Things to do in winter school holidays

For some families, the school holidays are an opportunity to spend time doing things outside of the regular routine! This is as cold as Queensland gets so here are some fun holiday activities that you can do at home or in your local area. Doing something different with your child or having other family members able to join in will help boost your child’s language skills while you’re making memories and enjoying yourselves!

Build vocabulary while you play

Describe what you are doing as you get ready for a day out. Talk about the clothes that you’ll need to wear on a cold day, name parts of the body as you put a jumper on or slip on socks. You may even like to be silly and try putting pants on your head or shoes on your hands.

If you are playing at the park, try singing nursery rhymes with your little one as they climb up, or slide down the slippery slide. These can be as silly as you like! Maybe Incey Wincey spider went up the slide and now Incey Wincey is going down the slide. This will help build your child’s vocabulary and introduces positional language (things like “up” “down” “under” “over” etc). When it’s time for a warm bath once outside play is over you can gently splash your little one as you name different parts of the body. “I am splashing your arm”, “I am splashing your knee”. This helps to build their knowledge of body words and then they can show you or tell you which bit needs splashing next!

Connect words with meanings

On a cold and windy day try cooking or making playdough together. Look at the recipe and talk about the tools and ingredients you’ll need. You might even need to write a shopping list; this will help your child understand that words have meaning. Let your child help you measure and mix, and then play with the dough, this helps build their fine motor development, an essential skill for when they start to write.

Enjoy the winter holidays together!