5 educational activities to do with your grandchild on pedagogical days

Introducing children to reading by allowing them to choose books that interest them is a great way to spark their curiosity and encourage their love of reading. In addition to being filled with a huge variety of books for children to flip through and borrow, many libraries also have cultural activities, board games, creative spaces, media viewing rooms, and of course, quiet areas that are perfect for studying and doing homework. If you are looking for book ideas for your grandchild, check out the library’s staff picks and new release displays, not to mention our lists of book suggestions. Most importantly, remember to bring your grandchild’s library card!

Most children love cooking. Cooking with your grandchild can be very stimulating from a sensory point of view! It will also give you a chance to create memories that will last a lifetime. Here are a few ideas you can try:

• While you prepare the ingredients, you can get your grandchild thinking about proportions and equivalencies by asking them questions such as: “How can we measure ½ a cup of sugar with a ¼ cup container?”
• You can also talk about classifications of matter if the recipe requires you to boil water. For example, you could ask your grandchild the following question: “Now that the water is boiling, will its temperature continue to rise if we keep the heat on?” (The answer is no, because at the boiling point, water transforms from liquid into steam.)
• Conduct experiments related to fractions when portioning food.
• Etc.

Here are some recipes you can try:

• The ultimate hot chocolate popcorn recipe
• Gingerbread house
• Homemade fortune cookies

Spending time drawing and colouring gives children a chance to develop their manual dexterity while letting their imagination run free. Besides, who can resist drawings made by little hands? They are such lovely treasures to keep around! Here are a few ideas you can try to make drawing and craft time that much more educational:

• Review geometric shapes while colouring beautiful mosaics
• Relax as you colour mandalas by choosing the right homophones
• Bring the charming characters in Alloprof’s games (coming soon in English) to life by colouring them in with the help of mathematical operations
• Etc.

Learning through play is always a fantastic way to spend quality time with your grandchild. Book of Spells is one of our most popular games, and it can help improve your grandchild’s reading skills.

In this game, students get to read short stories and answer reading comprehension questions. The more questions they answer correctly, the more resources they earn to take care of a friendly little monster. With an extensive library of excerpts from Quebec children’s books to browse through and different levels of difficulty to unlock, this game is sure to be a hit with your grandchild.

Math is all around us! You can demonstrate this to your grandchild in all kinds of everyday contexts. Here are just a few examples:

• Play a card game, and then place the cards in order or count them
• Go grocery shopping together and try to estimate your cart total before you go through checkout
• Figure out how long it takes to get to school from your home (if you live in the same area)
• Flip to the sudoku section of a newspaper and try to solve one of the puzzles together
• Play a game of dominoes
• Play one of Alloprof’s fun games to review math concepts