We don’t want the children to lose the momentum of awesome lessons. Here are some holiday activities you can enjoy with your children at home to boost their brain cells. 

Language Skills

There’s no better time to improve your child’s language skills than during the school holidays. Besides constant practising, one of the best ways to develop fluency in any language is to really immerse yourself in it. For example, to improve your child’s grasp of Mandarin, you could read Mandarin books or play games with them in Mandarin. Basically, making learning a language fun by relating it to things that kids enjoy.

Mess-Free Fun

A happy child is a child who will learn! Even indoors you can get active and creative, without creating lots of mess. Working on Maths and English skills whilst practising hand-eye coordination is a fun way to bring complete focus to an activity. Ask children to take turns hitting a balloon up in the air, but before each player takes their turn they must add a word to create an ongoing story. This can get quite creative! Alternatively, decide whether you are adding or subtracting… player A will then call out a number, player B calls another and as player A takes their next turn they must call out the answer.

For music at home, it is recommended using household items to make instruments like shakers and drums then using them to play along to music the child likes. You can also use items like paper plates to ice skate in time to classical music on tiles (with caution!). Introduce them to a range of musical genres, see if they can find jazz, classical, pop, and folk music online with parental support. Play Name that Tune or instrument when listening to songs they know on Spotify, just stop the tune after a few seconds for the guessing game. Change the words to nursery rhymes to get their creativity firing and for a good giggle.

Concepts

Basic concepts help children make sense of the world. Which is why you can make use of everyday objects around you to help them understand things like size (big and small), location (up and down), opposites and basic patterns. That’s why it’s easy for parents of young children to make use of their environment when thinking of fun holiday activities. Use nature or your home surroundings.  Ask the children to find and collect items with either a similar shape and different colour or just a similar colour and then line them up to form a repetitive colour pattern. You can also cut string up into small and large lengths and get your child to divide the pieces into long and short piles.

Cooking and Baking

Cooking with your kids is a great way to boost those brain cells during the holidays. Through cooking, children learn about counting, measurement, estimation, reading and following instructions, and creative problem-solving. For younger children, it’s also a delicious way for them to exercise fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and be exposed to different types of food. Enjoy some fun recipes.

Maths and Number Skills

Get out the chalk and explore maths in a more visual sense. For young children, make up games that require them to draw numbers or sequences of numbers. Collect sticks outside and use string or tape to tie the corners together to make shapes, discussing the number of sides and the angles you can see. When out and about, choose a topic and take a survey. For example, ask your child to note how many cars of each colour they see, use a tally chart to take down the information and then use the data to practise their skills. Can they draw a bar graph or a pie chart? Play board games and work on jigsaw puzzles to help with hand-eye coordination, colour identification, number recognition and heaps more. Teach them some card games. Remember how much you used to love card games when you were younger? Why not get your children in on the action by showing them a few simple games? Not only will it be heaps of fun, but it will also boost their numeracy and maths skills.

Literacy

Literacy development is very important and should be a part of every young child’s daily life. Keep reading. Be sure to sit down with your child and make reading a part of their everyday routine. Storytime before bed is a great opportunity to spend quality time helping our children recognise letters, sounds and make sense of the illustrations. However, literacy isn’t just about reading a book, it encompasses listening and speaking skills, and the ability to make sense of text and visual symbols in various forms, both on paper and digitally. Make the most of your storytime sessions by getting your child to engage with the tale in more ways than one by asking questions. Humans are born to be curious, and with curiosity comes questioning. Questions are important as  they are the seeds of self-motivated inquiry and the mother of all human inventions and innovations. Therefore, ask away!

From: Various Resources