10 Ideas to encourage learning during the holidays!

 

Ritu Rahul Rathod, Creative Writing & Communication Coach and Founder Moonlight Musings offers some interesting tips and ideas to encourage learning for kids during the holidays.

By custom or law, when normal activities, especially business or work including school, is suspended or reduced, we term it as a holiday.

Generally, holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate, set aside time for rest, travel or participation in any recreational activities alone or with family. Besides regular weekends, individuals get approximately three months of holiday time in a year, spaced out. That is a lot of time to be whiled away, languishing.

Learning is a process that leads to change, result and experience and accelerate potential for improved performance and future learning.

The importance of constant learning is that it helps the individual to acquire essential skills and knowledge to achieve certain set goals. Constant and consistent learning is important for success.

If learning is active and social and is enhanced by interaction, one can keep aside a few minutes every day during the holidays to keep themselves challenged, purposeful and engaged. Continue learning contributes to higher levels of self-efficacy and resilience. A sudden break from learning during the holidays can be debilitating, and to then get back to regular learning activities can be tiresome and challenging.

When the holidays come around, the trick is to integrate learning with holiday and seasonal activities.

Although maintaining the momentum of students' learning during vacation is a challenge, it is imperative.

Here are some ways to encourage learning even during vacations, and make holiday time productive and enjoyable.

Get creative

Arts and crafts bring families together during holidays they require attention to detail, following proper instructions, and maintaining steady focus. Imagination and creativity or enhanced during craft activities and bring about satisfied and proud children. Build giftwrapping skills.

Treks

Taking advantage of appropriate weather, hikes can be interesting    and enlightening. Physical activity helps health and increases          appetite for the growing ones, leaving them craving for nutritious  food. Tracks can also be a time to learn about botany.

 

Reading

Children rarely get time to read during school days. Holidays are a great time to catch up with Reading, one of the greatest ways to learning. Reading about 45 minutes a day during the holidays can help children develop vocabulary and become great storytellers. This activity will help them stay connected with school during the break.

Stay plugged.

Staying plugged and playing games online can also contribute to learning. There are several games for every age, online, that enable learning. So many podcasts and videos available on YouTube are productive. Children would love parents asking them to go online.

     Learn a skill.

  Develop a skill like cooking. So many integrated lessons can be            incorporated while cooking. Nutrition, biology, health and fitness to name a few. Have children create holiday menus and go shopping for ingredients. A family that cooks together bonds together.

    Catch up!

Catch up with incomplete activities like incomplete stories or cleaning up. Mostly, everyone eventually craves structure and routine. Holidays are a great time to get organized and focused and get a head start. Organizing also Gets you up beat about the near future.

Write!

Start writing a diary. Commence with only 10 minutes a day. A Travel diary is also an interesting activity to indulge in. Write about the trip to the museum. Right about new friends that you made in the holidays

Travel!

Visit nearby localities and explore the food, people and culture. It need not be an expensive or elaborate trip. How often do we get time to study Our neighbourhood? Turn car rides into learning opportunities and play geographical games naming cities and their capitals.

Communicate with parents, neighbours and extended family members.

Communicating, having discussions and debates on current and relevant topics can be interesting and educational. Intriguing topics such as 'why is peace not on everyone's mind?' Can engender great discussions and bring families together, while learning. Global citizens need to get involved in such discussions. Create a family tree.

 Have Bake sales.

Learning money and mathematics while releasing baking activities can be so therapeutic. Students can also learn social skills while fundraising and sharing. Measuring is a great way to practice fractions.

Studies have found that children who keep themselves engaged during holidays demonstrate stronger critical thinking skills, display great levels of social tolerance, develop a test for cultural activities and make great international students.

Hence, let the kids relish the holidays, but remind them that learning can be one of the most fulfilling holiday activities.