Home projects keep learning on track over summer

Keeping kids busy over summer vacation is an important way to ensure young minds continue to grow when the lesson plans and homework assignments take a break.

Simple tasks like helping mom in the kitchen or dad in the yard are not only great ways to keep the family together, working to build relationships, but they offer a loving, rudimentary way to sneak in a math or English lesson when your son or daughter isn't looking.

"You have to motivate and stimulate their minds and bodies," said Vielka McFarlane, a longtime educator and chief executive officer and founder of Celerity Educational Group. "You have to provide them with choices and opportunities to expand on the classroom knowledge they gained during the year.

Although McFarlane maintains that how you keep a child busy depends on their developmental stage and grade level, there are key activities that will enrich a child and preoccupy their minds.

Build

Have them build a kite, a bird house, a boat or even a Lego structure. Building accesses spatial temporal reasoning and improves fine motor skills. More importantly, most kids get absorbed in the process of creation.

Cook

Have kids help in the kitchen or become chefs for the day. Cooking utilizes reading skills, math skills and basic judgment. The finished product will produce pride and self-confidence. It also gives the parent a mini-vacation.

Play games

Favorite games like chess and Scrabble accesses math and sequencing skills. It is an excellent way of keeping your child's mind active and quick. Also, many public libraries have chess clubs that meet so your child will have the opportunity to compete. Additionally, Scrabble is an excellent way of building your child's vocabulary and perfecting their dictionary skills. You can also compete with your child to keep their skills agile.

Art

Summer art projects can be great for keeping your kids busy. Get them outside and have them work on landscape paintings or drawings. Or have them work on a found art project. Looking for components for their project can become a treasure hunt. The art supplies you provide can be minimal. The point is to give them ideas for their creation.

Write

Activate your child's story telling abilities by reading them a portion of a story and having them finish the story in their own words. Younger children can also illustrate their stories. Writing flexes the entire brain and is beneficial for a child's development and success in school.

Take A Tour

Taking tours can be fun and educational for you and your children. For information on gallery and museum exhibits, or more interactive trips to your local newspaper or television station is only a phone call away. Other outings to recreational areas will provide lessons on local plants, marine animals and wildlife.

While these ideas may seem basic, McFarlane says they utilize key mental and physical skills.

After all, she adds, the best way to keep a child busy is to get them absorbed in a task and to almost trick them into learning. And what better place for education to begin than in the home, where children feel instantly at ease and uninhibited to ask the first question that pops into their minds.

These six tips, with some preparation, can keep a child active all summer and get them primed for the school year.