Picture this scenario: it’s a cool December weekend evening and it’s still drizzling outside your home after a heavy downpour in the afternoon. No one wants to go out, but you’ve been meaning to do something as a family during the festive period for some time since travelling is still not an option, something that really bonds everyone together beyond what the usual indoor options can offer.
If this sounds anything like you, why not give Family Game Night a go? Game nights can prove to be a surprisingly fun and cohesive activity, and with a little planning and effort, you can come up with your own games and items at no expense too.
What is more, game nights also provide the perfect opportunity to sneak some holiday learning in for your children, keeping their minds sharp for the next academic year ahead and inculcating key developmental skills such as critical thinking and learning how to control their emotions and deal with adversity.
Depending on your position on device time, you can choose to go high-tech or no-tech for the games too! Here are 4 fun and educational activities you can consider for a variety of ages:
Nothing quite fuels the quest for knowledge like some friendly competition, and a good old quiz or trivia night is sure to tickle your child’s competitive bone.
With quiz nights, it’s up to you just how much control you want to have over proceedings.
You could elect to go with pen and paper, or use a digital quiz platform like Kahoot.
You could invest the time to do the research and come up with the questions yourself for the topics of your choice, which could involve esoteric mathematical concepts or, equally esoteric to your children, iconic movie stars of the 80s.
Make sure to throw in a few easy ones, though, so your child doesn’t get discouraged. Or you could team up with your child to take on the ready-made quizzes on free apps such as QuizUp, taking your chances with topics that could stump everyone in the family. If things get heated between duelling siblings, that’s a good time too to emphasise the spirit of fair play and learning how to both win and lose with respect.
To start you off, we have devised a school-themed trivia quiz for your child that you may access here.
Children love to dream and fantasise, and the chances are that your child has some wild aspirations of being a famous personality or a character from their favourite book or animated series. That’s where you come in.
Role-playing games aren’t limited to specialist dice-throwing hobby groups or video gamers. All you need is your imagination and some knowledge of your child’s likes and dislikes to build a fantasy world around them, and involve them in a decision-making process.
For example, if your child is a Harry Potter fan, you can recreate the process of being sorted into a House at Hogwarts, get them to choose their wand and broomstick, and come up with incremental tasks for them to overcome, such fending off as a class bully before taking on a magical creature or one of Voldemort’s minions.
For parents who are more familiar with traditional role-playing game elements such as equipping items, learning new skills and levelling up, you can introduce these into your game sessions too, and record them using pen and paper or with a word processor.
These sessions are more likely than not to become a long-term affair, and if your child gets tired of one “game world” you can simply create another featuring another theme he or she likes. As the game master, you will have a bird’s-eye view of how your child responds to various challenges you throw their way, challenges which teach them lessons about real-world situations such as the necessity for trade-offs and compromises.
Is that a drawing of a bird, a plane or Superman?
Drawing games make for hilarious experiences as you and your child attempt to identify the amorphous blobs that materialise on paper despite your best efforts.
While obviously dependent on artistic ability or lack thereof, drawing games are also a gauge of communication and people skills.
You don’t have to be a master artist to win at the game — you just need to be able to think quickly on your feet and somehow communicate your message to your teammate without saying a word. Playing a drawing game with your child gives you the added advantage of working on parent-child communication too.
The multi-faceted nature of the English language lends itself to various kinds of wordplay such as puns, rhymes and anagrams, and you can incorporate these elements into family game night too.
Start a game of rhymes to see who runs out of words first, take turns coming up with words that begin with each successive letter in the alphabet, or set the requirement that each player must say a word that starts with the last letter of the word provided by the previous player.
You could even put your child’s creativity and composition-writing skills to the test by collaborating on a three-word story, where both of you alternate writing three words each. The possibilities are endless. Moreover, word games require no set-up of any kind: just explain the rules, say the word, and you’re off!
As the saying goes, the family that plays together, stays together. Or did we just make that up? Whatever the case, family game nights can be an excellent choice of holiday activity, because they offer a hard to beat combination of fun, education and bonding.
At The Learning Lab, we believe in blending fun and learning together in equal measure, as children learn best when they are motivated and engaged.
English tuition, Maths tuition and Science tuition may sound rather dry, bland and boring for your child, especially if lessons mostly consists of textual information that does not help your child develop an interest in the subject.
In our English classes, we build a solid language foundation for your child through an extensive scope of games and engaging activities that comprises word puzzles, trivia competitions, board games, movie screenings, class debates and discussions on complex global issues.
Meanwhile within our Maths programmes, our curriculum specialists have specially devise creative and original classroom activities like intriguing puzzles and hands-on problems with real-world applications for your child to solve in fun and interactive ways. Think stimulating activities such as weaving maths into planning a travel itinerary, exchanging foreign currency, trivia games and more.
For Science, we have the world at our fingertips. From exploring the ingredients in bubble tea to building electrical circuits, your child will get to perform delightful experiments and fun activities that complement the topics taught in class. These interactive exercises bring scientific theories and phenomenon to life and can help your child visualise, understand, recall and even enjoy complex concepts.
Having a strong grasp in English lays the foundation for a large part of your child’s education and life beyond that. Ensuring your child has a strong foundation in English will allow them to make significant progress in school.
Unfamiliar with the format and hesitant about what content needs to be written, many students prefer to stick to the tried and true forms of narrative or descriptive essays. Ultimately, students are afraid that they may not score well for the expository essay. However, there are ways to overcome these hesitations.
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Through lessons that arouses your child’s interest and excitement, we am to highlight how Maths is a powerful and useful tool. This allows your child to gain invaluable skills to confidently tackle mathematical concepts of higher complexity.
During the ‘O’ Level exam, even the most capable students may experience mental blocks or are unable to complete the paper on time. Find out how to strategise for revision, manage the time crunch in the exam and tackle challenging questions from a past year ‘O’ Level Additional Mathematics Paper 1.
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Growing edible mushrooms, building terrariums, dissecting frogs, concocting slime and engineering periscopes — these are just a few of the engaging activities that your child can look forward to in our experiential Science classes.
The study of Chemistry at the ‘O’ levels requires students to retain and apply a vast amount of content knowledge and a very specific set of skills. In this guide, we break down essential information about Paper 2 of the ‘O’ Level Chemistry Paper and share 5 key ways that students can tackle this paper.
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The Learning Lab is now at locations. Find a location that suits your needs.
If you have any questions about our range of programmes or class schedules, you may contact us at 6733 8711 or drop us an email at enquiry@thelearninglab.com.sg.
The Learning Lab is now at locations. Find a location that suits your needs.
If you have any questions about our range of programmes or class schedules, you may fill in the form below or contact us at 6733 8711 / enquiry@thelearninglab.com.sg.