Engaging Activities to Help Promote Skill Development During Summer Break

School starts in just over a month and in case you're worried about your children losing the skills they’ve spent all school year developing, here are ideas to challenge their minds and ease them back into learning.

Engage your children in critical thinking discussions

Instead of providing answers when they ask "why" or question a specific rule or reason for something, ask them what they think the reason might be and have an open discussion about the possibilities. This promotes critical thinking, empathy and problem solving skills. 

Practice social skills with games and discussions

Help them develop empathy and ask how they think another family member is feeling on a given day. Play emotion charades and demonstrate a facial expression or emotion and have them guess what you're trying to display. Promote social pragmatics with games like 20 Questions where one person thinks of something and tells the guessers if it's a person, place, thing, or action. The guessers get to collectively ask 20 yes or no questions to figure out what that person is thinking. With more mature students, try Two Truths and a Lie. One person gives three facts about themselves, two of them are true and one is not. Everyone else has to guess which fact provided is the lie. This promotes children to consider all of the things they already know about that person and synthesize this information to formulate a hypothesis. 

Encourage children to read throughout the summer

Create a fun reading fort or sit outside with them and read your book while they read theirs.

Consider reading out loud to them. This allows them access to stories with content that interests them but may be above their reading level. Reading out loud to your children is a great way to spend quality time together while also promoting an important skill: auditory processing. They must listen to what is being read, comprehend what they are hearing, then visualize the characters and actions throughout the story. Feel free to stop and discuss the plot line, character’s decisions, and define words that the listener may not know.

Discuss characters and scenarios from their preferred shows or story books

Ask your children what emotions the characters are displaying and why. Ask your children if they feel the character's reactions to problems are proportionate to the problem, too big, or too small. Emphasize when the characters display flexible thinking abilities, empathy, perseverance and other positive characteristics. 

Incorporate visual perceptual activities throughout their day

Play games like I Spy, word searches, or hide an object in the house with a small portion peaking out so that they have to search their familiar environment for it. If they become stumped while looking, provide hints to them as they get closer to the object by saying "warmer" and if they get further from the object say "colder". 

Promote fine motor strengthening for improved handwriting and endurance

Have a race where each player collects small pom-poms, crumpled pieces of paper or any small item using clothespins, tweezers, or tongs. Whoever collects the most when the items are all gone wins that round. Try switching hands to give both hands an opportunity for strengthening and to improve coordination of the non-dominant hand.

Allow them to be the teacher

Ask your children to provide you or an older sibling with a spelling test, math problem or any other questions for the subjects they choose. This role reversal may help spark their interest in school subjects while also asking them to recall things they've learned in the previous school year.

Try writing a word, sentence or paragraph and make some common age appropriate mistakes (reversing a letter, grammatical errors, spelling errors) and ask your child to correct your work as if they were your teacher.

Here's to a final month of summer filled with fun, learning, trying new things, and gearing up for a great academic year. Feel free to contact us for a free consultative phone call if you have concerns regarding your children's fine motor, handwriting, visual perceptual, or sensory processing abilities.