Hands on activity is all about learning through doing. It allows students to gain knowledge of the topic or concept they are studying through experience.
Children in all stages, from pre-school age through their teenage years, are continuously developing and growing. During these extremely critical period of growth, the more that children can immerse themselves in, and engage with their education, the more they will be motivated and take pride in all that they learn.
This is where hands on activity truly comes into play. Hands on activity gives students both the freedom and responsibility to learn through real experience, rather than through simply reading or listening to somebody else.
The benefits of hands on activities are enough to make any parent or teacher use these methods indefinitely. As a learning method, using hands on tools and resources support students to use all their sense to learn and understand new topics. Hands on activities allow students to engage the subject matter with their hands and create something new or solve a problem. They are able to touch and innovate the objects they are learning about.
The traditional sense of learning, where a teacher reads from a text book and students sit quietly and listen, lacks in one key area-engagement. This is where experimental learning like hand on activities shines, because students get to actually engage with the content. When children learn to count, they usually recite the numbers from memory. But this does not mean a child actually understands quantities. It is only when they physically hold objects they are counting that they actually begin to understand what the numbers mean.
By using hands, students can see the relevance of what they are learning in the real world. That’s because they sometimes get to actually create something. (i.e., drawing, painting or construction projects.)
Students might be taught about colors in art class and what happens when they are mixed. But if their teacher just reads this from a text, the words may mean nothing to them. But, when they get to mix blue and yellow and produce green, this is a concept they will never forget. Active learning is also empowering because it shows students that they can impact the world around them-they can produce something creative.
Hands on activities allow students to get creative. When most people hear “creativity” they tend to associate it with subjects like music or art, but these aren’t the only subjects where creativity comes into play. Creativity results in a new way of thinking about a particular concept, and hands on activities help students continue to develop this important skill.
At XandY we encourage students to be creative and initiate them to think out of the box by providing them hands on activities of their aptitude and choice.
