Trick not only for parents,
how to entertain children
in summer

The holidays are an opportunity to involve the family in preschool education. Pull some ideas out of your sleeve and equip parents with tips for clever summer activities.

Advise parents how they can stimulate their children’s all-round development when the nursery is closed over the summer. If you don’t have time to write anything down, that’s fine. We’ve already put together one of these picks. Just forward it.

Gross motor skills

Children need to run, jump, climb. They have fun and develop their gross motor skills. They learn to coordinate their movements and balance, in short, they improve their overall dexterity. Most of the time you just have to go to the playground or the woods, but you can try:

• Monkey Track

  Set up a monkey track in your apartment or garden. The individual elements can be assembled from what you have at home. There are slalom, table climbing, chair and bench climbing, crawling through a large cardboard box, balancing on a plank or rolling barrels and throwing somersaults on the bed.

• Children’s disciplines

  Keep the kids entertained with classic disciplines you know from your own childhood:

  • jumping rope,
  • jumping in a sack,
  • target throwing,
  • the cones,
  • carrying a ball on a spoon.

• Zigzag path

  Draw a winding path on the pavement with chalk for the children to follow on a scooter, tricycle or bicycle. You can also draw traffic lights, road signs and pedestrian crossings to review the basics of traffic education.

Fine motor skills

Fine motor skills are the smaller movements of the hands and fingers in coordination with the eyes. Without them, children would not be able to serve themselves, draw and later even write. Those who don’t want to string beads can try:

• Drawing on the pavement

  Get out the chalk and have the children draw on the sidewalk in front of the house. They’ll relax their wrists and try different grips as they draw on the large surface. They’ll also create something pretty and colorful.

• Water Battle

  Soak sponges, fill water guns or at least PET bottles with water. A water battle in the hot summer will refresh, squeezing the aforementioned water guns also strengthens the muscles of the hand.

• Common household

  When there’s finally nowhere to rush, allow the kids to help. It takes longer and the result isn’t perfect, but that’s not the point. The goal is to involve the kids in the running of the household, teach them responsibility and casually practice fine motor skills. So go ahead and start wiping, peeling, cutting, screwing, hammering or tying shoelaces.

We explained the benefits of training gross and fine motor skills in the article
Graphomotor skills: how they develop and how to help a preschooler with them.

Language and speech therapy

Talking, listening and understanding is essential. So practice these skills at every opportunity. Talk, imitate sounds, sing songs, play the game Cuba said…, prepare a theatre performance. Include in your repertoire:

• Relaxation exercises

  For correct pronunciation, you need to know how to work with your breath. A wonderful aid is a bubble blower, an inflatable balloon, blowing markers or a boat on the water.

  TIP: You can assemble a boat from paper, cut it out of bark or simply make one. Just rubber band two wine corks together, stick a skewer into the cork for a mast and string a piece of colored paper on top for a sail.

• The robot game

  Play robots. Move jerkily, chop words. By doing the latter with children you are non-violently training auditory perception and breaking words down into syllables.

• Time to read

  Go to the library with your children and let them choose books they like. Then set aside time at home to read together. Rereading is fine in itself, it expands vocabulary. But talking about the story will also help you practice reading comprehension and critical thinking – so make guesses about the plot, put yourself in the characters’ shoes or retell the story from memory.

For more tips, see How to awaken a love of books in children.

Nature and Science

Children are inquisitive, eager to experiment and eager to discover everything for themselves. Support them in this. If they think of science as play and fun, they won’t even notice that they are learning.

• Hide & Seek

  As you walk, invite the children to look around and search for anything you can think of. The possibilities are endless: five types of insects, ten different flowers, something yellow, something smooth, something wooden…

• A balloon rocket

  String a straw on a long string. Stretch the string and tie it at both ends according to the possibilities of your space so that it is taut. Inflate the balloon, hold the mouth to prevent air leakage, and glue the duct tape to the straw. Count off the launch and deflate the balloon rocket.

• Experiments with vinegar and baking soda

  You can repeat this simple chemistry experiment as many times as you like and it will always be a hit. Mixing vinegar and baking soda will create a reaction full of bubbling and hissing. For added effect, you can color the vinegar with food coloring or mix it with a little dishwashing liquid.

For more inspiration, see What STEM activities to try in kindergarten.

Creativity and art

The nice weather directly encourages you to move your creativity outside and try out techniques that would make a mess at home. Just to be safe, though, repeat the mantra that kids are washable.

• Colored bubbles

  Pour the bubble solution into a low container and add food coloring. Make a blower with several straws tied with a rubber band. Dip one end of the blower in the dyed solution and blow colored bubbles onto the paper.

• Pour water into an ice maker and mix a little food coloring of different colors in each well. Cover with foil, carefully cut a slit above each dimple and insert a popsicle stick into the hole. Place in the freezer to freeze. Then remove the ice colors from the creature, let them loosen a little and you can start painting.

• Action painting

  Squeeze the tempera paints into the cups and thin with water. Take a paintbrush, spoon or maybe even a fly swatter, dip into the paint and splash onto the paper.

We also have nice art ideas in the article How to do outdoor learning activities for preschoolers.

We could come up with a lot more, but the article has already swelled.
Still, there’s enough to keep boredom at bay and have a lot of fun with your kids this summer.

15. 6. 2023 | Martina Zatloukalová