Age shelf · what suits a six year old · 17 activities
6 year olds
Seventeen activities for the age at which a job can be put down and picked up again tomorrow.
Six is when work starts to span days. The cardboard loom is about two hours of weaving spread over four sittings, and the half-finished cloth sits on the shelf in between without the whole thing dying. A bean in a jam jar gets measured every morning for a fortnight. A maze taped across the floor gets drawn to scale on squared paper, one shoe length to one square, and the drawing is finished the next evening. None of the younger shelves asks for that, and a six year old will give it.
Real tools and real materials come with it. Soap and a blunt tool gives forty quiet minutes and a carved shape at the end, and the tool is blunt because soap gives way and there is nothing to gain from an edge. Kitchen string, yarn, a bar of soap, tins and rope: the materials are ordinary and the results are not.
The seventeen here spread wide, because half of them run on to eight and nine. A six year old still enjoys the shape shadows and the story cards, and does them faster and with better jokes. Pick by what the evening is for rather than by what looks advanced, and if you want it to run over several evenings, routines and habits is the page on making that stick.
Six has two corners with pages of their own: numbers, shapes and thinking and talking, reading and writing.
The seventeen
Ordered by the age each one suits best, so the four and five year old work a six year old still likes comes first and the things that carry on to nine come last. The list is built from the whole range an activity suits rather than its single best age. Every line gives the setup, the play time and whether anything has to be bought.
- Three-Step Instruction Hunt You give three instructions in one breath, and your child goes and does all three, in order, without help. no setup · 3 to 5 min · nothing at all
- Button Sewing Card Your child sews real buttons onto a punched card with a shoelace, up through one hole and down through the other, until the card is covered in buttons. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Painters Tape Floor Balance Track Your child walks a line of tape stuck to the floor without stepping off it, then does it again carrying something. 4 min · 10 to 20 min · one substitute needed
- Shape Shadow Match Your child stands a solid shape in a beam of light and works out which of the outlines traced on the paper its shadow belongs to. 2 min · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Story Sequence Cards Your child puts four or five cards into the order the thing actually happened, and then tells you the story they make. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Weighted Pod Sorting Your child picks up two pots that look exactly alike, decides which one is heavier, and keeps going until all ten are in pairs. 15 min, once · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Balance Beam Coin Carry Your child walks a taped line heel to toe carrying a small stack of coins on a saucer, and discovers that the only way across is slowly. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Clock Face and Hands Match Your child sets the hands on a paper clock to match a card, and the card says what happens at that time in his own day. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Continent Map Puzzle Your child lifts each continent out of a wooden map by its knob and puts it back where it came from. 1 min · 10 to 20 min · has to be bought
- Paper Folding Precision Challenge Your child folds a square of paper corner to corner, presses the crease with a thumbnail, and finds out four folds later whether the first one was straight. no setup · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Place Value Bead Bank Game Your child is sent to the bank for a number, comes back with loose beans, bundles of ten and bags of a hundred, and trades ten of anything for one of the next size up. 2 min · 20 min or more · household, or a bought set
- Bead Chain Addition Snake Your child lays a line of bead bars, counts off the first ten beads, swaps them for a single ten-bar, and keeps going until the snake is nothing but tens. 2 min · 20 min or more · household, or a bought set
- Bucket Stilts Balance Track Your child stands on two upturned tins, holds a rope in each hand to keep them under her feet, and walks a taped line across the garden. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Maze Blueprint Mapping Your child tapes a maze onto the floor and then draws it on paper as a plan, or draws the plan first and builds to it. 2 min · 20 min or more · household only
- Plant Care and Growth Measuring Your child grows a bean from a dried one in the cupboard, waters it on a schedule that is hers, and cuts a paper strip to its height every morning. 2 min · 5 min a day, for weeks · household only
- Soap Carving and Safe Whittling Your child cuts a shape out of a bar of soap with a blunt tool, slowly, and the shavings go everywhere. 5 min · 20 to 40 min · household only
- Cardboard Loom Yarn Weaving Your child weaves a small square of cloth on a loom cut from a cereal box, over four or five sittings, and it takes as long as it takes. 15 min, once · 20 min or more · household only
Most of these are built rather than bought, and the building is half the activity. Make it yourself collects the ones worth an afternoon.