Summer days are a great time to play with your child and do special activities together. Setting up a few areas in your home where your child can play independently will allow your child to have fun playing on his own, too—so that you can recharge as well.
There are many creative ideas for boredom busters out there, but the Montessori way takes a slightly different approach to summer boredom. In a Montessori summer vacation, the role of the adult is to prepare the environment, rather than to entertain the child. This means setting up a space filled with simplicity, beauty and interesting things—encouraging independent play and learning.
Here are Montessori-friendly areas you might include in your child’s space to encourage independent play this summer:
Science and nature
Choose a small area of your home to serve as a science and nature center. This could simply be a little table in your child’s room. Include books about plants, animals, geography, and whatever else you notice your child is interested in.
Find a little box or basket to use for a nature collection—where all of those little pebbles and feathers they gather outside can go. When the box is full, it’s time to return some things to nature. Bonus: Include a magnifying glass so they can examine everything.
You can also include things like these fun insect specimens or a selection of magnets for open exploration.
Read more on how outdoor education opens pupils’ eyes to the world, click HERE.
Art
Designate a small shelf or corner for an art area for your child. For a young child, it can be helpful to have each art activity on its own tray.
You might have a tray with oil pastels and black paper, a tray with two or three paint colors, paper, a paintbrush, a water cup, and an apron to protect their clothes. Then a tray with a bowl full or paper scraps, a small container of glue, and some paper.
You can switch out the art supplies throughout the summer as you notice their interest waning.
The first time they choose the activity, give them a lesson, showing each step, including how to clean up and where to put the picture when they’re done. After you’ve shown them how they should be able to choose the activities and do them independently whenever they want.
For bigger kids, you may enjoy this beautiful Spring Frida Kahlo Flower Art ideas, click here.
Story time and language
A well-stocked and cozy book corner is always a wonderful place for a child to spend time.
Click the link HERE you can find some ideas for 10 BEST BEAUTIFUL BOOKS FOR CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OLD.
For a younger child, consider a set of interesting picture cards for building vocabulary. Don’t use them as flashcards to quiz your child, just talk about each one together.
For an older child, include some story writing paper and colored pencils and encourage him to write his own stories as well. If you would like to know, why reading aloud to bigger kids is still so important, just click here to read the article: “All about books”.
Food prep
Many children love preparing food and there are so many fun food prep activities that toddlers and older children can complete by themselves.
Clear off a small shelf or drawer in the kitchen for your child’s kitchen tools and food prep activities so that they can choose what they want. A simple one to start with for young children is peeling an orange. All you need is a small tray with two bowls, one for the orange peel and one for the orange slices.
Other activities include carrot or cucumber slicing using a wavy chopper, egg peeling and slicing, banana peeling and slicing, and cherry pitting.
Older children can do things like make guacamole or bake bread using a toaster oven. If you show your child how to use the tools safely and how to clean up, these are all things that they can do independently.
Also, read about all the process that will make it easy to cook with kids.
LEGO DUPLO and WOODEN BLOCKS
Other areas that you won’t find in a classroom but might want to include at home are pretend play and a building area with various kinds of blocks and Legos. You can really set up a small area for anything your child is interested in.
Read HERE my previous article about unusual uses of LEGO DUPLO: from speech therapy, to learning math! Also, enjoy the free recourses, click HERE to teach your child the first skills to recognize the written numbers.
If you are still interested into how to get 15 minutes’ break for a peaceful coffee only for you this summer, click HERE.
I hope you will enjoy some of activities I have selected for you and your child above, so you can both have a wonderful summer!
All the best,
Joanna
xxx
