There are lots of activities that children can practice at home to support their DT skills and development. Below are some links to activities that help children develop basic skills such as measuring accurately, cutting carefully, and joining materials in different ways - as well as engaging their creativity!

Encouraging children to help you to cook at home can support with skills including weighing out ingredients accurately, scaling recipes up / down, evaluating dishes and then changing / adjusting ingredients, and designing their own recipes (e.g. What flavourings will they use in a cake / biscuits? How could they make a healthy snack / sandwich? Can they design a fruit salad?)

You could challenge your child to design and build a structure using toys such as construction kits (Lego, K-Nex, Sticklebricks, wooden blocks) e.g. What is the tallest tower that you can build? Can you create a shelter for this animal? Can you design a farmyard that could house pigs, horses and chickens? 

Using junk or natural materials is an excellent way to harness children's enthusiasm, and can really support children to experiment with different ways to strengthen and join a range of materials. 

Challenge ideas:

Can you create a photo frame from natural materials you find in the garden / at the Nature Reserve? What could you use to join the pieces?

Build a shelter for a hedgehog. How can you make it more stable? 

Useful links:

• The Institute of Engineering and Technology produces home learning resources and activities for 5-11 year olds. 
• Engineering@Home sets weekly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) challenges.
• Dyson Foundation The James Dyson Foundation has 44 of the best science and engineering tasks to keep children's minds active at home.
• Neon Brilliant Inspiration - brings STEM to life through real-life engineering.