The summer vacations are for rest. Children deserve a reward for work done during the course, leaving homework and school routines behind. But summer is very long and sports, outdoor games and leisure plans do not have to be at odds with other activities such as reading or reading. reinforcement of the knowledge acquired during the course that has ended.
But how can parents encourage our children to reinforce in summer what they learned in school? without resorting to homework? We give you some tips of fun, creative and educational activities that we can do as a family.
How to review the math?
If our children have finished the course by performing simple mathematical operations such as addition or subtraction, we can reinforce this knowledge. proposing games or involving them in housework.
For example, we can accompany them to the bakery and Encourage them to ask for bread and pay for it. In this way, they will become familiar with money, the price of things, the return ... "If a loaf of bread costs 60 cents and we have paid with a one-euro coin, how much should they give us back?", Simple mathematical problems and Contidians who will teach you without hardly realizing it.
Likewise, when making food we can ask you to help us while we review the mathematical operations. "If we have 20 potatoes in the pantry and we are going to use six to make a stew, how many do you think will be left?"
And if they have already started handle weight or distance measurementsWe can make use of a cake or a road trip to review these concepts with them from a playful point of view.
If, on the contrary, they are in the Infant stage and have not yet started in mathematical operations, we can help them to acquire knowledge from the game with the famous Cuisenaire strips, which they may even have used in the school during the course .
These Wooden strips are ideal for working numbers and understanding operations so they can be used from three years (always with supervision because there are very small sizes) to even adolescence.
On this page you will find numerous game ideas with the strips, all of them very fun and educational, that will help them learn or reinforce content from leisure.
How to review the language and writing?
- One of the best ways to review literacy is encouraging kids to write a holiday diary.
Invite your child to write daily in a notebook about their vacations, completing the writings with clippings or souvenirs that you want to keep (such as a shell found at the seashore or the entrance to that water park that has fascinated him so much, among many other things) and with photographs of special moments.
At the end of the summer you will not only have a beautiful album of memories, but it will have served to perfect writing, oral expression or creativity.
Another option that they usually like a lot is Get together with a friend from school or family and send them postcards of your vacation spot. In this way, they will review grammar, calligraphy, the correct construction of sentences and the use of verb tenses.
And if your child likes to read and also has a lot of imagination, help him foster his creativity by encouraging him to write your own stories and then read them aloud to your siblings or to you, acquiring, in this way, speaking skills.
And if you also like to draw, what better way to combine all these skills than by comic creation!.
- Another very funny idea is to take advantage of music and your favorite songs to dictate and review spelling. If your little one especially likes a song, propose to listen to it together and learn the lyrics.
You can stop the song in each sentence and encourage him to write what he has heard. Once you have it written from beginning to end, encourage him to sing it by looking at the letter he has written and thus encouraging reading.
- You can also ask them to help write the shopping list, that you read the posters of the names of the streets or any other indicative brochure. This will make them feel useful and will encourage them to continue helping them while practicing literacy in a simple and playful way.
How to review a foreign language?
If your child attends a school where they study a second language, it is important not lose the knowledge acquired during the course it is already known that, language that is not practiced ends up being lost.
Put simple or children's songs in that language and ask them to identify any word or expression that they have heard and understood. Language teachers also recommend see a little while of your favorite drawings in the foreign language, as well as read simple stories.
If the parents know the language the child studies, you can encourage play a simple play together, the passage of a story or any daily scene of daily life. In this way, you will not only be helping him not to lose the acquired concepts of vocabulary and expression of a foreign language, but also to boost his creativity and imagination.
Board games and other recreational activities
If what you like are the family board gamesChoose those in which children can review all these concepts while having fun, such as:
- Sink the fleet (strategy, letters, numbers, coordinates ...)
- Scatergories (words, grammar, mental speed ...)
- Memory (visual memory, mental speed ...)
- Apalabrados (strategy, grammar, vocabulary ...)
- Monopoly (mathematical operations, strategy, money management, economics ...)
- Trivial for children (general culture, memory, acquisition of new content ...)
Also certain card games, dice, dominoes, chess, classic games in which you have to count squares ... Surely you find the perfect game for the age and knowledge of each child!
We must not forget, either, that our children are digital natives so, always under our supervision, and with the appropriate control measures, we can turn to technology and online games to review concepts, read or even write.
And last but not least, remember that nature and outdoor excursions are an excellent source of knowledge. Observing the atmospheric phenomena, the behavior of certain animals, the parts of a flower or taking advantage of a night of sacks under the stars to remember earth movements and planets, will not only contribute or reinforce knowledge, but it will be a summer experience that They will never forget.
Photos | iStock
