Hands-on activities help children learn in a practical and sensory way.
Dr. Karen Burke, at WaysWeLearn.com, explains that students of all ages often learn best through hands-on activities. Children are motivated to learn because hands-on activities are fun. But they also learn new skills and concepts in a practical, sensory way, develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. They may also feel less anxious about failure because many hands-on learning resources are "self-corrective."
Science Fun
Activities with food offer many opportunities for learning in science. For example, baking bread enables younger children to explore materials, such as the texture of the dough. They can observe changes, such as how it sticks together when water is added and discuss how and why it rises when cooked in the oven. Older children can follow up the baking activity by recording results and doing fair tests. For example, they could investigate the best ways to store the bread to keep it fresh for longer.
Practical Math
A hands-on approach to math includes apparatus such as cubes and dominoes. In her book, "Hands on Math," Kathleen Fletcher Bacer explains how children can use a set of dominoes to help them learn addition. For example, challenge children to find a domino that solves the sum of 9 and encourage their problem-solving skills with the instruction, "Don't use the same domino twice." As a follow-up to math hands-on activities, children can record their findings on a worksheet, enabling them to begin the transition from hands-on learning to more abstract learning in mathematics.
Malleable Art
Malleable art materials, such as clay and salt dough, let children engage in creative thinking without worrying too much about the end result. Young children can explore salt dough with their hands, pressing and squeezing it into different shapes and piling it all back together if they wish to start again. Talk to young children and describe their actions as they play, to extend their vocabulary and learning. For example, say: "I can see that you are squeezing the dough into a long, thin shape." For older children, hands-on learning with malleable materials involves working more closely on representations of their ideas. In their book, "Create Anything With Clay," Sherri Haab and Laura Torres suggest teaching all children make basic shapes from clay, such as balls, logs, circles and flat sheets because "every creation is simply the basic shapes stuck together in new ways."
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