Keep your child learning over summer

The summer holidays are now in full swing and we're sure children across the country are enjoying some well-deserved fun, filling their days with bike rides in the park, family trips and playdates with friends. This downtime is certainly crucial to help children rejuvenate and relax after a busy school year yet, as the break continues, it is important to start reintroducing a bit of mental stimulation and routine into their days.

This is because having long breaks from school and study means children can sometimes require extra support to get back into the routine of daily work and they may be out of practice when the new school year comes around. Ensuring they continue educational activity over the summer can mean they are confident, equipped, and ready to tackle new topics when they go back to school.

We've collected a few ways you can encourage your child's learning over the summer holidays, without them even realising:

Keep a summer diary
Free-form writing helps a child build vocabulary, develop their thought processes and learn to articulate how they feel. They can record what they get up to each day, people they meet and anything new they've learnt. The diary will also be a nice keepsake for them, full of memories.

Write postcards to friends and family
If you are going away, you could suggest they write postcards to send to those back home, detailing their adventures. This means they are continuing to practise their writing, spelling and grammar.

Take educational trips
Visit a museum, the zoo or take a nature walk; all low-cost ways for children to have fun while learning. Visit your local city website or community library to learn what's going on in your area in the coming weeks. You can make these experiences even more enriching by setting them tasks to do whilst there, like a scavenger hunt across a museum.

Reading
Your child should maintain their reading habits over the summer. It is a great activity to engage your child's attention and help them relax. Try and set some reading goals with your child so they have something to aim for. If you are planning to go to the cinema to see a film adaptation of a popular book, why not encourage your child to read the book before you go? You can then discuss afterwards the ways in which the book has been interpreted into film.

Budgeting their pocket money
We use our maths skills every day in the simplest of tasks, from counting change to time-keeping. Encourage your child to take charge of their own pocket money; they can budget it and allocate funds for upcoming activities that week.

Board games
Board games like Scrabble and Ticket to Ride are both fun and educational. They will come in particularly handy on those rainy days by providing hours of mentally stimulating entertainment, as well as a bit of healthy competition.

Get creative
You can encourage your child to use their creativity and knowledge to build projects from common household materials. In doing so they will learn new skills, practise existing ones, and at the end, have something to be proud of.

Students on the Kumon Maths and English Programmes are continuing their daily study throughout the summer holidays, keeping their brains alert and active. Each day they are reinforcing the vital learning and study skills which will help get their new school year off to a flying start.

Learning is like exercise: once you take a break from it, it can be harder to get back on track. So, keep your child's learning on track by ensuring the remainder of their summer holidays is full of learning as well as laughter.