With summer break reaching its halfway point, you may be struggling to keep your child entertained in a healthy and productive way. Keeping your child busy during the summer months can be difficult, and often leads to countless hours spent watching television or playing video games. While these activities are certainly fine in moderation, it’s important to make sure your child is still spending time this summer being physically active, and doing activities that challenge the brain. But between work, and the other responsibilities of being a parent, finding productive activities for your child during summer is often easier said than done. 

Thankfully, there are several options for your family that will be fun for your child, without adding much extra stress to your plate. Here are a few ways to make sure your child is utilizing summer break in fun and brain-building ways. 

Get Physical

Physical activity is crucial for everyone, but even more important with children. Physical activity promotes growth in children, helps manage stress, builds a stronger heart, muscles, bones, and joints, helps to manage weight, and sets a pattern for staying physically active at a young age. Try enrolling your child in tennis, baseball or softball lessons, or even joining a recreational team. If you’re looking for a way to stay cool in the heat, visit your local public pool or enroll your child in swimming lessons. You may consider setting aside time in the evening to enjoy physical activities as a family, like taking a bike ride or a walk together around the neighborhood.

Continued Education

Research about learning loss for children during the summer can be alarming, with statistics suggesting that over a month’s worth of the school year’s learning is lost during summer break. Thankfully, summer learning loss is easily combated by devoting just a few hours a week to learning. You may consider enrolling your child in an on-site education program, or enrolling them in an online summer learning course for more flexibility. Another great year-round practice is to read a book before bedtime, whether you read to your child or they read to you.

Practice Mindfulness

Practicing meditation and mindfulness is becoming more widely popular with adults, but research suggests that it can also be extremely beneficial for your child. The proposed benefits are numerous, and could potentially help with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, sleep quality, school performance, and behavior problems. Mindful meditation can be done alone or as a family, and only takes a few minutes a day. It’s a great way to start a productive day, or to wind down before bed.

Summer Camps

Enrolling your child in a summer camp can be a great option, especially for busy and working parents. Summer camps offer your child time to interact with and meet other children, to learn new skills, and to build upon existing skills in a fun and social environment! 

Express Creativity

Creativity is so important for children. Because creativity is rooted heavily in exploration, it ultimately aids in problem solving — even in non-creative situations. There is a lot of opportunity for growth in creativity, because children are allowed to make their own decisions, and determine the outcome. You can try enrolling your child in art classes, or introduce creative activities at home like painting, drawing with chalk on the driveway, or making homemade slime. Playing music is also a great way to allow children to use both hemispheres of the brain as a technical and creative skill — enroll your child in music lessons, or challenge your child to create a tune using only household objects.

Interested in eLearning’s Summer Academic Programs and Camps? 

Slip-n-Slide Battle

Go head-to-head in a race to the slippery finish! Challenge your child with fast facts or math problems in a fun and exciting way. 

What you’ll need:

• 2 dry erase boards and markers
• slip-n-slide with room for two lanes
• water hose
• 2 or more participants and a game leader

How to play: 

1. Have an adult set up a slip-n-slide in an area free of obstruction with access to a water hose. The slip-n-slide should have enough room, or lanes, for two people to safely slide at a time. 
2. Two participants will stand at the start of the slip-n-slide with a dry erase board and marker. 
3. The game leader will call out a question, and both participants will race to write down the correct answer on their dry erase board. Both participants should continue reworking the problem until they achieve the right answer. 
4. Once either participant receives approval from the game leader that their answer is correct, the participant can race down the slip-n-slide. The other participant should continue guessing until they’ve gotten the correct answer. 
5. The participant who gets to the end of the slip-n-slide first scores one point. The first participant to 15 points wins! 

Tip: This game is great for testing fast math skills, spelling, or vocabulary skills.