Top Tips for keeping Primary aged children learning this holiday!
The Festive Period is upon us and the UK can be at its most challenging weather wise! Keeping younger children who might typically be in our Prep School or Nursery engaged and stimulated throughout the school holidays isn’t the easiest of tasks for parents. So, looking beyond screen time and encouraging them out into the somewhat bracing winter air ensuring you have some spare time also for last minute festive cheer!
Luckily, there are a lot of things you can engage your children in that will be fun and simultaneously keep them engaged. We spoke with our Prep School teachers, many of whom parents themselves for their top tips of activities this Festive Season!
1. The joy of word games
Literacy is a key theme for primary aged children at Westbourne Prep, and some of the oldest board games are excellent at supporting that.
The family favourites are often that for very good reason! Playing Scrabble is a great opportunity for the whole family to interact without staring at a screen. For younger members of the family, Scrabble is excellent for enhancing vocabulary, improving spell and thinking about words and how they are formed….just make sure you have rule book to hand!
2. Make believe
Father Christmas and the elves keep young imaginations active in the lead up to Christmas, however make believe can be a very useful tool for those pre-school and Reception age children who may not have quite mastered enough spellings to make Scrabble a viable option.
Sound recognition is a great alternative. To play, simply give them common sounds (examples of such can be found online) and together try and make as many words as possible, containing that sound.
If you feel like incorporating some arts and crafts into it, you could make some flashcards with letters and provide a stack of magazines and newspapers to your little ones. Use child-friendly scissors and ask them to cut out all pictures that start with that letter.
Alternatively, YouTube has many videos with sounds and picture being identified, if you wanted to incorporate some technology into it.
Additionally, if you are travelling, you can play ‘I spy’ with sounds to encourage them to really think about it.
3. Festive spending!
You may think you are doing quite enough of that this Christmas!
However, most of us now typically tap a card to pay for goods and the traditional counting of money is a skill are children may well lose as we quickly head towards being a cashless society. Coinage has the excellent advantage of teaching our children numeracy, to get them thinking about the simple maths’ behind exchanging money.
Keep a small ‘float’ in your purse, or grant pocket money in cash, giving children the opportunity to not only learn to count but the confidence to interact with adults in shops, pay and check their change. For those that are slightly older, giving them a budget for Christmas gifts and teaching them the simple life skill of planning and keeping to a budget can be invaluable…and fun when funded by the Bank of Mum & Dad
4. Puzzles
Encourage your children’s imagination and spatial awareness with suitable for their age puzzles that you can all put together. Similar to the way hand-eye coordination is achieved, puzzles provide the opportunity for children to develop fine motor skills. Not to be confused with gross motor skills such as walking, fine motor skills require small, specialized movements that puzzles provide.
Other skills developed by puzzles include shape recognition, problem solving, memory and the ability to set small goals and achieve them.
Most puzzles will have clearly indicated on the packaging age group they are suitable for, so make sure you follow those guidelines.
5. Hangman
While easy to do and requiring very little preparation, these classic games develop the ability to think about words and spelling.
The popular guessing game hangman only requires a pen and some paper to be played and there are usually two participants. One player thinks of a word, phrase or sentence and the other(s) tries to guess it by suggesting letters or numbers, within a certain number of guesses.
This exercise requires children to think about the spelling of various words.
6. Build a ginger bread house
If you feel like spending some time in the kitchen, why not build a gingerbread house from scratch. While definitely a challenging task, it will also leave you with some wonderful memories and encourage the use of various skills.
To practise some basic number skills make sure you let the children measure everything you’ll need. Allow them to cut the dough based on the template and decorate the house when baked to develop their artistic abilities….and no-one says the ginger bread house has to be a traditional shape…let imaginations run wild!
7. Snapshot diary
For slightly older children, get them to write about their experiences during the holiday and take photos of memorable moments.
In can be as brief as a couple of sentences for each day, but it will get them to reflect on their experiences and would be great for presenting their holidays to the class when the break is over.
8. Days Out: Mountain view ranch
Local child-friendly destinations provide a good opportunity for a day out while usually offering thematic holiday experiences. Located in Cardiff, it is a short drive away for most families based in the Vale of Glamorgan. You could also choose to get a train to Caerphilly and then hop on a bus to the ranch.
Mountain view ranch offers children to meet Santa and his (real-life) raindeers, meet the elves in their toy workshop and much more.
9. Margham Country Park
Another local spot perfect for taking primary and nursery children – as well as any older siblings – to is the Morgam Country Park, famous for its illuminated trail that can be a great experience for little learners who are still developing their sense of colours.
Another activity the park offers, depending on weather conditions, is the Go Ape adventure. It offers both young and old to take to the trees and go down zip lines, there are rope bridges and Tarzan swings all located high above the ground! Perfect for keeping children active and developing gross motor skills.
Easy to get to, the park is located in Neath Port Talbot and allows for an easy drive during the day.
10. Free museums!
Another simple suggestion, however it is great to have a look at what is on offer. With Dippy the dinosaur welcoming visitors at Cardiff’s National Museum children are bound to get that spark and want to learn more about science.
Visiting the permanent collection is free (including seeing Dippy the Dinasour), however, some of the visiting exhibits or additional activities might be paid for. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 – 17:00 and most bank holiday Mondays.
11. Screens for learning!
With secondary school students, it becomes a touch harder to keep them separated from computers, tablets and phones while also ensuring they remain engaged with their studies. Some of our above-listed suggestions are still applicable, like baking and visiting local sights and museums, however, there is much more you can do as well.
Use those screens to do some learning
Consider not trying to separate your older children from the screen at all, instead use them as a tool! There is an abundance of tools for free education out there including
- Coursera
- Udemy
- YouTube
And they can do a course on anything from animation to how to create a video game! This will be the only place they can go to for subjects that they absolutely love.
There is also the opportunity to use technology to learn a new language or practice an existing one. Duolingo and Memrise are popular apps for mobile devices, BBC languages is another useful resource. Don’t exclude popular services like Netflix either, instead encourage them to watch something in a language they are learning at school!
12. Volunteering
What better time to give back to your community than Christmas? If you have sixth formers who are doing the IB Diploma, encourage them to make use of the free time they have and get some CAS points.
Regardless of their age, however, volunteering can have many great benefits for the development of students. Get some inspiration on different ways to volunteer from our CAS ideas blog.
…and not forgetting some traditional fun!
As a capital city, Cardiff presents a lot of opportunities for our Prep School aged children to have fun outside and enjoy the festive spirit. From strolling through the Christmas market and enjoying festive food outside to having fun at Christmas Wonderland and ice skating!