Keeping Kids Motivated over the Holidays
Here's how to keep your kids motivated over the holiday break. Get ready to do some planning!
School’s out for the holidays and the kids are home for two full weeks. This can go one of two ways: you are either the type of parent that counts down the days until school’s out and the kids are home or the type of parent that dreads this time off because you just aren’t sure how to keep your kids busy and motivated over the break. As a Learning Specialist, I always try to find ways to keep kids learning without them really knowing it. The secret here is to give them fun and motivating activities to do that incorporate goals and skills they are working on in school. Go ahead and create a calendar for yourself to plan out different activities, spacing them throughout the holidays. Here are five great activities that you can try out. Each of these activities can be tailored to suit any child’s age and abilities.
- Baking– Pull out that favourite cookbook of yours or go online with your kids and find a recipe that seems to be a crowd pleaser. Not only is baking a fun activity for the family, it incorporates a bunch of different learning skills across different curriculum areas. Baking integrates math (measuring ingredients), decoding and reading comprehension (reading and understanding the recipe), skills for following directions (following instructions) and health and safety concepts. If you have kids that are not reading yet, you can find many resources that have visual recipes instead of written recipes. The best part about this activity is that you end up with something really yummy in the end!
- Find A New Hobby– Sit down with your kids and brainstorm a list of hobbies that are not currently a part of your daily life. The holidays are a great time to try something new! These hobbies can range from crafting, playing sports, scrapbooking, cooking, photography, board games, DIY projects, gardening, card games, painting, yoga and the list goes on…. Challenge yourself and your kids to dive into a new hobby that is likely out of your comfort zone. Picking up a new hobby means learning new skills. What better way to keep your kids motivated while learning at the same time?
- Library Scavenger Hunt- When’s the last time you were at the library? A lot of families might not frequent the library as much as they used to in the past now that reading resources are so easily accessible online. The library is a wonderful place for tactile learning experiences. Why not take advantage of this and send your kiddies off on a scavenger hunt throughout the library? Start off by creating a list of things for them to search for in different books. I would advise creating a list that is broken down by people, places and things. For example, on your people list might be a princess, a dog, a mother and a baby. On your places list might be a farm, a school, a park and a shopping mall. Lastly, on your things list might be a bicycle, a sandbox and a tree. Once again, if your kids are at the stage where they are not reading yet, you can create a visual list for them by finding images online and pasting them into a word processing document. Print it off and you are ready to go! The person that find the most items from the list in a given amount of time wins a prize.
- Make a Movie or Documentary- Nowadays kids seem to be quite motivated by technology. There is a lot of great value that technology brings to the world of education and learning. The best part about this is that there’s a lot of technology out there that makes it easy for kids to participate. This activity is great because you can stretch it over a few days. Have your kids create a script. You can provide them with guidelines for the script based on the writing skills they are working on in school. If they are too young to be physically writing stories, have them create them orally and jot them down as they share them with you. Give them the option to exercise their imagination by either writing a non-fiction story or a documentary. Once they have written the story, they can put together their cast and sets and get filming. Filming can be done on any smartphone, tablet or a good old video camcorder. Once they have created their masterpiece, it’s time to call in the troops for the big screening. Pop some popcorn and sit back as your kids present their feature film. You are guaranteed to have very happy and proud kiddos once they complete this project.
- Be a Tourist- One last activity that I highly recommend trying out is being a tourist in your own city. As parents, our lives are often so busy with day-to-day stuff that we sometimes don’t get much opportunity to burst out of our bubble. Touring your own city can provide a great geography and history lesson for your kids. Do a walking city tour, visit historical sites, get on the ‘hop-on, hop-off bus’ (if your city offers one). Check out a local museum, art gallery or science center. If you live in a multicultural city, you can consider visiting different restaurants or markets that represent those different cultures in your city. Go online and see if your city is hosting any special events for the holiday season that are family friendly. If you live in a very small city or town, you can always consider a road trip to a neighbouring city. Don’t forget to bring your camera!
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Motivating the Unmotivated
How do YOU motivate a learner who is completely unmotivated? Here is a great strategy that can reduce your frustration when you just can't get a student to respond.
One of the best parts about being an educator is that you also get to be a student. Student learns from Teacher and Teacher learns from Student. It's a wonderful symbiotic relationship. I find myself learning from my students and clients all the time. This is not limited to all the typical learners out there. The same holds true for all my students and clients with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, executive functioning challenges, poor self regulation skills, motor planning issues, and the list goes on....
One of the biggest challenges as an educator who works with students with different exceptionalities, is trying to find ways to motivate the student to learn. There is no doubt that motivation is the key to successful teaching and learning. So... how do you do this with with a student who is labelled as "gifted" but has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), an anxiety disorder, extremely poor fine motor skills and very weak coping skills- all at the same time??? Sounds like a recipe for disaster (especially when his History assignment is due in 2 days). My approach to this is to identify the student's strengths and use them to boost the weaknesses. In this case- this particular student is very intelligent, has strong verbal skills, and loves technology. It just so happens his teacher has the class using Google Docs to produce and organize assignments. BINGO! Smart smart Teacher! He followed the classroom structure of doing his work on the computer in Google Docs- however had the brilliant idea to open his Google Drive app on his iPhone and use the microphone to dictate his thoughts, which we watched get automatically typed on the computer screen in front of us. By the end of our one hour session- his assignment was just about complete and he felt accomplished! I found ways to motivate him by tapping into his interests (technology), reduced the fine motor demand (no handwriting or typing), maximized his verbal skills (dictating), and kept him on task (because he was motivated). What a success! Here's the strategy we used- I hope it's useful to help you #educate #motivate and #accelerate your students!
-Cori
Once signed into your student's Google account on the computer- open up the Google Drive and create a new Google Doc (give it a good title). Once this is done open up your Google Drive app on your mobile device and find the new doc. you just created-open it up!
On your mobile device, pull up your keyboard and press the microphone button- start dictating those awesome thoughts and ideas. Make sure your student talks sloooow and clear. You should see those brilliant words appear on your mobile screen. After each sentence or 2- hit 'done' and they will appear on your computer screen.
The beauty of this is you don't have to remember to 'save' your document because Google does this for you automatically every few seconds. Tada! You did it!
If you want any further information on the strategies mentioned above, please don't hesitate to be in touch. I love sharing the goods! Looking forward to hearing from you.