Fun Indoor & Outdoor Play: Summer Break Ideas

When Summer Break roll around, the children are home!  What to do now?  Well, let them play of course!  The best way for children to learn the concepts, skills, and tasks needed to set a solid foundation later for school and life success is through play.  Play is not a task that needs to be taught, rather encouraged.  So encourage your children to play!  Play activities can be performed both inside and out, it just depends on the tools in hand and by tools I mean toys and their surroundings.

Indoor Play Activities
•    Role Playing/Pretend Play is the perfect way to let your child’s creativity and imagination grow!  Pretend play encourages children in social skills, language and vocabulary development.  Provide your child with sheets, blankets, or costumes and let them create an entire world.  
•    Board Games are a great way to get the entire family involved and can also be the perfect quite indoor activity.  There are many different versions of games, my favorite are the Melissa & Doug wooden no lose piece games, such as the Flip to Win Memory Game, Bingo, and Hangman.  These games are also great for traveling because the pieces are all attached!
•    Puzzles provide children will problem solving skills, abstract reasoning, and shape recognition.  There are many different types of puzzles available now from chunky puzzles for small little hands or sound puzzles great for helping preschoolers learn the alphabet and numbers.
•    Arts & Crafts allow children to express creativity, emotional expression, and develop fine-motor skills.  Using Triangular Crayons like the one’s created by Melissa & Doug will help your grasp the crayon correctly developing the preferred grip for later writing skills.  Having different materials such as construction paper, scissors, glue, glitter, stickers, and buttons always available will encourage your child to explore there creative side.

Outdoor Play Activities
•    Going to the Park/Lake is a great family outing event.  Taking a picnic to a park or lake can help with family bonding time away from the house and the technology that distracts us.  Kids can bring their own picnic basket.  Fishing is also a great family activity and great for developing fine motor skills, while learning about different types of fish.
•    Going on Nature Walks will teach your child about the environment and everything that surrounds them.  Taking care of the Earth we were given is a very important lesson that children will enjoy learning about.  Learning about different types of birds, animals, insects, trees, and flowers will help your child feel more compassionate about protecting our environment.
•    Growing a Garden of flowers, vegetables, or herbs will bring nature to your own back yard.  Let your child help you clean, plant, and grow their garden.  It will make them feel that they contributed and will make it their own.  Growing your own vegetable or herb garden will provide your family with fresh food everyday in your own backyard.  If you can’t grow your own garden you can always visit one.  Visiting your local farmers market, strawberry farm, and orange grove will not only teach your child about other living things, but you will also be supporting local farmers.
•    Sports/Playing Outside will provide your child with physical activity.  Playing outside not only makes children healthier, there are a number of other benefits to a child's growth and development provided by outdoor play.  Allowing your child to join a sports team will also allow them to learn about team work, but your child does not have to be in a team to enjoy outdoor play.  Simply by taking a ball outside and kicking it around your child is participating in outdoor play and physical activity.  
Children need to be given the opportunity to play, so whether you are inside or outside during your Spring or Summer Breaks remember that play is essential to development for your child because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, emotional well-being, and it also maintains strong parent-child relationship.
"Knowledge arises neither from objects nor the child, but from interactions between the child and those objects." - Jean Piaget