Summer is a cataclysmic change for many families.  Kids go from being busy with school and homework and activities to suddenly having a bunch of free time and complaining they are bored.  In the meantime, parents still need to go to work and have more tasks than ever as the outside needs cared for as much as the inside.

So how can you keep your kids learning, active and engaged once they are out of school?

This is going to depend on the age of your kids first and foremost.  But here are some great ideas.

1.      Chores – Once upon a time kids did chores.  Put in a garden and ask them to weed and water it every day.  Same with the flower beds.  Kids any age can do this.  The little kids will think it is fun in most cases.

2.      Camps – There are two kinds of camps which are great for keeping kids active in the summer.  One is sports camps where kids get introduced to a sport or sharpen their skill in a sport. 

3.      The second type of camp is more academic.  More and more places run computer camps, robotics camps, coding camps, etc.  These can teach your kids valuable skills that the schools more traditional curriculum is most likely not covering enough.

4.      Want to save money on those camps?  You can ditch the group activity and buy online courses and get your kids to learn via the computer.  Udemy is one such place where for as little as $10 you can get an online course that will teach programming, game design or many other types of skills.

5.      Summer sports – some sports are played in the summer but not run by the school system.  One example is tennis, which has USTA events year-round where you do tournaments on the weekends and find people to practice with during the week.  If your child cares about being good, they need to practice regularly in the sport.

6.      Summer Jobs – Is your child 16 or older?  Get them out to find a summer job.  Kids need some exposure to working because it helps with being more responsible as well as having more appreciation for work and workers later on when they are older.  Many seasonal businesses will be looking for young people to work in the summer.

7.      Summer projects – decide on a project your family is going to do this summer and work on it regularly, making sure the kids have a lot of the responsibility.  Maybe it is cleaning the basement, or it might be building a shed or a picnic table.

These are just some ideas for you to keep those kids engaged, busy and learning throughout the summer months.

People have always wondered if intelligence is inherited or something that we adapt and polish with time! As a kid my mum made me do a lot of mental math, spatial learning exercises, and many more similar activities. She aimed to boost my intelligence, though I was never sure how effective they were. One thing is for sure,  I am able to think on my feet and multitask well.

Now growing up and become a mother to a four-year-old, I adopted the same practices, but in my opinion, the results were not like the ones I was expecting. I started dreading that maybe my child is a slow learner! This led me to research and read up a lot just to clear my doubts about the kind of learner my daughter was. I came across some really interesting facts.

• There are no slow learners in reality! (surprised?)
• Every brain is equally gifted. Though the gifts may differ.
• Our circumstances and environment play a crucial role.
• Inherent qualities do exist, but again it’s our environmental setup that impacts the actual growth.

Tips and Exercises to boost our Intelligence

Through my research, I understood one thing, there are no slow learners. Each brain has its capabilities and how much we utilize or make the child utilize the brain gives us the actual level of intelligence. The genetics do come into play but they only have around 15% impact, the rest can all be honed.

The methods that can be employed are simple yet scientifically backed, and they can help in making our children able to use a larger part of their brains.

1.    Work on their concentration span.

Children have a very short span of attention. They need to learn to focus. Children who have better attention spans have better working memories. An age old trick of staring at a single spot on the wall can be helpful in increasing the attention span. Also, doing activities and playing games that help in improving memory can help the working the memory and this also helps them perform better in class and makes them confident.

2.    Make your child sleep better.

Today, the problem that we face with our children is their lack of sleep. They are exposed to a lot of gadgets throughout the day. Their bodies absorb light from these gadgets, and their biological clock informs them that their body system should wait for few more hours before shutting down. This way they stay awake for a long time and never get the required sleep hours. When a child has rested enough, his brain is fresh to absorb newer concepts and ideas.

3.    Encourage your child.

Boosting your child’s morale will help your child become confident and encouraged to try newer things. But make sure you don’t go overboard as it can instil a sense of superiority and overconfidence in a child. Also, praise things they worked on, not things that came easily.  A confident child is bound to try newer things and explore. The experiences help broaden the mind. Never snub or discourage your child in public. It shatters their self-confidence as they feel humiliated in front of their peers. This makes them clam-up and shut their minds.

4.    Talk to your child.

This is very important! All the efforts that you are making on your full time or  part time job is to make sure that your child has a great future. But what is the point when you are not able to give them time? A neglected child will ultimately wallow in his loneliness and become miserable. Give your child time. Discuss things with them and listen to their opinions and views and then guide them to the right and wrong. When you discuss their curiosity with them, you are expanding the horizons for them.  If you wait until they are older, it may be too late as they are already used to not sharing things with you.

5.    Challenge your child.

It is important that you allow your child to solve his problems, but keep a watchful eye. For example, if a ball rolls down under the bed, instead of you retrieving it, allow your child to do it himself/herself. They will learn to solve their problems and devise solutions that can help them resolve problems on their own.

My Experience

I started with making a proper sleep routine for my daughter, and gradually I noticed things falling into place. By empowering her to make decisions herself, she started feeling more confident. A happy child is a successful child; this is the mantra as parents we should be understanding. But surely we should keep in mind that fulfilling all whims is not the key; we should try to make them happier by giving love and support.

I bet you have not thought of all these  five different ways to do really fun things with your family without spending money. We all like to go and spend money at the movies or in restaurants but you can’t do that every day and be fiscally responsible. Especially when you have small kids, you need to be planning ahead for college, for the car when they are a teenager, and all the other expenses that will come up with raising kids.

Number one is obvious. Going to local parks when the weather is nice is an easy way to get out and have a lot of fun with your kids. As the runaround on playgrounds they’re getting more fit and having a good time and likely making friends. If your kids are little bit older you can still pull this off by taking a frisbee, hacky sack or a soccer ball to the field and working on physical skills with them.

Number two is often overlooked. It is going to all the fantastic free events near where you live that you are probably not even aware of. Colleges, high schools, middle schools and churches have a events all the time open to the public and free of charge or sometimes they charge a small fee. This could be music, dance performances, theater, or other group activities or performances. Many colleges require students to do performances for their classes and these are often available for free.  And having young kids start making noise in a free middle school performance is not as embarrassing as having them throw a fit at the symphony.

Another idea few people bother to do is organize in their own clinic around a sport or activity. For example, your child might like tennis but there are no tennis camps. If you can find a few other families interested in tennis then you can organize a weekly tennis get together and work on your skills. You don’t have to be a coach to develop basic skills and practice. This could be for any sport or other kinds of group activities. You could organize a Spanish club, hiking club, art club or a coding in group. And if you are organizing, this could actually make some money for you if you charge a small fee to the other participants.

But if you don’t want to organize events like this you can also depend on your local library to have many things that are free and open to the public and great to do as a family. I know locally you can go see movies at the library on certain nights as well as go to art classes, story time, and book groups. I’ve never seen any of these things cost any money.

Lastly a great way to get out and have some fun and not spend any money is to go on a nature walk or a hike. But to make it more interesting for kids consider making a treasure hunt.  Decide what things you’re going to hunt for and mark them off the list or take pictures of them when you see them. They could be things like the bluebird or an acorn or are yellow car.

By making a treasure hunt it becomes far more interesting and it  can even become competitive. This is not much different from the old travel bingo games people used  to keep the kids entertained in the car before iPads and entertainment systems.

These are just some of the ideas you can do to get out and have fun and not spend any money while entertaining your kids getting exercise or developing a skill. It doesn’t matter where you live because things like this are going to be available in your area. These are just  common things in most communities. The key is the call around and find out what’s going on and talk to people and find all these great things available to you. Now get out there and enjoy them.