Simple Ways to Engage your Child with Learning During the Summer Holidays
As the holidays approach, you may be wondering how to keep your child entertained as well as encouraging their learning. It is easy to overthink it, however there are some simple and fun ways to ensure that you can enjoy learning and the holidays too!
- Read together: Spend quality time together reading books or articles that interest them. Some ideas include; news articles about current draft picks, the statistics of their favourite sports player, recipes, joke books, the latest release from their favourite author or the local newspaper to find out about upcoming events around your area.
- Board games: Board games encourage family time together and allow for many skills to be developed including oral language, counting, turn taking, resilience, problem solving, compromising and collaboration.
- Hands on activities: Encourage your child to help with the meal planning and preparation, writing the shopping list and even scanning the items at the checkout. A fun way to make the shopping list is to cut out the items you need from the weekly catalogues and glue them onto paper, and for the older children they could add up the totals and try to stick to a given budget. Allow for creativity using household items like a potato masher for painting or paper towel rolls to make an art piece. Playdough is easy to make and can be used in many different and interesting ways. Remember that mess equals making memories!
- Get outdoors: There are plenty of beautiful beaches and trail walks, parks and waterholes that provide the opportunity for risk taking, problem solving, socialisation during play dates and prospects to read signs about local history. For younger children you can ask them to count how many insects they can see, to make patterns with rocks and shells or spell the sounds they can hear in everyday things like a slide, sand, dog and bus.
The key is to make the learning enjoyable and relevant to your child’s interests. By providing your love, attention and precious time, your child will continue to thrive with their learning during the holiday break and build extra connection with you and your family.
Michelle Western | Pre Primary Teacher
