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School is officially out for summer. And while the summer holidays can be a good break for kids from a tiring term in the classroom, there can be the worry that children’s school learning will fall behind when they return in September.
Thankfully, there are plenty of activities they can do to keep their brains active before then, and with the family too. So here are some family activities to keep your primary school children learning over the summer holidays.
Do a museum visit
Museums are always good for an educational family visit, especially for learning about history. Your kids’ schools will have probably taken them on a museum visit at some point over the last term to fit in with what they’ve been learning, whether they go to your local faith school or a private one like Rossall. So it’s a great idea to visit a couple during the summer holidays. This could include learning about anything from the Victorian era to the cotton industry, the Romans to the Egyptians. You can make the visit an even greater fun and learning experience too. For instance, many museums usually have a fun quiz for children to do as they walk through the exhibits. Or you could do one of your own by testing them about what they’ve learnt at the end.
Go food shopping
Anything can be educative for your children if you put your mind to it. A perfectly good example is your weekly food shop. Supermarket shopping with the family can be especially good for maths or simply recognising items. Depending on their age, you can get your child to take a calculator or notepad and work out the total costs of your shopping, or costs of types of items like fruit, vegetables and tinned foods. They could also do a couple of sums to work out the price difference of cheaper alternatives to certain items. This could include cheaper brands of things like cereals, tea and coffee, and cleaning products.
Take a train ride
Ditching the family car and taking a ride on a train instead is another way to keep your kids learning these summer holidays. For instance, it can help keep your child or children learning about distance, time and speed. This could include them working out your journey times when looking at when you’ll depart for, and arrive at, your chosen destination or at certain stops along the way. You could also look at maps together and work out things like the direction you’re travelling in and the location of stops. For young children, it’s a good way to recognise typical things they can expect to see when travelling on a train, such as signals, platforms and conductors.
Do a nature trail
If you want to keep your kids learning about things like nature, plants and biology, a nature trail is a great family activity to do. There are different types of trails you can do together, depending on what your children have been learning about at school. This can range from family walks through woodland to look out for wildlife, to a walk along the beach to spot sea life. Or it could involve walks through open fields to spot birds and insects, or a walk along you nearest canal to spot ducks and pond life. Before your walk, you could buy a children’s nature book that you can take with you to try and spot things from it. Or you could make a list of what you expect to see along the way and tick them off when you do.
Take a trip to the cinema
A family trip to your local cinema can be made educational, such as from what you buy and have much you pay, but also with the family film you decide to watch. The latter can help with your children’s understanding of situations and test their observation and memory skills. Rather than just asking your kids if they enjoyed the film, you can take this one step further by talking about the themes that ran through it, like friendship, greed or kindness. Depending on their age, you could ask them about the morals behind the narrative, or you could ask them why they think the characters chose the actions they did and what might have been a better outcome. You could even challenge them to come up with an alternative ending.
This is just another way to show how family activities can be fun, can allow you to spend more time with your children and, importantly, can keep them learning when schools are closed for the holidays.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post.