Summer holidays are all about fun and frolic. Students look forward to the summer holidays so that they can play all day and catch up with their friends and cousins. However, no matter how much fun the summer breaks are, learning takes a back seat. According to a study, students are likely to score lower on standardised tests after a long holiday break. It is often called the summer learning loss, summer setback, or summer slide. Summer break activities help:
- students to be in touch with the learning process
- encourage students to use their time wisely
- promote self-learning
- offer families an opportunity to bond over a learning experience
The importance of summer break activities cannot be emphasised enough. However, the summer break activities do not mean students have to dig their nose into the books. For 21st century students, summer break activities have to be fun and engaging yet educational. These activities should be more of a self-exploration and learning experience. Here are some summer break activities that are fun and educational:
- Create a board game: Board games are a great way to have fun and learn at the same time. Let students create their own board games. It could be their version of an existing game or they could come with something from scratch. For instance, they can come up with a monopoly game set in their city. This activity involves critical and creative thinking. Not only do kids use their imagination to come up with a game, but they also have to use art and craft to give their imagination a tangible form.
- Make a hand puppet of a fictional character: It can be a tad difficult to get children to read books during summer breaks. However, reading comics and making the hand puppet of their favourite character can be fun.
- Make a summer vacation video: Most children during their summer breaks get opportunities to visit a zoo, amusement park, or a different city. Ask children to make a short video of how they spent their holidays and what they enjoyed the most. For this, ask them to prepare a script and then shoot the film. This way not only will students learn camera handling skills, but they will also develop communication skills, both written and oral. They will also learn filming and editing skills.
- Create a memory book: Children love art and craft and creating a memory book is a great way to have something as a souvenir and to remember all the fun students had. The memory book could be in the form of a write up or a mix of photos and text. Students can even paste tickets to the place they visited, their artwork, and stickers.
- Leaf hunt: A great outdoor activity, leaf hunt can be used for teaching students about plants and trees. Students can pick leaves from different trees, plants and bushes. They can keep the leaves inside a book and leave them to dry. Once dried, leaves can be pasted on a scrapbook. With the help of their parents, they can find out the name of the plant or tree and other information.
- Travel games: Summer is the perfect time when families go for road trips or vacations. Students can do this activity while travelling. They can note down things and objects they are seeing for the first time. This is a great way to promote observational learning.
- Grandparent biography: This is a good activity for older students. They can write a biography of their grandparents or make a short video showing the life of their grandparents. The project could have information about when they were born, what they do for a living and where they studied.
- Know your city: This is an amazing project that students can undertake over the summer. They can collect in-depth information about heritage structures that are there in the city. They can paste photos of places that tourists visit in their city. They can also collect information about the food that their city is famous for.
- Movie reviews: Summer vacations are the perfect time when students catch their favourite shows and movies. Lazy summer afternoons can be turned into interesting by watching movies and after that writing their reviews.
- Make a cooking video: Cooking is one of the most interesting summer vacation activities for students to be active. Ask students to make a short video of themselves cooking and explaining the recipe. This is an ideal assignment for older students and that too under parental supervision.
