Holidays – a break for all but with our children there are benefits to keeping young minds tuned into routines, reading, maths and learning outside four walls.

Playing games with your children is a perfect way to spend some quality time together while at the same time consolidating skills, using social skills and having fun.

Allowing time for board games helps practice cognitive skills such as problem solving, speeds up our response time, helps develop logic and reasoning skills and can increase our spatial reasoning. With games such as Monopoly and Scrabble we are consolidating spelling choices, enhancing our general knowledge and practising social skills such as turn taking and losing graciously.

What do our children want more than anything? They want someone to play with, someone to listen to them and someone to have fun with.

What do we as parents want? We want to develop our children’s verbal and communication skills, increase attention skills to encourage concentration and focus for longer periods of time and to activate our children’s imagination while recharging their batteries during the holiday break in a stress free homework free environment.

In addition playing games with our children allows us to spend quality time together, offers great learning opportunities, can satisfy competitive urges, offers opportunities to master new skills and gives endless possibilities for social skills to be practised and young minds to be guided especially in how to loose with a smile!.

Learning opportunities through games can cover number, shape, patterns, counting, general knowledge, spelling, letter and sight word recognition, reading with a purpose, strategy development, hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills.

Communication skills such as engaging your children in conversation, sharing interests, turn taking, verbal communication, winning gracefully and expanding your child’s attention span can all develop through participation and completion of games in a relaxed holiday atmosphere.

Maths

Snakes and Ladders – counting forwards and backwards / direction

Dominoes – number patterns

Cooking – measurement within the recipe / shopping list – (paying $ / c) / healthy foods

Blokus – a strategy game for all ages, spatial awareness, number

Jenga – patterns, strategies, fine motor skills

Monopoly – counting, following directions, strategy

Reading / Spelling / Vocabulary

Read for fun

Start a novel together and take it in turns to write a chapter

Maps – follow your trip on a road map or world map / give directions for a trip or a local walk / read the street signs

Recipes – reading, following directions, measurement

Scrabble – spelling

Snap – sight words, spelling words

Boggle – spelling, vocabulary

Have their own shopping list and trolley to help in the supermarket

Design a menu for the family dinner – shop and work out the cost

Writing

Write the family Christmas cards in advance

Keep a holiday diary

Research

Use your computer skills to find some interesting local activities

Log on to the Museum or Art Gallery and find activities you would like to attend.

Keep a weather map for the holidays – create your own weather symbols

Find the cheapest mode of transport from A to B – cost of train from one place to another – work out how much it would cost to get to Manly from your house by ferry, train, bus or car….

Physical

Write yourself an exercise program to share with the family

Practise a new skill each day

Play Twister with a friend

Plan a walk through an area not usually visited such as over the Harbour Bridge, down along the city side of the Harbour around the Opera House and up through the Botanical Gardens where they can release some energy and view the surrounds.

Add a picnic to your park visit.

Another popular trip is to cross the Harbour by ferry across to Manly with a run along the beach before heading back across the water.

Encourage your children to take a sketch book to draw things that attract them or perhaps they can take a camera and put a presentation together for grandparents.

Creative Activities

Create your own birthday cards / gift cards

Create a colouring book for a younger sibling or friend with your drawings

On large paper, potato print your own wrapping paper and print matching cards onto cardboard

Plant and care for a vegetable plot

Happy holidays to all…. Remember a balance of structured and non structured activities is good for both you and your children.

Holidays give us the bonus of time to encourage creative opportunities….

And finally….

Quiet time – is equally important for all….

Happy holidays

Katrina James – Learning Enhancement