While fun and play is the theme of every child’s summer break, learning should not stop during this time. In fact, keeping your child’s brain engaged during the summer months is critical, not only to the health of their rapidly developing brains, but also their ability to use them.
To help you keep their brains active and learning and ready for when school resumes, we rounded up 3 simple and easy to do activities that will stimulate their cognitive abilities while also having fun!
Practice Writing Skills
Depending on their age and how much practice they have had in the past, encourage your child to write their name no matter what their handwriting looks like. While perfection is not the goal, practicing how to draw lines in a fun way will help them later on when learning how to write in school.
Practicing patterns will directly help their fine motor skills.
Our Pre-writing basics patterns set is a fun way to work on said patterns and the easy to wipe patterns can be used with pencils, crayons, chalk or finger paints. Take it to the sidewalk and use a chalk or place it on top of heavy cardboard and use paint!
Practice Buttoning and Zipping
Zipping and buttoning and knowing how to navigate any fasteners is an important and essential self-care skill. From buttoning our jeans after using the bathroom to zipping up a coat every time we go outside, we don’t realize just how many times a day we manipulate fasteners. Since knowing how to dress and undress themselves is not something they will learn overnight, practicing on themselves and on their toys is another way to help them become self-sufficient.
Our diversity collection of Fastening Dolls will help them start practicing how to button and unbutton pieces of clothing while playing, making it a fun activity they can then carry over to their self-care.
Our Fastening Dolls are available in Hispanic, Caucasian, Asian and African ethnicities, helping children understand diversity and inclusion while also practicing their motor skills. BONUS: They are machine washable!
Practice sorting colors and shapes
Sorting and matching things helps develop visual, thinking and memory skills. Sorting and grouping things together is an important cognitive skills that should be fostered over the summer months to help developing brains be ready for the start of the school year. Sorting and grouping teaches a child to notice similarities and differences, to learn how to categorize and develop early literacy and numeracy skills.
Translucent sets such as our Translucent Counting Gems and Translucent Color Palettes can be used alone or with our Portable Light Pad. The translucent counting gems come in different colors made of translucent plastic to be used as counters for playing and classifying by color.
The translucent Color Palettes is a game that allows boys and girls to discover the world through colors and to play at combining them with each other, discovering other shades when placed on top of each other. Both sets are suitable for ages 3-6 and will surely unleash a child’s colorful creativity. Math Rings, Geometry Shapes, Musical Counters and Tangrams are just a few more of the many translucent sets Miniland has to offer. Find them all here!
Supporting and encouraging little ones to be ready for the school year will help the transition from summer break to being back in the classroom go more smoothly for both the child, parent and teacher.
