Kids’ holiday activities rank fairly high when it comes to school holidays! They spend a lot of time at school, but they also have a lot of breaks! It’s often during these times that parents find themselves looking into the abyss and wondering how they’re going to keep them entertained!
Holiday activities can include taking them to the park, swimming, and going for nature walks. These are all great activities and help our kids’ development in a multiple of ways. But there will be chunks of time spent at home and you’ll want your kids involved in activities that don’t always include the iPad! You may also want activities that have that extra added ingredient to reinforce and develop their learning.
Below is a list of kids’ holiday activities that will provide just that. It’s now the Easter holidays, so I have included some Easter themed ones too!
Kids’ Holiday Activities
Easter Fun
1. Healthy Egg Hunt!
You will need: paper/a pen/toy eggs/chocolate eggs (optional)
- Write some challenges on small pieces of paper, appropriate to your child’s age.
- Fold each paper and put one inside the toy egg.
- Ask your kids and their friends to find the eggs.
- When they find one, they must do the challenge before hunting for the next egg!
Either the winner receives a chocolate egg or a small prize, or you could hide chocolate eggs, with names on. Once the challenge eggs have been found, they can then hunt for their egg!
2. Picasso’s Eggs
You will need: eggs/paint/paper/glue/large piece of paper or a large piece of canvas/old sheet etc.
- Take the yolk and white out of several eggs. Do this by taking a small section off the top of the egg with a knife.
- Clean the inside of the shell with anti-bacterial soap.
- Leave the egg shells to dry.
- Once dried, get you kids to fill the shells with paint.
- Cut a small square of paper and stick it over the hole you made earlier, to seal the paint inside.
- Place a large piece of paper or white canvas either on the floor or upright. Doing it outdoors would be good!
- Now here’s where the real fun begins! Get your kids to throw the eggs at the paper/canvas. The paint will splash out of the broken eggs and make some great art work. Fun and creative!
3. Letter Eggs
You will need: toy eggs and a permanent marker.
- Using a permanent marker, write upper case letters on one half and lower-case letters on the other half of the eggs.
- Separate each egg in half and mix them up.
- Ask your child to put them together again, making sure that the upper- and lower-case letters match.
- You can do variations of this with older kids, such as doing sums.
4. Egg Basket Challenge
You will need: toy eggs/basket
Get your kids to throw as many eggs as they can into the basket from a challenging distance.
Depending on how many kids/friends you have, you can expand this to have relays, competitions, racing against the clock etc.
STEM activities
Getting out kids passionate about science and maths is pretty important, especially for girls who tend to lack confidence in this area and are often put off pursuing careers in STEM subjects. Incorporating STEM activities at home in a fun way, can go along way to ensure their enthusiasm and confidence in this area continue to thrive.
5. Creating Crystals
You will need: pipe cleaners/bamboo skewers/boiling water/Borax/ string/one large glass jar.
- Ask your kids to create a design with the pipe cleaners. It could be a person, a ball, a car etc.
- Tie the design to the bamboo skewer with some string. Use enough string for it to dangle (a couple of inches between the skewer and the design), and also so it won’t touch the bottom of the jar.
- Pour water into the jar and add 3 tbls of Borax for each cup of water used.
- Place the design in the jar with the bamboo skewer resting across the top.
- Check to see the design is completely covered in the Borax solution.
- Leave for at least 24 hours. During this time, your kids can watch the crystals form.
6. Fizzy designs
You will need: shaped moulds/water/food colouring/baking soda/vinegar
- Get enough water to fill your moulds and add some food colouring.
- Pour the water/food colouring mix into the moulds.
- Add a tbls of baking soda to each one.
- Freeze the shapes overnight.
- Take the shapes out of the freezer and allow them to start to defrost.
- Pour some vinegar over each shape and watch the fizz begin!
7. Fingers
You will need: your fingers!
This is a really fun maths game that doesn’t require anything but your fingers! Originated by Andrew Jeffery, it’s similar to the game, Rock, Paper Scissors. It can be used to practice times tables or simple addition and/or subtraction.
To practice times tables: After the count of three, you and your child hold up any number of fingers on one hand. The number of fingers held up on each hand needs to be multiplied. For example, if you hold up two fingers and your child hold up two fingers, the answer is 4. The first person to shout out the correct answer is the winner for that round and gets a point. Whoever gets the most points, is the overall winner. It can easily be adapted for addition and/or subtraction.
8. Fun, maths stories
You will need: your imagination!
This is a fun way of practising mental arithmetic that doesn’t require anything but being able to tell a story! The idea is to tell your child any made-up story, that requires things or people joining or leaving. When somebody joins or leaves, ask your child to say how many people are left. The more dramatic and/or humorous you can make it with tone, different voices and actions, the more fun you’ll child will have. For example:
On a cold and windy evening, six-year-old Sally and her mum were the first people to board the plane. Sally looked worried. Nobody else was there. But then came a heavy stomping sound, followed by a high-pitched squeal. Suddenly, there appeared a man laden down with bags and trailing behind him, a young, crying child. (How many people are on the plane now?).
A stewardess arrived, followed by another passenger. (How many people are on the plane now?). The passenger, who was dressed for the beach, started to complain. She said she couldn’t possibly stay on a plane with a crying baby; grabbed her bags and left. (How many are on the plane now?).
And just when Sally thought there couldn’t be any more commotion, the pilot emerged from the cockpit. Only he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a pilot….
You can have a lot of fun with the stories and progress the arithmetic as your child progresses.
Mindfulness Activities
School holidays are also a great time to fit in some mindfulness activities. Here are two you may want to try.
9. Scent Sensation
Ask your child to close their eyes and put something that they are unfamiliar with under their nose. Get them to take a deep breath in and focus on the scent as they breathe out. What can they smell? Can they smell different scents? Does it smell like something they know? Is it a pleasant or unpleasant smell?
10. Guess the Object
With their eyes closed, place something unfamiliar in your child’s hand and ask them to describe it. Is it soft, hard, spiky, rough? What does it feel like against their cheek? Does it feel different from their hands or the same?
You could expand this to putting several things in a box. Once they guess an object correctly, they can take it out and keep going until the box is empty.
Related: Play ideas for Cognitive Development / Kids’ Mindfulness Activities / Nurturing Creativity in Your Child
Over to you…
When it comes to kids’ holiday activities, what kind of activities do you do with your kids at home? Have you tried any of the above or variations of them? I’d love to hear what you and your kids have been doing in the comments below.
References: https://www.fantasticfunandlearning.com/make-crystal-egg-easter-craft.html /https://www.science-sparks.com/baking-soda-ice-cubes/
