The school year is almost over! Another year of mostly online school, with small windows of physical sessions, the year went by really fast! The much-awaited summer vacation is here!
The question is should kids keep working during the summer to avoid dulling their minds or they should be granted this time to have fun? The answer is well … both!
Let them choose
In the school year, kids are instructed to follow timetables, what to do, when to do, strict bed times, study and even play time is scheduled.
While we don’t recommend throwing the schedule totally out of the window, summer time can be an opportunity to allow kids to explore and choose their own activities. You can make a schedule on paper and hang it with a magnet on the fridge door and keep rearranging for the day’s activities. Take inputs from kids on what they want to do and how they would like to plan their days.
The crux is allow kids to make independent choices on how to spend their free time!
Being creative
Summer gives a lot of opportunities to explore new ideas and activities. You can introduce kids to different forms or art: verbal (drama), physical (dance or yoga) or visual (paint and craft).
You may already know what form of art your kids enjoys or not and you can build on that along with exploring and experimenting on new ideas. There are many ideas available online, DIY kits that you can get, or recycle the material you have at home into creative utility items. You can act out the book the child last read, recite poems or sing songs together. Plan a dance night to let loose.
The idea is to give them a wide variety of experiences and see if something sticks to their mind which can be pursued later on as well.
Encapsulating memories
Relive the year gone by! Spending afternoons creating memory albums of the key school events, birthdays, vacations, achievements is an excellent way to reflect on the year gone. It’s a fun exercise where the child bonds with parents.
It teaches children to be grateful as well. You can ask them questions like:
What is their favourite memory?
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Evaluate what they did best during the school year.
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Think about their friends this year.
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How their classmates were great friends.
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A few things they learned in school this year.
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What was one thing they learned that they will remember most from the year?
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What was the favourite festival they celebrated?
You can also include souvenirs like birthday invitation card, report cards, favourite movie tickets!
You can download templates or make it from scratch in the project books that you can get from Amazon or your local stationery store.
Voila, you have a memorabilia for life!
Inculcating habits
Kids love to act like adults; give them responsibility and they shine! Start with simple chores like making the bed, tidying the room, cleaning the shoes, and sorting the books.
Why not clean the house and teach your kids about helping others at the same time?
Have your kids pile together all the toys they no longer play with, and involve them in cleaning out that cluttered closet you’ve been meaning to get to.
You can involve them in donations too. They can learn about the different organizations that your old clothes and toys help benefit.
These responsibilities will easily keep your kids busy and engaged while completing a task of your own.
Keep the learning on
A break from school sounds fun for both parent and child, but the parent in us always fears that the child might forget his studies and it would take him/her time to get back on track. Learning doesn’t have to be instruction-led only. Our day-to-day lives offer so much scope of learning and we can include children in the process. Sorting vegetables by colour or type, putting them in the grocery bags offer sensory and visual simulation. Counting steps to the neighbour’s home engages them too.
You can download simple quizzes and worksheets and solve them together. If your child is starting grade school, you can get simple reading books and set a time aside like bed time for reading. Even board games are fun and offer bonding, participation and interesting learning opportunities.
One can also plan a grocery shopping trip! Make it fun: brainstorm item lists together and then sit and cross check the bills. Involving them in simple daily jobs sets the basic groundwork for performing essential life activities later. It then gets in their system naturally.
I hope these points are helpful to plan your summer vacation. What things do you do to help the summer holidays pass smoothly in your house?