Tips for Making your Vacation an Educational and Fun Experience

Children Vacation TipsIf you want to make sure that your children’s vacation is educational as well as fun then keep on reading. Although you may not want to ask your children to complete lots of ‘homework,’ it is worth making sure that their vacation is full of learning opportunities, as it’s believed that if children take a complete break from learning during vacation period, they can lose a lot of the skills that they have learned in reading and mathematics. Below is a list of the different ways that you can make your children’s vacation fun yet educational.

• Music

All children tend to love music so see if you can challenge your children to have a go at writing their own lyrics to a song that they already like or for a new song. Alternatively, you can tap into their advertising skills and ask them to create a short song or rap to advertise their favorite hobby, food or toy.

• Make Board Games

Think about something that your children love e.g. princesses, animals, football and ask them to see if they can think of a way of creating a board game related to the thing that they love. This is a great hands-on opportunity for children to express their creativity, think about rules and use these in their writing skills.

• Baking

Get your kids in the kitchen this summer and work on their math skills by asking them to half a particular baking recipe. You could also ask them to help you write a grocery list and take them shopping with you. When at the shops see if they can compare the prices of different products. Get them involved in cooking dinner and see if they can help you to prepare a meal by reading, measuring and following instructions.

• Art

Ask your children to try and redesign the front cover of their favorite DVD or book. Give them the opportunity to use different colors, words and images, either digitally all through art and craft supplies.

• Play Chess

If you don’t know how to play chess then this could be something that you could learn together. Use the Internet to learn the basics and once you can all confidently play using the basics, you could consider sending your children to chess club. Playing chess teaches a child how to think critically.

• Transport

When you next decide to head out for the day use a different form of transport other than the car. Consider using the bus, ferry or train and get your kids involved in working out the route that you will take, how long the trip will take and the distance that you will have covered.

• Movies

After you’ve watched a movie together ask your children some questions. Aside from asking them if they liked the movie, you can also ask them what they think the theme of the movie was (i.e. fairness, respect, etc.). Also, ask your kids why the characters behaved in the way that they did and if there was anything they could’ve done better. You could even ask your kids if they can think of their own ending to the movie.