Category: Creativity

Holidays bring a mix of feelings for almost everyone. Parents are forced to think of fun things to do at home during holidays to prevent kids from boredom. So, if you’ve been wondering, “What are some fun holiday activities, or how do I entertain my kids on a budget?” you’ll get all your answers right here.

To make the most out of off-days or keep your child busy, below are some holiday activities for kids that will not let you fret!

So scroll down and find new activities for each day.

Holiday activities for kids – First week

Go for Volunteering:

Holidays always give you enough time to indulge in extra yet soulful activities. Volunteering is also one of them. Check if any club or organization is looking for volunteers around you, and push your kids for this mindful activity.

Make Sock Toy:

If your kid’s stuffed toy is no longer as pretty as it should be, try making a new one using spare socks available in your home.

Practice Setting Goals and Completing Them:

This is the healthiest activity. By setting goals and practicing their fulfillment can help kids with their mental strength building.

Invent New Games:

Do you want your kids to practice brainstorming more often? That shouldn’t always have to be academic, right? So try making new games of your own as holiday activities.

Charitable Giving

Have a discussion with your kids about giving.  Decide what you can do as a family to help someone in need or an organization. Everyone can contribute, even very small amounts from young children.  It’s an excellent way to ignite compassion for giving in share in the joy together.

Start Journaling:

Journaling can help your kid in many ways too. For example, being aware of their good and bad deeds or how much fun they had in a particular, all this when written can turn out good. Also, journaling helps in improving writing skills a lot.

Try to be Close to Nature:

You can utilize holidays in a way that makes your kid closer to nature. For example, going for nature walks.

Host Play Date Outside:

Put your backyard to use by hosting a play date. This is another one of the healthy holiday activities that can help your kids maintain a bond with their buddies.

Plan 2^nd week of entertainment for your kids

Attend a Holiday Lightshow:

Christmas might be just around the corner and if you’re not sure what to do exactly, then try exciting and fun-filled Christmas ideas for kids. Attending a holiday light show can be one of them too.

Read Books:

Reading books doesn’t always have to be as boring as it sounds usually. You can use audiobooks, books for kids that come in an interactive form or accompany your kid’s reading session, so he doesn’t feel alone.

Try Verbal Games:

Verbal games come in handy when you’re really busy with important work of your own. With such games, your kid will stay active and practice his vocabulary words while you do your own work.

Bedroom Makeover:

Making changes to your surroundings can be one of the holiday activities too. This will let your kids make changes as they wish as well as stay active.

Visit the Library:

Nothing beats a healthy visit to the library. Push your kids to join book clubs and discuss books after reading them.

Suggest a Science Experiment:

You can discuss with your kid and see what interests him the most in his science subject. Then, you can select an experiment related to it as a holiday activity.

Learn About The World:

Utilize these holidays to increase your kids’ knowledge about the world he lives in. This can also help him develop a positive attitude after knowing the good he has been blessed with.

Keep your child busy in 3^rd week also

Create An Idea Box:

It is perfectly normal to run out of creative ideas sometimes. So to deal with this, you can create an idea box and expand the holiday activities you want to do with your kid.

Write Holiday Stories:

Writing holiday stories can help collect memories in a way that your kid can go through again.

Family Photo Shoot

It is often difficult to get everyone together for a Christmas photo. A child’s first impression of it may be that it’s boring.  So, why not make the family photo shoot a fun activity.  Create a theme and dress up accordingly.

Arrange Slumber Party:

Spend a night with the kids at a slumber party arranged at your own place. Kids always love to try fun ways to spend their nights.

Teach them Baking:

Is your kid a sweet tooth? Then try teaching him baking because he’d definitely love trying and tasting baked items.

Play Board Games:

Playing board games can be a perfect option as one of the holiday activities.

Sketching:

You can also encourage your kid to improve his sketching skills during the holiday break.

Try Music Classes:

Based on the interests of your kids, you can sign up for music classes too. Creativity comes in different shapes, and being good at music is one of them.

Conclusion:

Being mindful of your kid’s positive learning can sometimes feel trickier. But not to worry, because we are constantly surrounded by opportunities waiting for us to explore.

So, hopefully, these holiday activities will keep your kids active, busy, and happy throughout the holiday season.

Looking for ways to engage kids that don’t involve a TV of some kind? Want to entertain your child in a way that is helpful to their growth and development? Brain games for kids are simpler than you think.  Children are growing constantly, and their brains are making new connections all the time.

These easy games can be done almost anywhere and will help your child develop important thought processes for later in life.   Keep reading to learn more!

1. Minesweeper

Minesweeper is a single-player puzzle video game where players clear a rectangular board by revealing cells without hitting hidden mines, using numeric clues to avoid detonation.

It’s excellent for children as it helps develop critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and logical reasoning while providing a challenging and engaging gaming experience.

2. I Spy and Simon Says

These games for children can be more productive than you may realize. Saying “I spy with my little eye something green” and then having your child find the green objects in the room helps with spatial awareness, memory, and language.

Simon Says offers a lot of the same benefits, as well as enhancing attention and a better ability to follow instructions.

3. A Scavenger Hunt

You might not think that a scavenger hunt involves brain training, but by making it a themed scavenger hunt, you can teach them about all kinds of topics. This also helps them with focus and orienting tasks in a certain order of completion. It can be a great game when you need them entertained for a while as well.

4. Building Blocks

Providing your child with blocks or other toys that can be stacked and built upon may seem like a very simple way of keeping a child busy. However, this can help early development of color recognition, coordination, and math skills.

This can be helpful later when your child needs to tackle some easy school projects, and they already have the basic building blocks of construction and crafts.

5. Playing Pretend

While playing pretend may feel like a child’s play, it is filled with brain exercises. Playing pretend or make-believe helps your child with language, emotional skills, social skills, and learning to think on the spot.

They will better understand things in the world and how it works. Try being creative with playing pretend by doing a wide variety of roles.

6. Story Time

This is not just about reading to your child from a book, but giving them the opportunity to tell their own story. Allowing your child to create their own narrative helps with memory, building up language abilities, and confidence in your child’s own imagination.

You can use prompts to get started and take turns making up stories together. This is a great activity for car rides when there isn’t much going on.

7. Puzzles

Puzzles are great for brain training, and you can find puzzles that fit a variety of ages. Whether you’re doing Sudoku, a word puzzle, or an actual puzzle with pieces, your child is learning spatial awareness, fine motor skills, problem-solving and more.

There are also online puzzles for kids who are more interested in playing games online.

8. Game Night

Board games and card games make for great brain exercises. You can do a family game night with everyone, or simply play games when you have the time. Games can help a child learn how to handle frustration, how to plan and coordinate, and problem solve on the spot.

Best Brain Games

Some of the best brain games are simple and easy to learn, but can help your child in innumerable ways. You don’t need lots of fancy gadgets and tech to help your child learn how to succeed in the world.

Often the best games are the ones where you’re having fun and don’t even realize you’re learning. And if this helped you get some good ideas on how to entertain and teach your child at the same time, keep reading for more great tips and tricks.

Children today are not as fascinated by things we older generations once enjoyed so much. Back when we were kids, we loved drawing with color pencils and crayons. Coloring books were common and we would also scribble or color anywhere we could express our imagination. But all is not lost!

Today, free coloring pages for kids make it easy for anyone of any age to find printable drawings of anything imaginable. It’s true children today are not as fascinated by things older generations once enjoyed so much. It’s unfortunate that many kids now don’t find coloring books enjoyable.

There are some good reasons for this—and yes, I am talking about the internet, smartphones, and tablets. These fantastic inventions have robbed today’s kids of some of the simple pleasures in life. They are often more interested in playing video games on a computer or smartphone, instead of drawing or coloring something using markers or crayons.

However, just because kids like their smartphones and tablets doesn’t mean they wouldn’t love to draw or color. They simply need to be introduced to how fun it can be. For example, if you likes coloring animals, there are hundreds of animal coloring pages to choose from. It may be on a long car trip or at home when parents want to limit screen time. Instead of just saying “no more time on the computer”, why not provide them a fun activity as an alternative?

Online Coloring Pages

Thanks to the internet, children today have a whole new world to explore that will evoke their passion for coloring and drawing. This is something kids a generation ago were not able to experience. Professional artists are now drawing and coloring cartoons, animals, game characters, animations, and much more using highly-sophisticated computer software.

These artists also are sharing their creations on websites for everyone to enjoy. The tools and formats used by them are only available for adults with full-fledged careers. But, there are ‘kids versions’ for these tools, and children can use them to draw and color objects.

When searching for tech-free fun things to do for kids to reduce screen time, there are plenty of websites for kids to draw online with and easy-to-follow instructions to animate their drawings. Simply Google “online coloring pages” and you’ll find websites that are designed for kids to color digitally on the screen. Still, these interactive coloring pages where kids can create using the site’s tools are not the same as finding an image and printing it to color with real crayons.

Coloring Page Communities

Whether the artwork is online for virtual coloring using software or you access printable drawings, many of these coloring pages are created by the artistic community. It’s a way for them to share their art and provide fun for kids without having to publish a coloring book. The great thing about this is that parents and teachers only need to print the specific drawings that kids want to color. It’s a great way for them to explore their artist skills and decide if they some day want to join the artistic community as they grow older.

Simply introducing all the coloring page ideas of what to color could inspire someone to try coloring. Discover drawings such as Athletes, Birds, Cars, Color by number, Dinosaurs, Disney, Educational, Flags of countries and LEGO. Or try Motorcycles, My Little Pony, Princesses, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Superman, Vegetables and Winnie the Pooh. The sky is the limit for what kids can color.

Coloring as also been known to be very therapeutic for kids and adults alike to help with anxiety or stress. Or just to have fun doing something they haven’t experienced since childhood. There are printable drawings available that have been created just for adults or teens. These coloring pages require a finer attention to detail. What a great reactivity to do together as a family.

Inspiring Artistic Creativity

While old-school coloring books may be a thing of the past for most children of our generation, they are one of the best ways to inspire kids and reignite their inner passion for drawing and coloring.

Introducing kids to free coloring pages can have a profound effect on children to encourage them in highlighting their creative side. It may inspire them create their own drawings to color.

It will allow them the freedom to make mistakes and improve their motor skills, thanks to the ability to reprint images and color them a second time. And it’s super easy pin their creations on a fridge without having to rip each page out of a coloring book.

Author Bio

Paul B. Wright has over five years of experience in the field of drawing. He specializes in drawing coloring pages that are printable for kids. It’s is Paul’s desire that children of all ages will will discover and grow in their true creative talents.

Share this article on free printable coloring pages with your friends and family!

Why is music important? Music is amongst the few universal and eternal pleasures of life. Playing a musical instrument or singing is a delightful, meditative, and rejuvenating experience. Apart from the sheer joy of it, there is a great importance of music training in other aspects of life.

Here are the top 13 significant benefits of learning music, no matter your age or level of musical  proficiency.

1. Improves Intellect & Memory Power

You need to recognize different lyrics, tones, and sounds. Thus, in the process of learning music, you enhance your reasoning skills, phonetics, and knowledge of the language. Learning all this new information and remembering them naturally sharpens your memory and intellect.

2. Enhances Problem-solving & Mathematics

There is an intelligence called spatial intelligence, which is responsible for the recognition and arrangement of stuff. During music training, you need to arrange various elements together. The tune, lyrics, and musical notes all need to align with each other. You can choose to learn music to sharpen your math skills.

3. Makes You Result-oriented

When you sign up for the music training, you commit yourself to focus, organizing, and memorizing the technicalities to perfection. The cluster of these qualities and some other qualities are known as executive functions. It becomes your second nature by the end of your training.

4. Increases Confidence & Self-worth

Both learning and performing music are meditative and enlightening experiences. You get the opportunity to express yourself in front of other people. It increases your confidence. Being proficient in music gives you a feeling of self-worth. You value yourself more as a learned musician who is different from the crowd.

5. Boosts Emotional Intelligence

Performing arts like music gives an opportunity to see life from other people’s points of view. When you learn music, you become more empathetic, sensitive, and more understanding, and sensitive towards others.

6. Develops Creativity & Imagination Power

Every art form compels you to create with your imagination. The same is the case with music. You develop your ability to think beyond the realities in front of you. Your problem-solving techniques become more innovative and experimental.

7. The Ability to Write Songs

Journaling, writing in a diary, or writing poetry is a away many people work out their thoughts and express themselves.  Learning music with the added ability to play an instrument opens up a world of expression through song writing.  It may become a lifelong passion or even lead to career as a performer.

8. Teaches the Value of Discipline

Increased discipline & persistence is one of the major benefits of music learning, especially for kids. They become more aware of the importance of attending lessons and practicing. It takes time to master the art of music. When you patiently wait to grasp the correct note and tune, it leads to increase in your persistence.

9. Helps in Achieving Academic Success

Contrary to the popular belief that learning music will distract students from their academics, various studies proved that it improves their test marks. We have already alluded to the close correlation between music and mathematics.   It also has many other benefits for students that help them improve in school and colleges. It will encourage more parents to let their kids pursue music.

10. Trains You in Team Work

Musicians and singers need to sync in to create a performance. When you are training for music, you develop the skills of coordination, communication, and comprehension. It is perfect for kids if they get this kind of exposure from an early age.

11. Enhances Social Skills

The importance of learning music is not limited to the art form only. It teaches you social skills. In a music class, you need to interact with other students. Especially kids play and learn in the same group. Their improved social skills enable them to thrive in social situations instead of getting social anxiety.

12. Expands Your Knowledge about Different Cultures

Music crosses the boundaries of cities, countries, continents, and cultures. A kid or adult interested in music becomes aware of different cultural norms around the globe. They get to know everything, from the Bagpipes of Scotland to the Tabla of India.

13. Sharpens Listening Skills

One of the underrated benefits of music training is it improves your auditory attention. You can differentiate amongst various sounds. And can choose to concentrate on whatever sound is essential for you to listen to.

14. Provides Stress Relief

Many studies proved the relaxing and soothing effect of music. Learning music can give you a nice getaway from other stressful parts of your daily life. It can be your daily vacation for a few hours away from your studies or professional engagements.

Author Bio
Reema Krishnan is a content creator at Acharyanet platform for Carnatic music learners where they can learn music from gurus through 400+ video lessons. Being a music enthusiast and a history buff herself, she is able to provide value for her readers and her content is well-received by musicians, music lovers, and music learners of all ages and at all stages. She loves to volunteer with music therapy groups and bakes up a storm in her free time.