Spring Break is a wonderful holiday to enjoy lazy mornings and the warm weather outside, but that also means young energetic kindergartner is running around the house looking to you for guidance on what do in their new found spare time during the Spring Break holiday. As a mom you want your kids to rest, relax, and recharge, but you don’t want your kindergartner’s academic skills to diminish while they are on Spring Break, so in between all the video game playing, running outside, and bubble blowing sneak in these five fun educational activities for your kindergartener:
Paint a Piggy Bank
You can purchase a blank piggy bank at any craft store for this fun educational activity. Let your kindergartner go wild painting the piggy bank with fun spring colors. After the piggy bank dries give your kindergartner a few coins to start their collection, the catch is that your kindergartner has to sort and count their new money before they can insert their money into the piggy bank. This fun little educational activity will help your kindergartner hone their observations skills so they can identify similarities and differences between objects and identify coins.
Make a Story Board
This is a fun two-part activity that spans over two days. On day one, let your kindergartener dictate a story about Spring Break or another holiday to you while you write down their creation. Then, break the story down into three to five steps. Write each step down on a piece of paper. Next, have your kindergartner illustrate each step in the story. Finally, on day two mix up the illustrated story and have your kindergartner put the story back in sequence. This fun educational Spring Break activity will help your child think creatively and will help them understand how events unfold as a sequence of events and it will be helpful with creative writing.
Have a Shape Hunt
Choose a shape and have your kindergartner find and place objects of your chosen shape into a box. Let your kindergartner arrange the items in the box to make a three-dimensional collage. This is a fun educational activity can be done outside if the weather is nice during your Spring Break holiday; plus your child will be learning to identify shapes in a complex environment during the long holiday break.
Make Playdough Letters
First, let your child roll the playdough into a long snake. Then, have your kindergartner cut the playdough into equal length sticks about two inches long. Finally, have your kindergartner shape the playdough into letter shapes. Rolling the playdough will help your kindergartner’s fine motor skills which will help their handwriting and make letter shapes reinforces the identification of letters, so there will be no regression of letter recognition during the long Spring Break holiday with this fun educational activity.
Make a Cookie of the United States
Using any basic rolled sugar cookie recipe cut out the shape of the United States either freehand or with a cookie cutter. Using sprinkles and colored sugar let your kindergartner decorate the cookie. Have them identify on the cookie where they live. Place a large decorative sprinkle on that location. Identify other places of interest such as where grandparents live or the location of a family vacation.
This delicious and educational activity will help your child understand where they live in the United States. Additionally, this activity can be used as a springboard to discuss the difference between country, state, and city.
To your kindergartener, most of these activities will feel like structured playtime while on Spring Break, but you can step back and smile as the learning continues during Spring Break with these educational activities.