In the spirit of the Holiday Countdown Calendar we’ve complied this list of holiday activities to keep the kids mentally active over the break! Feeling creative? Why not cut out each tip, put them in a bowl, and have the kids choose their daily mental to-do activity? Or better yet…hang them on the tree and have the kids pick one a day!
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We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 12: Chip Away at Schoolwork
There’s many creative and unique ways to incorporate learning into the school holidays. But sometimes, the simplest solution is best: do a little bit of schoolwork everyday. This is especially important for high schoolers. If your teen has a school assignment over the holidays, make a plan to work on it a little bit everyday. This will not only help avoid the “I-go-back-to-school-tomorrow-and-I-haven’t-started-my-project” stress, but will help teens to not lose focus or forget important facts.
Just like over the summer break, kids’ motivation can take a nosedive over the holiday. It doesn’t take long for it to happen. The best way to prevent a holiday brain drain is to maintain the momentum. Even if no schoolwork has been assigned, organize notes. Tidy binders and pencil cases. Clean out book bags. Read over notes and highlight keywords. Make study notes.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
Tip 6: Use Your School Agenda
Tip 7: Go to the Library
Tip 8: Keep a Holiday Journal
Tip 9: Go Online
Tip 10. Send Holiday Thank You Cards
Tip 11. Get Puzzlin’
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 11: Get Puzzlin’
Crossword puzzles. Search-a-words. Puzzles. Sudoku books. All of these not only make great stocking stuffers, they are a great way to challenge the mind. Sure, they can be frustrating, but the process of trying to figure out a problem, and work systematically through the steps needed to reach a solution get the mental synapses firing on all cylinders.
You can turn these otherwise solo activities into group games by attempting a puzzle together, and talking trough the steps, and explaining your reasoning to each other.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
Tip 6: Use Your School Agenda
Tip 7: Go to the Library
Tip 8: Keep a Holiday Journal
Tip 9: Go Online
Tip 10. Send Holiday Thank You Cards
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 10. Send Holiday Thank You Cards.
Everybody sends cards before the holidays, so why not start a new tradition of sending holiday thank you cards after the holidays? Make a list of recipients and their addresses. For younger kids, have them decide what they want to say and write it out for them on a sheet of paper that they can use for reference. Then grab the pens and get writing! It’s a great way to practice penmanship and try out some new vocabulary words!
Try to incorporate some of the words from this Christmas vocabulary list.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
Tip 6: Use Your School Agenda
Tip 7: Go to the Library
Tip 8: Keep a Holiday Journal
Tip 9: Go Online
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 9 Go Online
Let’s face it: even the most novel of Christmas presents loose their appeal after a few days. So, why not task the kids with doing some sort of online research project? Any topic goes, whether it’s a favourite animal, or what model of snow blower is the best value. Ask the kids to locate the information for you, and then have them tell you what they discovered.
This is also a great opportunity to have important conversations about online safety and evaluating information sources. Have kids take note of where information comes from and ask them to analyze the quality of one site or another. Media literacy is a skill that will become increasingly important as kids age. If you can combine important thinking and learning skills with holiday fun, then everybody wins.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
Tip 6: Use Your School Agenda
Tip 7: Go to the Library
Tip 8: Keep a Holiday Journal
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 8: Keep A Holiday Journal
Journaling doesn’t have to be about sitting down and writing for a period of time, a task that many kids find daunting, especially if their only previous experience with a journal is one that they were assigned to keep in class.
Journals can be about anything at all. They can be used to sketch, or to make lists, to keep track of favourite quotes, or to create mind-maps. You can glue things in them. You can tear pages out. There really are no rules. The point is to put pen to paper and get introspective. It’s about putting aside some time everyday to think actively and document the thought process.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
Tip 6: Use Your School Agenda
Tip 7: Go to the Library
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 7: Go to the Library
Libraries are more than just a place to locate books. For the developing reader and/or the student of any age, the library can help develop a certain sense of discovery and motivation to learn. Whether it’s researching a topic and locating the corresponding books, or discovering a book about an unknown subject simply by wandering the stacks, the experience of going to the library and borrowing books can help kids feel a sense of ownership in the process reading and holiday learning.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
Tip 6: Use Your School Agenda
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 6: Use Your School Agenda
The holidays are perfect for relaxation and celebration, but not every hour of every day is a party. Studies show that children actually crave structure and routine. Over the holidays, use a holiday agenda to stay organized and focused, and to stay on top of any upcoming January assignments.
Just as your child uses a school agenda to keep schoolwork organized, an agenda can be used to organize the holidays.
Sit down together to record holiday activities and January assignments in the agenda. For example:
Have your child refer to the agenda everyday — this way your child can stay on top of responsibilities and activities and practice time management!
Try to fit in one hour for schoolwork everyday, even just to go over school notes, read or organize a binder or pencil case.
Ask your child: “What’s going on tomorrow?”
Use the agenda during the holidays to underscore the idea that school doesn’t end just because kids are on break. Create a seamless transition to back-to-school by staying organized and on-track.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
Tip 5: Roll the Dice
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, we’ve compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 5: Roll the Dice
Board Games are more than just a way to get families to interact—they actually teach valuable learning skills.
A simple roll of the dice helps kids develop higher-level thinking skills such as critical thinking, strategy, analysis, planning, creativity, cooperation, organization, and rule-following, as well as improving basic school skills such as addition, subtraction, and reading comprehension.
And, one other critical thing: Board games are a great way to step away from technology for an hour or two, Sometimes, it’s just fun to spend simple quality time together. And, if kids pick up additional skills along the way, then all the better,
Check the comments on our post Board Games and Learning for great game suggestions from our readers
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
Tip 4: Play Video Games
We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, with the holidays fast approaching, we compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!
Day 4: Play Video Games.
This might seem like an odd activity to suggest, since your kids are most likely fully intending to play video games day in and day out over the school break. Research has indicated that video games might not be as detrimental to kid’s mental development as we tend to think. In fact, certain interactive video games might actually help children develop skills (math, literacy, and social) that pay off in the classroom.
If you want to spend some quality time with your kids, why not pick up the controller, and get them to teach you how to play? Putting the kids in the instructor’s seat forces them to think systematically, logically, and analytically about the game and how they play it.
Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike
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