Your guide to holidaying with your kids during the school term

1. I always contact the teacher and find out what sight words/heart words they’re focusing on depending on which grade they’re in. Find out what work they will be missing out on – the teacher will usually give you the main concepts – English + Maths for you to go over. Most schools now also have a website or software program they’re using for students to play at home – these are usually accessible on iPads and phones.

2. Reading is a big one. Read to them, read with them, let them read themselves. It’s a no-brainer. We are happy to provide letters to our local library so you can borrow books while you’re here. Our local library is Elanora Library at The Pines.

3. Get a special notebook and let them journal each day about what they’ve done. They can take photos/polaroids or draw pictures to go with it too. The focus here isn’t on how they’re writing, it’s just that they’re writing.

4. Go adventuring and investigate some different habitats. Around here we have the mangroves at Beree-Badalla Reserve, the oceans, fresh water creeks out at Currumbin + Tallebudgera Valley. They can draw what they see, create labelled diagrams (this might require a google search depending on your level of animal anatomy haha), write a poem about what they hear, list all the animals they can hear and see, tally the animals they see etc. The options are endless.

5. Head down to the beach and grab a stick. Practise sight words/heart words, write numbers, practise place value (thousands, hundreds, tens and ones), do math sums, create mandalas (this teaches symmetry and basic maths concepts). Writing things in the sand is way better and more fun than writing in a book!

6. Grab a pack of cards and play card games. There’s so many educational card games out there – a quick Pinterest or google search will unveil a heap of these. We take a pack of cards to cafes/restaurants and play while we’re waiting for our food.

7. Grab an activity book – find a words, sudoku, dot to dots. There’s loads in Big W, Kmart and even printable options online to suit all ages. If your kids are like ours and attached to their iPads, we recently replaced their iPads in the car for activity books + notebooks. It kept them entertained enough for short trips and even broke up the iPad watching on the much longer drives (3hrs +).

You really don’t need to do much with them – at the end of the day it’s their holiday too. Just a bit here and there is really all you need – if you want to. Now go and enjoy your mid-term holiday!