6 Activities to keep kids brain active this summer
Children love when school is out. They don’t have to do homework, study, and go to class every day. They are excited to stay home all day and play. In reality, they get bored very fast, and it is the parents who bear the burden.
But during the summer the last thing children want to do is to learn and study. To keep their brain active, parents need to find new entertaining and learning activities.
Here we prepared a list of six activities to keep your children playing and learning during the summer.
- Bird feeding
A simple activity to keep children engaged throughout the summer is to make a bird feeder.
Upcycle old cardboards to make the bird feeder, fill it with seeds and place it in your backyard or balcony. Now let the feeding be a kid’s responsibility. Through the process, they will observe and learn more about birds. You can encourage them to keep a journal where they track the birds visiting.
Like this, they will learn natural science without noticing they are doing so.
- Egg in a bottle
Show your children the laws of nature using eggs. With this simple experiment, children will see in action how physics work.
For this activity, make a hard-boiled egg and a thick glass bottle. Get a piece of paper, light it up (that is a parent’s job), and place it inside the bottle. Put the hard boil egg and watch the vacuum sucking the egg.
- Calculator hopscotch
Use this activity if your kids like to play with numbers. Through this fun activity, the children will engage their bodies and their minds.
Instead of drawing traditional hopscotch, make them draw a calculator. They can play in several ways. When with friends, they can play together by one of them jumping to the equation (like 5 + 4) and the other jumping to the answer. Or the kids can play it themselves by throwing a stone onto a number and then jumping into as many combinations equaling that number.
- Book bingo
Get your children to read by rewarding them with prizes after every read. The rewards will encourage them to keep reading the books, without them knowing you are tricking them into reading.
Get cardboard and attach on them 14 (or how many books you want) envelopes. In each envelope, place a prize. Seal the envelopes good and then write the book name at the top. Now, every time your child finishes a book, he will open the corresponding envelope to get his prize.
The best way to keep them excited is to add as prizes the toys they like to have.
- Map the world
Get your kids to know about geography with this simple yet fun activity.
All you need is to buy a wall world map that shows the borders of each country. Then make the kids every day collect a few unique labels that come from different countries. It can be labels of produce, clothes, or toys. Then using pins or removable poster tape makes the kids find the countries where the items come from.
Through this activity, the kids will learn geography and how we live in an interconnected world.
- Growth charts for bulbs
Every parent loves wall marks that track the child’s growth. Now it is time to get the children excited about that. They won’t even notice they are learning math and science.
Buy spring bulbs that have a few growing tips exposed. You can either plant them in soil or keep their root ends in water. Place them near a sunny window and make the kids water them regularly. For measuring, place next to the bulb an 18-inch wood stripe.
Make the kids check the bulb regularly and measure the growth. On one side, let them write the date, and on the other side, measure how much the bulb grew. Make the kids color each block of growth.
You can encourage them to do this experiment a few times. Then, they can discuss the pattern they found throughout all experiments.
To sum up
Just because school is out doesn’t mean the kids should stop learning. Make sure to engage them with fun activities at home that keeps children’s brain active. Kids will enjoy the play and won’t notice they are learning.