With Easter rapidly descending upon us all, it’s time to start thinking of new and creative ways to spend time with children. Every vacation requires some kind of creative activities to keep the kids (and adults!) Entertained, and Easter is one of those fun vacations where the weather can be great and you can spend your days in parks and on days familiar, but then it could also rain and get miserable for two weeks and you find yourself struggling to find fun things to do indoors. It is always complicated.
There are many activity books on the market intended to keep children entertained on bad weather days, on long car trips, or on trips to visit friends and family. These books are great, often colorful and task oriented, they provide a real focus for children. However, they are also generic and often repetitive in terms of content and the activities they suggest are completed. Homemade activity books that are tailored for each child are so much better!
Creating your own activity books for your children is a wonderful way to ensure that all of the activities in the book appeal to your specific children. It is also a fun way to stretch your own creative muscles, something that is very important in adult life and is often lost in the mundane routines of housework, school life, work life, and family responsibilities. When creating your own children’s activity book, there is also the opportunity for them to help you create the activity book in the first place, an entertaining activity in its own right!
So what kinds of things can be included in an activity book? Well, as mentioned above, the beauty of creating your own activity book is that you have control over the activities it contains. The content of the book will also depend on the age of the child or children who will be using the book. However, some common ideas for activities that could suit a variety of children and of different ages include;
– Write a story about the image. Make a small picture or picture cut out of a magazine and glue it to the top of a page. Next, assign the children the task of writing a story about the image in front of them, asking them to be as imaginative as they want.
– End the sentence. Start a story by writing an opening line and ask them to finish it.
– I spy. Choose an accessible room in your home, such as the kitchen, and ask the children to list all the items they can find in that room that begin with a chosen letter, such as the letter M.
– All about me. Provide space for children to draw and write about themselves.
– Create a character. Write some adjectives that can be used to describe an imaginary character and ask the children to draw what they think when they hear these words.