Five ways to safeguard your child's progress over the holiday

Many school leaders believe six weeks is way too long an holiday as many children revert back to their previous behaviour or achievements due to a loss of momentum. However, the holidays can be a time used to reset, refocus and to practise family habits that have been lost in the busyness of the academic year.

Below are five ways that you can safeguard the progress that your child made before the break. So hopefully they can rest, have fun, nature the ground they have made and be better prepared for the new school year. here we go:

1. Social media / TV diet - This is so important. If your child is left to their own devices (literally) they will not control themselves and this can be more harmful than good. So it is important to help them by creating healthy amounts of social media exposure.

2. Create challenges or projects - Even though children are off school they can still be learning and developing their scholastic thinking, creativity and life skills. This can be done by creating challenges for them whether it is creating something, writing a play and performing it or inventing better ways of doing things at home, this will keep them growing and stimulate their thinking.

3. Encourage reading - This can be difficult as it may be a lost art for some with more technology being easier to access, however the joy or reading and utilising the mind and imagination via books are always a great way to encourage development and avoiding mental atrophy.

4. Family bonding - How many of us need this? Especially those who work with other peoples children and lack having time with your own children. As a Father, I am alway challenged by this as a man I can say, I am working and developing the life and lifestyle for my wife and children, but what good is that when I am just growing further and further apart from my children? I am not saying this is the case in absence as a parent as the bonds can still be incredibly tight however, the holidays (and everyday life) this is important to foster.

5. Limit technology - This is such a challenge because now everyone has a device and they have different websites of choice and activities and reading and skyping etc. I am sure you get the drift but, when you start seeing that everyone is in their own space, on their own device this is not encouraging oneness.

The above list could have gone on and I am sure that you could add five more that would be relevant. This is just a short list to present a few ideas once done, tweaked and bespoke to suit your family and environment I am positive it will add value in some way or another.

I hope that it helps and that you and your children have a great holiday season as well as a new start to the academic year when it comes.

All the best,

Herman