Miss Frugal’s new school have set her homework to complete throughout the Summer Holidays and whilst I don’t agree with the volume of homework she’s been given, I do agree with the principal of continuing to encourage learning through the holidays – albeit in a much less formal and structured way than they learn at school.
Encouraging Reading
There are so many ways to encourage reading but my big thing about reading is making sure that I don’t make them read when they don’t want to because I want to encourage them to love to read rather than just reading because they’re told do! Saying that though, there’s plenty of ways to make children want to read:
- Make a reading chart with an incentive for them when they read a certain amount. We pop a sticker in each square for every twenty minutes reading and you’d be surprised how quickly they get filled when there’s a treat at the end.
- Visit your local library but don’t just stick to the story books section – get some factual books out. Master Frugal loves reading random facts and his favourite book at the minute is the Guinness Book of Records.
- Reading anything is good so encourage reading at all times – menus, websites about places you’re visiting, note’s you’ve written, instructions for cooking things.
- Takes books with you when you go places – we have a favourite book each in the back of the car.
- Have plenty of books around that you know they’ll enjoy.
- Lead by example, read with them and don’t just use their reading time to catch up on Twitter. 😉
Encouraging Writing
Writing is something that we need to work on this Summer with Master Frugal as his writing is so neat when he wants it to be but it’s not consistent so I want to encourage him to practice his writing this Summer:
- Keep a Summer Holiday journal to record memories from the Summer.
- Write out the shopping lists and meal plan each week.
- Miss Frugal loves writing stories and she has a book with a list of story titles at the front that we wrote together. She just chooses one when she wants to write something. Things like ‘If I ruled the world’ encourage imagination and lead to some fun stories.
- Get them to make a treasure hunt. We had so much fun last year making one and the prize at the end was a bar of chocolate which made it even better.
- Get the kids to write a list of things that they want to do over the Summer Holidays – then do them!
The Other Stuff
There are so many websites out there that encourage learning – mostly in a sneaky way because your children will think they’re planing a fun game but there are educational elements to it too. Here’s a list of our favourite sites.
The most important thing to remember is that the Summer Holidays are vital for children to relax, recharge their batteries and be children – these are just a few ideas to get some sneaky learning into their everyday fun.
