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Holiday Boredom Busters Ideas – Outdoors (Part 1)
By Chan Hoi Ki on 09/06/2022
A family trip outdoors is one of the many ways to get the kids out of the house, break the boredom cycle and experience something unfamiliar for the first time.
Even a simple trip to the zoo, aquarium, park, beach and even to an art gallery can be spiced up with additional activities to involve your kids’ thinking & creative processes flowing. Here are some suggestions to have your kids more actively involved in whichever appropriate outdoor venue you’re headed to.
Keeping a nature journal
This activity can be applied to nature hikes or a trip to the beach/zoo/aquariums. You simply need to provide a blank journal/papers and writing/colouring materials to your child.
You may suggest some ideas on how your child will like to fill it up – writing about their key outdoor experiences & feelings, including the weather, date, what new sights they saw etc. Encourage them to sketch something related to the trip, this allows you to view how your child sees the world around him/her. You may also supplement his/her journal with printed photos of your own.
Of course, none of their drawings need to be scientifically accurate and you shouldn’t worry about their spelling either. Just let your kids have fun with their journal and watch how they see the world.
Digging for buried treasure
You can perform this activity if you have a sandpit in your backyard or at the beach. You will require a large tub to contain all the sand containing all the ‘buried treasure’. The ‘treasure’ can be any item – marbles, plastic animals, rocks, seashells. Keep track of the number of each item you have buried in the sandpit prior and have your kids have a go at it. You can offer them a toy shovel and sifter or they can simply use their bare hands to dig in. Let them know how many of each item they should expect to locate in the pit. Once the items are located, you can provide them with a brush to wipe them off.
Once all the items have been located, you can task your child to sort them by any category eg. size, colours.
Alternatively, you can have mock pirate coins labelled with numbers as the buried treasure instead. Once all the coins have been located, you can turn it into an additional mathematical activity by quizzing your children on simple mathematical equations!
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Featured Image Source: University Child Development School
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