A Plan for this Summer!

So, friends, exams are fast approaching! More than the children, it is the parents who must be feeling the jitters! But there is also the good news that follows. There is going to be a 2-month break for children from Nursery to Class VIII. Children in classes IX and X have to
stretch a bit if they have some classes in the vacation but there is no reason to get disappointed ! Where there is a will, there is a way! There are so many options available for children and parents to make the most out of this summer vacation.

Let us explore some of the means by which we can make this summer vacation as productive as possible.

Scribbling on the Paper

One of my aunts who had to manage three small children as a home maker had this funny tip for me. During the vacations, she used to keep some of the old newspapers and give a packet of wax crayons to her children (who were toddlers then) to colour them. This activity kept the children occupied and enhanced their motor skills. Today, her son is an engineer based in the US , one of her daughters has completed her MD in General Medicine and the third daughter is a pharmacist having completed her MPharm. Pretty impressive!

Get activity books from the market, or just get a bunch of blank sheets. When using a blank sheet, you can help your child draw something, and encourage him/her to color it. Some parents have laptops and printers at home. You can easily find drawing sheets on the web that you can print out. You will see that you kid will enjoy it and you can enjoy the quiet time you get.

Plan your Travel well in advance

One of my friends  travels most of the year on official work. But he never misses out on the opportunity to visit an exotic spot during the  summer vacations and spares no effort to ensure that his family has a gala time. Abhinav Mishra, one of our neighbours tells me that he starts planning for his travel right from the month of February. “I book tickets in advance to avail of the cheaper air tickets ; the money that I save can be deployed for other incidental expenses during the vacation. I inform my office well in advance.” His wife Mitali adds, “The school where our children study informs us about the schedule of the exams well in advance. The school has a  clear well defined time frame for delivering the results of the exams on time. This simplifies our planning”. (Some schools send text messages to parents informing them about the schedule of exams. What a refreshing change in the modes of communication between schools and parents – all thanks to technology!)

I need not be voluble about this but still – consulting your family doctor before your vacation and being equipped with medicines for common ailments will help you in a place that may not have state-of-the-art medical facilities or day-and-night pharmacies.

Summer Camps

A summer camp is definitely a boon provided it fulfils all the criteria for a good one. It is an indisputable fact that a good summer camp will boost the confidence of your child and help him in developing his interpersonal skills. As parents (let me reiterate again) we have to be vigilant and consider safety and hygiene aspects before choosing a summer camp.

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Preventive Health Check-ups

Summer vacation is a good time for having a routine preventive health check up not just for the parents but also for the children! A visit to the dentist for a preventive dental check up is not a bad idea!

Soak in the Spa and Pamper yourself

Parents can definitely indulge themselves if they have the money to spare by visiting a spa and rejuvenating themselves! Take your children along, have a ball and let your hair down!

Dance Classes

I know for a fact that Shiamak Davar and Rachel  Padamsee conduct dance classes during the vacations in Mumbai and they are quite popular too. Not everyone can be a bharatnatyam danseuse, so if children like such dances, why not enrol them in such classes? If not anything else, they will meet other children and develop new friendships. This will go a long way in developing their people skills when they grow up as adults!

Vedic Maths and Abacus classes

These are no doubt good but discretion is the better part of valour! I remember one of my daughter’s class mates getting confused with Abacus lessons and regular Maths lessons in school (during the  class IV exams). She used Abacus to solve the problems and did not show the workings and lost marks. Look before you leap!

Drawing Classes

Parents, you have my full vote for enrolling your children in drawing classes under a qualified drawing teacher. I can vouch for this based on personal experience. I will tell you how it helped us. We had enrolled our children in a drawing class conducted by an educational institution during the summer of 2007. The classes were crowded. There was no individual attention paid to each child. I will not say that these classes did not help. But somehow we were not satisfied.

Luckily for us, one of the instructors lived close to our locality. She was a teacher who taught drawing in a school. We discovered later that her granddaughter was my daughter’s play mate. (It is really a small world). My daughter learnt drawing from this instructor who had won several accolades as an artist. My daughter learnt drawing under her tutelage for close to 1 year.

In 2009, when we relocated to Bangalore, we were told that my daughter would have to learn Physics, Chemistry and Biology in Class VI (ICSE syllabus). To her credit, my daughter blended well with the ecosystem in the school.

One evening, I was browsing her biology note book and was astounded to see the drawings that she had made and coloured. The sketches were brilliant and her teacher had praised her with lot of verbiage on the notebook. Now, that was a proud moment for us. The drawing classes that my daughter had attended helped her in achieving this feat.

So, my suggestion is to have your child learn drawing from an expert – if possible in a special coaching class and if the need be, you can encourage him/her to pursue this uninterrupted after the vacations too.

I hope this article gives you some ideas about the kind of activities you can do this summer. Please share other activities that you can think of, as comments below.