LearningTip
#10:
Turning "I'm Bored, What Can I Do Now?"
Into a Fun Reading, Writing, and Learning
Summer for Children, Part II
By Joyce Melton
Pagés, Ed.D.
Mother of two children, President of KidBibs
Keeping children engaged in meaningful activities during the summer can be very challenging. Children are often drawn to TV, videogames, and other electronic devices. In addition to the suggestions on this page, find activities in LearningTip #9 and topically organized resources in the Loving Learning section to help children grow and learn during the summer months!
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Parenting Activities
Involve your children in: 1. Writing! This can take the form of keeping a journal, writing letters to last school year's penpal, taking pictures and labeling them in a photo album, writing letters to a friend or grandparent, or writing a story that they can put in book form. 2. Building! From blocks to models and electronics kits, children learn to create and follow directions by building. 3. Collecting! Hobbies, interests, scrapbooks, files, and collections can keep children reading, writing, thinking, and learning all summer long. Whether they are collecting newspaper clippings of their favorite baseball team, keeping a scrapbook of the family pet, or keeping a FavoritesFile of jokes, riddles, poems, songs, and tongue twisters, they are busy reading or writing what they enjoy. 4. Playing games! Most board games and card games engage children in higher level thinking and social interaction. 5. Cooking! Messing around in (and messing up) the kitchen by cooking broadens vocabulary, provides relevance for skills learned at school, teaches measurement, and helps children follow directions. 6.
Exploring,
Observing, Investigating, and Experimenting! 7. Solving Puzzles and Decoding Codes! Crossword puzzles, mazes, and search-and-find puzzles are fun for some children. Writing messages in code for a friend and decoding the response can also be fun. Logic puzzles can be challenging and entertaining for older children. |
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Many of these activities can be done with materials that you already have at home. The following list of books and kits might give you some other ideas. The books might be available in your local library. The following materials have been linked to the secure web site of Amazon.com, if you choose to purchase them.
Make Your Own Book: A Complete Kit (bookmaking handbook and all of the materials necessary for making one hardback book) [9-12]
Hummingbirds: A Bird Book and Build Your Own Feeder Kit [4-8]
Build with Beakman: Electronic Intercom (book and materials) [9 and up]
Fun with Computer Electronics: Build 20 Electronic Projects with the Same Type of Chip Used in Computers (book and materials) [9 and up]
Crazy Eights and Other Card Games (book)
Peg Solitaire (book with materials for playing 23 on-your-own games)
Classic Board Games (book with materials)
Lucky 13: Solitaire Games for Kids by Michael Street
Let's Cook! (book) [4-8]
Kids Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Manual
Messipes: a Microwave Cookbook of Deliciously Messy Masterpieces (laminated, sandwich shaped book)
Smoothies: 22 Frosty Fruit Drinks (book with spatula)
Magic Spoon Cookbook (book with spoon)
Resources for Exploring, Observing, Investigating, and Experimenting!
Backyard (One Small Square Series) (book)
Backyard Bird-Watching for Kids: How to Attract, Feed, and Provide Homes for Birds (book)
Backyard Camp-Out Book (book)
The Gem-Hunter's Kit (book with 8 gemstones imbedded in a rock for children to dig out and identify)
Weather Tracker's Kit (book with weather station and cloud chart)
Grow Your Own Crystals (book and materials crystal experiments)
There's Fungus Among Us! (book with complete fungus growing kit)
DK Action Pack: Light and Illusion: An Interactive Guide to Optical Tricks (book and materials) [8 and up]
Explorabook: A Kid's Science Museum in a Book (book with science experiment materials to learn about magnetism, light waves, illusions, biology, and physics) [9 and up]
Earthsearch: A Kid's Geography Museum in a Book (book with materials to study trash, population, rocks, astronomy and much more) [9 and up]
Resources for Solving Codes and Puzzles!
Puzzle Arcade: For People Who Like Lots of Hints (book with puzzles) [4-8]
Puzzle School (book) [6-8]
How to Write and Decode Codes: Codemaster #1 (book) [9-12]
Fantastic Book of Logic Puzzles (book) [9-12]
The Think-Tank 3-D Pop-up Games and Puzzles (book and kit) [9 and up]
For strategies to motivate reluctant readers, visit LearningTip11!
©
KidBibs International
http://www.kidbibs.com/
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