Fun Summer Activities That Promote Learning
Kids look forward to the summer vacation because they can have time off from school and lots of opportunity to do whatever they want! While most kids are going to the beach or participating in summer day camps, you can get your kids involved in equally fun activities that encourage learning. This will be a worthwhile way to spend the summer so they can learn new things while enjoying the season.
Participate in Theater Workshops
If your kids have a knack for acting and performing, enlisting them in a theatrical workshop is a worthwhile way to spend their summer. There are plenty of things that they can learn, aside from enhancing their stage performance skills. Among these include memory, hand and body coordination, listening skills, and also boosts their self-confidence.
Visit a Museum
If you want your kids to learn a lot of things in a short amount of time, and still have fun while doing so, take them to a nearby museum. Aside from indulging their eyes on some rare artifacts, they can also learn a few histories along the way, specially if there are guided tours on the museum. To ensure that they will have fun, let them pick the museum that they want to visit.
Sell Stuffs
This is a worthwhile summer activity because they will learn and earn at the same time. You can encourage your kids to come up with a business idea and make them involved throughout the planning process. They will be able to enhance their entrepreneurship skills early on while also improving their basic math skills.
Make a Scrapbook of Family Summer Adventures
If you enjoyed your summer adventures so much, why not keep those memories forever in an artistic scrapbook? Kids will no doubt enhance their artistic skills by making their own scrapbook that will allow you to look back on these adventures in years to come. It does not matter what you did during the summer, pasting photos and writing captions on those photos will no doubt inspire creativity from kids.
Teach Your Kids Healthy Eating Habits Early
Your kids can never be too young or too old to start making healthy changes on their eating habits. Though children usually shy away from eating vegetables and fruits and it can be testing to teach them to eat good, the health benefits are more than enough reasons for you to try to.
It’s no secret that their growing body and active nature require nutrients for their body to keep up. Supplements and vitamins can help, but nothing beats the power of real fresh vegetables. After all, giving in to their request and simply giving them bags of chip or sweet cereal is not always a good idea, especially long term.
Here are some tips to teach your child healthy eating habits:
Speak With Your Child’s Pediatrician – Teaching your child to eat vegetables can be very temperamental. At times like this, you need professional advice. Do not hesitate to talk to your child’s doctor and ask for help and strategies to make your child love vegetables. Also, ask for the best fruits and veggies for your child to consume.
Make Family Dinner A Priority – No matter how hectic and tiring your day has been, always make the family dinner a priority when you come home. Make it a family tradition and you’ll be glad of the result of your relationship with your family members.
Involve Your Kids In Preparing Of Meals – Make your kids love vegetables by involving them in meal preparations. Let them help in washing vegetables, breaking lettuce, and peeling some carrots (use a plastic peeler). When you help them cook, they’ll be more excited of tasting and eating the food.
Involve your children in the meal preparations.
Children often love to help by washing veggies, peeling carrots, breaking lettuce, or helping to set the table.
At mealtime, have age-appropriate table expectations.
Allow children to serve themselves when possible. Encourage small portions, but let them know that they can have second helpings. Model serving portions that aren’t too hefty. Resist the temptation to push the “clean plate club” as this can result in patterns of overeating. Allow children to stop eating when they are no longer hungry.
Tips To Make An Active Family
Get off the couch, turn off the TV
This may look like a no-brainer, but most of us love staring to a talking box. Adults may be able to ignore TV and focus on their important tasks and chores, kids on the other hand, are like magnetically connected to TV and mounted to the couch.
Open the windows
Kids will not have the curiosity of what awaits in the great outdoors if they can’t really see it. Thus, open some windows on a nice day and encourage your kids to play or go out and play with his/her neighborhood friends.
Travel and be a tourist
For long-weekends and holidays, spend some time taking your whole family for an out-of-town trip and plan a memorable vacation for everyone.
Give back
Collect clothes and canned food or prepare some sandwiches for the homeless or plant a tree. Whatever way you choose to give back, make sure you make the whole family participate and spend more time off the couch.
Look for adventure
Turn your front yard into an archaeological dig, obstacle course, or princess castle for your little girls. These are great ways to spark your kids’ imagination and make them get out of the house.
Schedule a play date
Get to know your kids’ playmates and make a play-date for the family very week. Each family can take turns on planning and picking the location – this should be of course, outside of the house.
Start a tradition
Make some regular plants to hold special activities for the whole family, say one-a-month plans. Go out, have a picnic, play outdoors, go camping and/or hiking, or whatever works for your family. Make sure you consider each one’s preferences and favorite things, ask for your family’s opinions and help on planning and make it a regular habit.
Eating Out with Children? Consider These Tips
Eating out with your child in a restaurant can be a wonderful experience for both you and your child; it’s a nice way to bond with your family and to expose your child to the outside world and see different people.
However, it can also be a very temperamental and embarrassing experience, especially if your child has decided to show everybody her nice ‘trick or that she can yell, or shows you how far she can throw her food across the dining room. Or siblings decide to fight, or step their silliness to a whole new level. These are just some of the nightmares parents should learn to handle – the most important thing to do when in this situation is – don’t panic. More or less, you’re not the only parent in that restaurant who will experience it.
Another important thing to remember when in this situation is to – not cause a scene yourself. It is already embarrassing to you and the people around you, especially when eating out with friends and other family members and relatives. The best way to deal with it is to stay calm and in tune with what is going on with your child.
Sometimes, people inside the restaurant will help you decide how to handle the sticky situation, through their glares, stares, and comments. At the end of the day, all you need is your sense of humor and perspective – it is just one restaurant eat out, you still have plenty of opportunities to give it try again next time.
Quick and Inexpensive Family Games
When the family plans to bond, the games that they should play are those that are easy to prepare and is not costly. There are many families who bond by going on a vacation but not all can afford this one. Here are some inexpensive games that the family can play.
The first activity is the trivia games. This is a free game and is not complicated in terms of mechanics. There shall be one member of the family that will prepare the trivia questions and will function as facilitator. The rest of the family members will be divided into two groups. The facilitator will ask one question to the group and if they got correct they’ll get a point. The group with the most points will win the game.
The charades is another inexpensive game that the family can play. The family has to be divided into two competing groups again. There will be one member of the family that will not be included in the groups and will serve as a facilitator. The objective of the game is to guess whatever one member of the group is acting. His acting will be based on the word or phrase that he picked randomly. If the group runs out of time or commits too many mistakes, the other group will be the one to perform. The group with the most points will win the game.
There are still many quick and inexpensive family games that can be found in the internet. Just remember that you don’t have to pay just to have fun.
Fitness Tips For Supersized Kids
Obesity has the implications for chronic health conditions, this is why at such young age, parents should always remind of their kids to control their eating, observe balanced diet, and keep active.
You don’t have to take your child to the gym to lose weight. They’re young, and through regular physical activities of just one hour a day, and balanced diet, anyone can help supersized kids manage their weight issues.
Here’s how to do it.
Doctors strongly recommend that children and teens, should get an hour of physical activity (exercise) a day. Three of the most important exercises for kids are called aerobic training, muscle development, and bone-building, all essential for your child’s developing body. If you can’t imagine watching your child jogging around your neighborhood, then consider these tips. These are fun exercises that will work your kid’s body and make them sweat.
1. Run with kites or ride the bike
2. Walk with your kids together, and let them walk your dog.
3. Hike once in a while. Bones become denser if you work it out against gravity.
4. Ask them to climb stairs up and down.
5. Teach them to jump rope.
6. Introduce them to athletic sports, such as soccer or gymnastics
7. Take your kids to the waters and teach them how to swim.
8. Find an indoor facility and take kids for a wall climbing.
9. Teach your kids to stretch or even teach them basic yoga poses.
10. Take your kids to roller skating or ice skating, its fun and good for their bone development.
How To Make Easter Healthy For The Whole Family
We all love chocolates, but obviously, we can’t have too much of it if we don’t want to pack some extra pounds this Easter. So how do you enjoy the Easter without being unhealthy? Here are some three great tips.
Quality over quantity
Let’s face it, most chocolate eggs we get in Easter are usually made up of milk with poor quality, making the treats not really good treats to have. So for this year, why not make your chocolates a little bit extra and healthy by opting for dark chocolates (70-85% cocoa content); it is less in sugar and has some good health benefits.
Hold A Real Easter Egg Hunt
If you have kids, they would simply love the idea of an Easter egg hunt. This is a great way to make a healthy activity for everybody outdoors, and you can include your friends and family. Rather than hiding chocolates anywhere, why don’t you hide real hard-boiled chocolates, plastic or wooden eggs, and some little toys for the kids? Also, give those kids who participate with some non-good prizes, this will keep their interest up and running for the whole activity.
Enjoy The Healthy Treats Of Easter
Search for new recipes online for the whole family and opt for healthy treats this Easter. A hot cross bun with some 100% fruit and/or low fat cream on top is a great choice. You can also bake some low fat banana muffins and finish with a little chocolate cross on top. At night, host a lovely barbecue party and grill fish or lean meat and pair them with wholegrain bread and some salad with healthy dressing. Make it healthier by roasting some vegetables and fruits.
Word Games For Family Road Trips
Road trips are both budget-friendly and family-friendly ways to have fun on long weekends and holidays. However, long hours on the road can be very boring and tiring, especially for the kids. And we all know kids can get really annoying when they’re bored. If you often find yourself stressed with your kids fighting at the backseat, then why don’t you keep the whole family busy with some word games while on the road?
Word games are fun for the whole family. One good way to do it is through fill-in-the blanks game; cut a link from a famous story and leave some blanks from passages for your kids to answer. These words can be nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.
You can also do some mental games right inside a moving car. There are tons of examples of these on line, find a couple or more to play on the road and keep your kids busy and practice their memorization skills. Ever heard of mental game like “packing grandma’s truck”? This is one of the most fun and challenging mental games for kids. The objective is to add items to put to the trunk, the next player will think of an item and must repeat the previous item the other player added. The whole family can participate to make a long list of silly things. Make it a team effort rather than a competition for your kids.
Road trip games require a sense of willingness to make it fun. It doesn’t have to be a strict competition; it can be silly more than anything else. The key is to have fun doing it, remember, the objective is to kill boredom while on the road.
Family Road Trip Survival Tips
A successful family road trip entails lots of planning on your part. However, spending time with your family via a road trip does not have to be stressful all the time. But it is easier said than done especially when you hear your kids’ whiney voices constantly asking if you’re there yet.
To ensure that you have more time enjoying each other’s company and less stressing over things, here are some of the basic survival tips to a successful family road trip:
- Nothing beats preparation. Make sure you have a checklist of all the things you need to bring with you on the road trip. When you have little kids, you cannot afford to leave out essential items or your vacation’s ruined. Do not forget the smallest details such as snacks, medicines, and the like, especially if you are traveling somewhere far from the city.
- Enjoy the road trip itself. Do some pep talk on your kids about the real essence of the road trip. Sure, they are going to get bored at some point, but you have to enjoy the ride. If you are traveling for several hours, why not make a few stops on tourist attractions you pass along the way to snap some pictures or enjoy the view. This helps to make the ride more fun and interesting for them.
- Let your kids be part of the planning. Kids like to take control. Hence, take the time to listen to what they have to say when it comes to planning your road trip itinerary. You will be surprised at how fun the activities they would suggest during the trip!
- Bring some gadgets. These are life-savers for parents during a long road trip with their kids. It allows them to do something they enjoy so they won’t be thinking much about the long road trip ahead.
Planning the perfect family road trip isn’t rocket science. If you plan ahead, you are sure to enjoy every minute of your road trip and back!
Cerebral Palsy Family Network’s Guide to Cerebral Palsy (infographic)
Many children with cerebral palsy are diagnosed shortly after birth. The following infographic helps educate those who live with, or are charged with care for, someone who suffers from this terrible illness.
