There are plenty of ways to keep kids' minds active during the school break. To help with this, whether a parent, teacher, tutor, instructor, or all of those in one, this post will provide a list of activity ideas that are educational too! These activities are suitable for most ages and can be tweaked to increase/decrease difficulty if required.
1. COOKING - Teach kids to cook with simple recipes. Depending on the age, discuss where math is being used during the cooking experience. CLICK HERE to view a variety of kid-friendly recipe ideas by the Food Network.
2. STORY REENACTMENT - Read some books/short stories and then try to reenact them using toys or other materials found around the home. Play Doh or Lego, paired with a bit of imagination, are simple ways to create characters and props to suit a variety of books.
We used Play Doh in the image below to retell the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
5. MATH MYSTERIES - These are a print and go fun worksheet activity. Set the story scene with the video hook, then challenge your detective to use their math skills and powers of deduction to solve the case. Find a free print and go math mystery for multiple levels HERE.
9. DIRECTED DRAWING - Grab a pencil, some paper, decide on something to learn how to draw, then see if you can find a directed drawing lesson on YouTube. Look for ones with easy steps. Pause the video after viewing each step to copy on paper. I'll link some suggestions below to get started:
10. COLORFUL BLOBS - You'll need a clear glass/plastic jar or bottle, container/s, water, a cooking oil, food coloring, a dropper or syringe. Fill the jar/bottle with water. Mix the oil with some food coloring separate containers. Using a dropper or syringe, pick up a colored oil and drop into the water. Observe what happens. Continue to experiment and explore the effects. Discuss how oil and water don't mix. See what happens when you shake the bottle or jar with water and oil. Observe what happens when it settles. Experiment with different sized jars/bottles, adjust the temperature of the water, use different tools to drop the oil in the water to see if it alters the results.
12. ONLINE MATH GAMES - Make screen time not wasted time by keeping it fun and educational. There are plenty of free options available that only require an Internet connection and adobe flash. I'll link some of my favorite go to sites below:
- Cool Math Games
- Math Playground
- Fun Brain
20. SCATTERGORIES - This fun game needs to be played with at least two people to keep it fun. Create a category list e.g. name, place, food, animal, movie title, etc. Then, either pull a letter out of a hat at random OR go through the letters A - Z, to fill out each category as fast as possible. Earn one point for every category correctly filled and earn bonus points if you didn't get the same answer for a category as anyone else. Increase the challenge by setting a timer for each letter round.
A 21st century School Teacher, Mother, and Wife.
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