With the arrival of June, the beginning of the desired and longed-for summer approaches, and the annual challenge of filling the almost three months of our children's vacations with all kinds of activities is activated: urban or country camps, soccer clinics, days with the grandparents at the beach or in town... But in addition to entertaining them, we can aspire and get them to carry out educational and formative activities with an impact on the family, if we take into account two things: choose them well and prepare them with a little bit of time.
Positive educational experiences at the summer resort
If we stay in our usual home or if we travel (before arriving at the summer resort), we can take the opportunity to look for museums, castles, archaeological sites, churches... and prepare a good explanation for the visit to be enriching and impacting. The key is for adults to soak ourselves in readings, podcasts or videos of people who know the place, to create a story adapted to the characteristics of our children, depending on their age and tastes. There may be several stories if we get together several families with children of different ages, explained by several adults in several groups, if there are no guides.
It is important to generate great expectations and enthusiasm for the visit. For children who like to communicate, and it is connatural to them, we can encourage them to make a video like a youtuber or an audio like a podcaster to send to the family after the explanation. Others can be invited to write a news item for a blog, or a chapter of a homemade book. In any case, when you tell what you have learned, it shows that you know and consolidates what you have learned. Because narrating what you have seen, either in person or through any medium, helps you to memorize, enjoy and learn to communicate properly.
Before this phase arrives in which our children tell what they have learned, there must be a previous phase in which there is an impact on their brains. For two reasons, because of how impressive what we visit is and because of how we expose them to what they are going to see, generating an appropriate context.
Concrete examples
Let's take an example, although it could be any other. In the Gallery of Royal Collections -next to the Royal Palace-, there is a large projection room where you can see a video of the history of the wall of Madrid, at a certain time the inside of a window that is on the side of the room lights up and you can see an authentic piece of the wall, which was found during the construction of the building, this for a child or for someone who wants to learn is something shocking. Not only because you see something authentic in the place where it was built but because there is an explanation that contextualizes it.
In the same place, but in another room, you can see the rich and spectacular rostrillo, crown and halo of the Virgin of Atocha. If, before contemplating this marvel, the parents or grandparents of the child-spectator have told him or her the story of how the priest Merino tried to attack Queen Isabel II near the basilica of Atocha, and how she, unharmed, interpreted what happened as a miracle of the Virgin and donated the jewels she was wearing to create this work of art, then the experience will make more sense. This historical-emotional context will favor a deeper and more lasting learning experience.
All of this learning has to be related to what was learned earlier in school, at home or in other areas. But in any case, summer is a great time to have these experiences.
To get a child to read
Reading is a great way to shape our family, respecting the way of being of each of our children, since reading is an autonomous activity, born from the initiative of each one and carried out individually. But the example of parents and older siblings has a great influence on the beginning and continuity of this intellectual activity in our children. In addition, parents, as role models, can help to program the most appropriate readings for each of their children. Parents are also essential to create the right conditions at home and in the family. Generating an environment of family reading and good readers requires time, advice from good readers, but above all, a real desire for our children to achieve this good hobby.
It may seem somewhat utopian for the times we live in, but whoever sets his mind to it and provides the means to achieve an adequate reading environment at home, how? By adapting a corner or place in the house to make it pleasant to read for a long time, establishing times during the day to read with the family and to achieve silence by turning off the TV, console and tablets,... and to achieve an inner silence that facilitates an environment conducive to reading. But choosing a good book requires having references, literature magazines or websites that suggest books to read, whether they are current, classics of children's literature, classic works adapted by age... but it is something that is not improvised.
There are two fundamental tools to generate good readers and a good environment that invites reading: a visit to an attractive bookstore and to a good library that unleashes the "reading concupiscence".
Going to a large bookstore, with displays that show a great variety of books, with colorful covers and suggestive authors generates the desire to read. Just as a good library invites you to read and enjoy different titles, making it easier to read them thanks to the lending system. A regular visit to the neighborhood library and to the bookstore as a family are highly impactful experiences that leave their mark if they are made in time.
