Cognition and learning

What you will do

1. With your parents agreement decide what you want to buy and how much money you have
2. Go to the shop
3. Look at the prices on the items you want
4. Calculate how much they cost altogether
5. Do you have enough money, if not you will have to put something back!
6. Calculate how much money you have left

Implementation tips
This activity can be done at home if you wish – have a look at the products you have at home and how much they might cost.

Extension activity
Think of your favourite treat or perhaps a meal. What ingredients will you need to make this and how much will it cost? Write a shopping list and the cost against each item and then calculate the total amount of money you would need.

Tips for parents
Encourage your child to take part in your household shopping activities. This promotes their independence and engagement with the social world.

There are links here to other domains of learning such as social skills as they engage with the shopping experience, the cashier, and other shop customers.

What you will need

• Paper and colouring pencils or perhaps some paint
• You may wish to use cardboard boxes if you go large scale!
• You may also need scissors, glue or tape if you want to develop a 3D model

What you will do

1. Go for a walk around your town
2. Take a note of where things are, street names and the names of key places
3. At home draw a map of your town putting your home at the centre
4. You may wish to go large or even 3D and use cardboard boxes to represent key buildings

Implementation tips
Start off small with a simple map and then you can develop your plan into something bigger. Ensure you have space and time to research and plan your map perhaps over several days.

Extension activity
Find out a little more about the history of your home town and key people. Add notes to your map or model to summarise your findings.

Tips for parents
Encourage your child to be independent in this activity. Praise their concentration and attention to detail as these are skills that will support their cognitive learning skills into the future. There are links here to other domains of learning such as literacy skills as they research their town and make notes to add to their model. Mapping is also a way of developing mathematical skills as they think about size, space, and the relationships between buildings and the position on their map.

What you will do

1. Design and build a model from Lego or a similar set of blocks
2. You may wish to take a photograph of the finished product
3. Take note of how many blocks you need, their size, colour and what you do at each stage of constructing your model
4. Use your notes to develop a set of instructions for a friend or family member
5. Can they use your instructions to build the same model?
6. Refine your instructions until they can

Implementation tips
You may want to research how companies such as Lego present their instructions as a guide.

Extension activity
Develop this activity for bigger and more complex structures. You may wish to add drawings or photographs to support your instructions.

Tips for parents
Encourage your child to be independent in this activity. Praise their concentration and attention to detail as these are skills that will support their cognitive learning skills into the future. There are links here to other domains of learning such as literacy skills as they research how others such as Lego produce their instructions, and also in their own use of writing for a purpose. Writing instructions in this way supports sequencing skills which in turn support mathematical skills.

What you will do

1. A door becomes the portal to a magical fantasy land
2. Decide on how long you have to complete your adventure and return to safety before the portal closes
3. On your adventure collect props
4. Narrate what is happening
5. Get back through the portal before it closes and you are shut in fantasy land forever

Implementation tips
Let your imagination run wild. In fantasy land anything might happen (a stick might become a wizards wand or a sword perhaps, a flower petal becomes a rescue boat, a stream becomes a raging torrent to negotiate).

Extension activity
Why not video your adventure and then when you are home you can enjoy your film.

Tips for parents
You might want to accompany your child and prompt them to be imaginative and think about what might be. Not only does this activity support creativity and literacy skills it also encourages children to think outside of the boundaries of every-day life, a skill which can be quite challenging for some!

What you will do

1. Choose 10 characters, animals or other objects
2. Assign a number between 1 and 10 to each
3. Cut your card into 10 rectangles the size of a playing card
4. On each card draw your animal and write down the number
5. On a separate sheet of paper draw up a grid
6. Add a number to each square
7. Shuffle the cards and then draw the first two
8. +, -, x, or / these two numbers to make one of the numbers in your grid
9. Shade the number in when you have made it
10. You can play this on your own or with a friend
11. The first one to colour in all their bingo squares is the winner!

Implementation tips
Start off small and as you get more confidence you can grow the game with more cards and different numbers.

Extension activity
You can increase the number of cards you play with and increase or decrease the number of squares in your bingo grid.

Tips for parents
You could introduce this activity by playing with your child until they get more confident. There are links here to other domains of learning such as social development through playing the game with others, understanding the emotions of winning and losing.