EASY Holiday Activities to Keep Your Child’s Brain Active Over Break
The holiday season is a time for relaxation and fun, but it’s also important to keep young minds engaged and active. While it’s tempting to let children indulge in extended screen time or idle play, incorporating some brain-boosting holiday activities can be both enjoyable and beneficial. The holiday season is a busy time already, so here are some things you can involve your kids in without adding to your super long to-do list.
Holiday Activities That Keep Your Kids Actively Thinking and Learning:
Holiday Baking: Involve Kids in Day-to-Day Math & Measurements
The holidays are a season where we spend lots of time in the kitchen! This is a great way to show kids how math applies in real life. Get them involved with using measuring cups or weighing things on scales. Intentionally have them double or halve a recipe to practice work with fractions or volume. You’re probably cooking anyway, so involving your kids and their brains is an easy extension of this activity!
Gift-Giving: Give Your Kids a Budget to Work With
This is another great way to show kids why math matters in real life. Give them a budget to work with for their own gift-giving responsibilities over the season. Help them plan and problem-solve through how much money they can spend on each gift. This not only builds awareness of money, taxes, budgeting, and basic math, but it’s also an exercise in executive functioning skills like planning, prioritizing, and problem-solving.
Family Game Night: Build Processing, Memory, Attention, and More
Games are a great way to activate brain skills outside of school! Family game night is an excellent opportunity to work on things like processing speed, attention, memory, spelling, contextualization, creative thinking, and so much more.
Here are some lists of great games to try with your family this year:
- 5 Family Game Night Favorites to Improve Reading Skills
- 9 Games to Improve Working Memory
- 3 Holiday Brain Games to Challenge Your Memory
- Games that Build Attention Skills
- Build Math Confidence with These Fun Math Games
Read Together Every Day
Consistent reading habits over the holidays is another easy activity that packs a big punch for your child’s cognitive abilities. If you have younger kids, have some special holiday-themed books that ignite excitement about reading together (or independently!)
For independent readers, building in some quiet time where they read every day can help them manage some of the overstimulation that comes in this busy season and practice their skills before school starts back up again.
If you want to get really creative with it, you could create a mini holiday reading challenge where you work as a family to read a certain number of pages or books over your winter break! Then when you meet your goal, you can do something fun to celebrate.
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