head and the kids describe stuff (V. good for english and for boys who hate using three words instead of one)

practical experiments.

As an ex teacher learning is all about keeping the interest of the learner. My little boy loves learning which is half the battle; we try to incorporate everyday life in learning such as looking for letters in food labels, number on doors, or through playing games etc

We have an alphabet floor mat and play jump on 'a' now hop onto 'p' ...etc

lots of singing and time together

learning through play :)

we try to make most things interesting or fun, in playing they learn, so if you can put a fun slant on even the dullest thing, it engages and learning just happens naturally.

My daughter loves counting at the moment, so we try and encourage her in fun ways. Examples are counting smarties and using them to work out basic sums (treat is eating them afterwards!).

Playing shops, teachers, and doctors and nurses helps with maths, english, and science skills, and it's fun for the kids too :)

My favourite way of helping the DC learn is on the way to school. We walk there and back, so we play 'The Minister's Cat' (starting at A, each person has to think of a way to describe the minister's cat beginning with that letter i.e. The minister's cat is an amusing cat') and this helps with vocabulary and pronunciation, we play the spotting game (one of us chooses a number of things we all have to spot e.g. 2 dogs, 3 cats and 2 traffic lights) and the running game (basically, I tell them how many bollards etc. they can run to and they have to count them out).
DD loves learning but DS is more practical so these work a lot better as a way of engaging him without sitting him down and forcing the issue.

We like to make puppet shows out of empty boxes, straws and cut out printed characters of my little by's favourite shows such as Paw Patrol. We can then do different plays or TV shows based on lots of different subjects.

We love Orchard toys games, fun but they learn lots at the same time.

When daughter struggled with addition and subtraction we made a number line with tiles that she could jump along or back on.

learning is only fun if it's led by the learner- coming up with 'fun' ideas for them will never work- be open to them directing their learning themselves and the best way of doing this is to offer them options, support, enthusiasm and time :)

One of my absolute favourites has to be shaving foam on a tray, & using their fingers to write words xxx
Works really well with fine playsand too xx then you can shake the tray & start again!!
Using Lego bricks for learning fractions has also worked really well with our older daughter xx

playing shops and restaurants helped tremendously with maths and writing