Exercising Their Minds During The Holiday Season

The holiday season is upon us and school bells will be ringing a final time as students race home to begin their holiday breaks.  Research has shown that children's retention is impacted during school breaks.  Why not incorporate fun activities that can involve the entire family to keep those skills sharpened during each break?  The alphabet game and a pile of leaves can do wonders!  Check out these suggestions...


The Alphabet Game-As your family makes its way to various
locations during the holidays, encourage everyone in your vehicle to participate in the alphabet game.  This happens to be one my family's favorite past-times when we travel.

How to play: Each participant attempts to find road signs that begin with every letter of the alphabet.  Any sign is fair game-restaurant signs, interstate signs, advertisements, etc.  You can even decide as a group to use words found on other vehicles, especially semi-trucks, which are oftentimes rich with muli-word text.  Keep in mind you may struggle with various letters within the alphabet such as Q, X, Y and Z.  The group can decide to be creative with how words will be identified for those letters.



Holiday Dinner Math-When you finally arrive at your destination, you can stir up the kids' math skills by discussing the number of guests and various items on the menu.

How to play: As you are waiting for dinner to be served or as you are preparing your plates, ask the kids to think about how many of the guests will enjoy each of the side dishes.  For example, they can count the guests and the side dishes and offer a guesstimate of which side dish will have the most eaters or a timeframe of how soon it will be consumed as a result of the number of guests who enjoy it.  You can also ask them to determine how many slices can be cut from a pie, a cake or even the ham or the turkey.  One other activity could be to ponder the number of fluid ounces of gravy or egg nog which are being consumed by guests.  Of course, if niblets have been added to the gravy, a discussion regarding the amount of space each niblet takes in the gravy could occur as well.  Lastly, you and the children can discuss the colors they see among the delicious spread of food and how each dish complements each other as a colorful palate.

Pile of Leaves-Once the meal has been eaten, friends and family may be looking for a way to work off some of those calories.  Take the family outside and engage in a Pile of Leaves game!

How to play: Encourage the kids to rake the leaves into four equal piles.  They can then guesstimate how many leaves are in each pile.  Ask the kids to determine the fraction of leaves that are each color, i.e. brown, orange, yellow, etc.  You can also discuss velocity and projection as you ask the kids to determine how far the leaves will fly if they run at various speeds through the leaves or jumping into the leaves.  Of course, at the end of these games, the best fun is to have all of the leaves in a huge pile and invite all friends and family to take a quick plunge.  We love this part!!  :-)

Count The Blessings: Counting blessings during the holidays can serve as a reminder of challenges the family has overcome throughout the year and the opportunity to experience life as a team.  The children can add up the number of blessings shared and marvel at the goodness the family has experienced.




These quick and fun games are a great way to keep everyone entertained while maintaining skills obtained during the school year.

Looking for more creative ideas to use during the breaks?  Watch your pumpkins scramble to decode these yummy words! 


For more fun with spelling go to Education.com.

 Answer Key: 








Shatanese is a the owner of Super Extra Ordinary Mom, LLC, a HR Consultancy that delivers leadership and development training with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion.

Shatanese resides in Atlanta, GA with her husband and their six children.  She enjoys walks on the beach and colorful sunrises.  Shatanese's goal is to encourage others to find the extraordinary in every day moments.

Invite Shatanese as your next guest speaker or trainer!

Contact shatanese@superextraordinarymom.com

Follow Shatanese on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.


Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 18, 2017 at 6:39 PM

    This is awesome!We will definitely use these.

    ReplyDelete
  2. momslatecomingoutNovember 27, 2017 at 8:04 AM

    These sound like fun! Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shatanese ReeseNovember 27, 2017 at 4:19 PM

      That is what it is all about...FUN while learning! Let me know if you try any of the activities and thank you for reading!

      Delete

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