Summer Activities: Shoebox Of Fun
Posted: Monday, May 12, 2008
by Stephany Springer
School is almost out and summer is on its way. Prepare now to keep your child's brain thinking during the summer. What better way to keep your child actively learning than to fill a shoebox full of fun activities!
Here are just a few ideas for the shoebox of fun.
Math
There are several games that will fit into the shoebox designed to keep their math skills up during the summer months. Place the following materials in the box: playing cards excluding the aces and picture cards, slips of paper with plus, and minus signs. Kids can work on their addition, subtraction and multiplication skills. Teach your child how to make number sentences out of the cards. For instance: 6+2=8. Then allow your child to flip it to make a subtraction. Kids can also draw two cards and multiply the numbers together.
Writing is an essential quality for kids to be able to process. It is a high-level thinking skill that will help your kid tremendously in school. There are several activities to get them thinking about writing and producing an end product. Fill the shoebox with pages pulled from old travel magazines, scissors, glue, writing paper and pencils or cutesy pens. Your child can choose a picture and glue it to the writing paper. He then can write a story about an adventure he had at that tourist spot. He can make up new tourist spots as well. Kids can also pull words from the magazines stories to cut and glue a new sentence or story. It is fun to watch their imaginations begin to church out stories.
Reading
Place some easy readers or letters of love from you to your child. Make sure you pick subjects that your child is interested in. You can also place a coupon for a book read aloud to them, if your child is younger and still likes the cuddle up with you and a good book. Place paper lunch bags in the shoebox with some craft eyes and string. Allow your child to make a puppet based on one of the characters of the book.
Word Making
Place two sets of magnetic alphabet letters in the box (these can be bought at the dollar store). Make up a word using the letters, then let your child see how many words he can create from the original word. Ask your child to make theme words for different days. In July ask for words that remind us of the holiday. Or ask for words that have to do with being cold such as ice or winter. Words that remind us of summer is also a suggestion. Be as creative as you want to be. Let your child make up nonsense words.
Get working now on the shoebox and store it some place central in the house. When the summer days get long, you have a fun resource at your fingertips.
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