Ravina Sewani

Things you will need: baby oil or vegetable oil, watercolours or food colouring, pipettes or droppers How to:With the help of your child, set the activity as follows:<ol><li>Take several cups of water and mix different watercolours or food colour in them.</li><li>Fill a cup up to half way with oil.</li><li>Using different droppers take different coloured water from cups and drop them in the oil cup slowly.</li><li>Observe - The coloured water droplets will settle at the bottom and will not mix with the oil.</li></ol> Explanation:For younger kids, there is no need of a detailed explanation. For older kids, you can explain them that oil molecules are only attracted to other oil molecules and water molecules are attracted to water molecules. So they don’t mix together. The reason the coloured water droplets settle at the bottom is because water is more dense than oil.

Significance:This activity will introduce the concept of attraction between molecules in science to your child.

Oil and Water exploration

How to:This activity can be easily done with things/objects available in your house. On a small table or sofa or a bed, lay down at least 6-8 objects in a row. Now give your child a good 40-60 seconds to have a look at the objects and try and remember them. Next, ask your child to close his/her eyes. Remove an object or two from the lined objects. Ask your child to open their eyes. Ask your child about which objects are missing and see if they got them right. Note:Use only those objects which can pose no harm to your children. Fun fact:You can level up this game by changing the order of the objects and asking about the previous order of the objects. You can also add more objects and ask which ones were added. When you add or remove the objects, you can ask from which place the change was made. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will enhance your child’s observational skills and memory power.

What’s missing?

You will need nothing for this activity. You can do this activity practically do this anywhere. How to:If you are sitting with your child in your bedroom, start the game by picking out a secret object within plain view and say, “I Spy something blue.” If only one child is playing, then (s)he can keep guessing until (s)he gets it right. If a group of children are playing, they can take turns looking around and guessing the object. The first child to correctly guess the object, gets to spy something next. To level up the game, limit the number of guesses each child gets or make the clues less specific. Happy Spying!

Significance:This activity will greatly enhance your child's observational skills.

I Spy

How to:This game can be played by 2 or more players. You will need a piece of paper and pencils for each player. First place 12-15 dots in a row and make such 12-15 rows. Now, turn by turn the players have to join 2 dots at a time either vertically or horizontally to make squares. The player who draws a line that closes the square has to write his/her initials in the square and this player will also get a bonus chance. When the entire grid is filled with squares, the player with the initials in maximum squares, with the game!&nbsp; Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will enhance your child’s brain’s analytical &amp; focusing skills. It will also increase your child’s patience as he/she waits for their turn.

Squares Game

Kids love outdoors and grandparents are fond of nature. This activity is perfect for children who are looking forward to spending some quality time with their grandparents. You will need:Nothing absolutely, except you, your grandchildren and a walk in the nature. You will do:On a fine morning, or evening, whichever time suits you the best, along with your grandchildren, go for a nice walk in a park or on the roadside. Take up any of the following three for your walk:1. Collecting things from the walk – You can make a list of the things – e.g.&nbsp;leaf, red coloured flower, twig or small stem, fruit, feather, stone, etc, which you would like your grandchildren to collect from the walk.2. Take a camera or use mobile phone and ask them to click pictures of things they see – from each alphabet.3. Practice Random acts of kindness – e.g. pass a smile to others, pet an animal, wish people (good morning or good evening), giving hi-fi to people,&nbsp;pick up a trash, let someone else go first, give a flower to someone, feed the birds, etc, along the way. Happy Gaming!

Significance:Activities such as these help in developing a very strong emotional bonding between grandchildren and grandparents.

A walk with a twist

How to:This is a very fun activity and it is bound to bring about a lot of laughter with it. Give simple instructions to your child, for example, “Simon says sit”, “Simon says clap”, “Simon says jump”, and so on. Your child has to listen to these instructions carefully and enact the instructions.The catch here is: If you give the instructions like “sit”, “clap”, “jump”, the child is not supposed to do anything. Only when the instructions begin with “Simon says”, does the child have to follow it. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will enhance your child’s brain’s processing ability and focusing skills.

Simon says

Things you will need: bunch of chits with words written on them How to:Write the main word on the chits along with 5 words which are related to the main word. For example, the main word can be "house". So along with this word on the chit, 5 words related to house, for example, "door, window, kitchen, bedroom, TV" also need to be written on the chit. This activity can be played in teams or just between two children. The aim of the game is to make your partner guess the word without using the actual word and 5 other words listed on the card/paper on which the word is written. If you observe than your kids are struggling explaining the words, you can remove those 5 words from the list to make it easier. Fun fact:To make it more competitive, you can set a timer each drawer gets. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will improve your child’s vocabulary and explanation skills. It will also help them to connect the dots between 2 or more things.It is a word guessing game.

Taboo

Things you will need: skittles candies (use can use M&amp;M or Gems as well), water, plate or bowl How to:Pour some water into a dish or a bowl and add a couple of candies to this dish. You will immediately observe a few changes. If you are using skittles candies, you will see that the 'ss' part of the candy quickly dissolves and starts to float on the water. The colours dissolve slowly and begin to mix with the water in the dish. You can make this experiment fun by placing several candies in different shapes and see the colours dissipating in various shapes. Why does this happen?Candies are made of sugar hence they dissolve in water. Sugar dissolves in water because both water and sugar are polar compounds. It is known that "like dissolves like" hence sugar dissolves in water. Happy Exploring!

Significance:This activity will introduce your child to the concept of solute and solvent and is also a fun and attractive experiment for kids.

Skittle Candy Experiment

How to:This is an exciting activity. Before leaving home for a daily chore or grocery shopping or visiting a park/museum with your child, instruct your child that they have to observe carefully the things they see along the way. When you reach home, sit with them with a piece of paper, pencil, eraser, and crayons. Ask them to recall whatever they saw along the trip with you and map them out (draw) on the paper. There are 2 benefits of doing this activity. One, when you go out of your home for shopping or a daily chore along with your child, you will not have to worry about him/her nagging you the entire time.&nbsp;Two, it will improve your child’s observational skills. Fun fact:You can do the same. It will help you understand how much attentive are you to everything. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will enhance your child’s memory. It will also instil creativity in their life.

observation skill activities

Activities are an interesting way to teach important life skills to children. Here are a few suggestions for you.