A child’s mind is always curious about how things work. Children take every opportunity to expound and find answers to their questions by exploring more.
Summertime is meant for breaks, but as your child is always learning, you can take the initiative to incorporate some fun activities that will stimulate your child’s intellect and creativity.
Listed below are some activities that will stimulate and inspire creativity in your child.
1. Set Up a Backyard Obstacle Course
As a parent, you can build an obstacle course in your backyard, which you can invite your kid and their friends to solve. This will keep your kids busy all summer as they try to solve the puzzle, pushing them to think of new ways to solve the problem. This also helps keep your child’s mind active and boosts thinking. These activities may involve using old tires, hoses, jumping ropes, and stones just as long as they are safe for your child.
To make these obstacles more fun and competitive, you can introduce rewards to the one who completes the task first. Just be sure to have consolation prizes for the other children as a way to praise them for their efforts and prevent discouragement.
2. Practice Art in the Backyard
Art is the ultimate way to stimulate creativity for your child, no matter what age. This can be interesting and act as a bonding activity as you guide your child through it. Summertime is the best time for this as the sun is out, making it easier to dry wet paints.
To make this more enticing for your kid, you can hang up some of their paintings in the house to show appreciation for their efforts.
3. Be Creative with the Toys
If you are working during summer or cannot spend time with your child, worry less as you can make up for it by choosing toys that will keep your child occupied in your absence. These toys include building things up or mounting the parts provided to create a complete toy.
Such toys include building blocks, Circuit Cubes, and puzzle pieces, all of which require your child to widen their thinking to complete the different tasks.
Besides, these toys help boost your child’s imagination while playing with them.
4. Do Camping Activities
You do not have to necessarily go into the woods as camping activities can be done in your backyard.
You can buy tents and recruit your kids to help you set them up. Successful tent installation will require multiple trials, especially since it’s a new activity for your kid; however, if you walk them through the steps and praise them along the way, your kids will feel a sense of accomplishment.
You can also include activities like making s’mores over an outdoor fire and have your child take part in these activities. Just make sure to exercise extreme caution so that no one gets burned or gets an injury. Nonetheless, you can set up a s’mores bar and allow your children to construct their own s’mores sandwiches with all the fixings.
Other camping activities include telling stories around the fire. Each person can make up a story and take turns telling it. This will definitely stimulate your child’s creativity.
5. Paint the Walls
If your kid has been complaining about the color of their bedroom wall for a while, or you feel like it’s time for a change, summertime is the best time to re-paint. Buy the paints and let your kid do the finishing touches by drawing flowers or patterns they may deem fit and interesting on the wall. Your child will be well-pleased with the creations they paint on their bedroom walls.
6. Cook with Your Child
Summers are the best times to bond with your kids, and what better time to bond than when passing down the family recipe?
As you teach your child how to make different dishes, you are equipping them with culinary skills, and in the process, they may ask questions, “feeding” their curiosity.
You can make this more interesting if you are baking by cutting dough into different shapes and asking your child to do the same, boosting their creativity.
In Summary
Creativity is a skill that will greatly benefit your child in life. Inspire and stimulate creativity in them by doing the above six activities this summer.