Shew & a hallelujah amen. Thanksgiving break has arrived. Bring down grandmother’s trusty turkey platter and be sure to save room for Great Aunt Louise’s delicious pumpkin pie with the homemade whipped cream on top. Moms, take a breather. One absolute respite that involves a nice hot cup o’joe, your best pair of jammie pants and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is in order. Your minivan will be happy to rest easy in park and OUT OF THE CAR RIDER LINE. And that good ole lunchbox? Cabinet it up for a wee bit, little guy. Mom’s hands are out of the peanut butter and jelly jars at o’dark thirty before the school bus’ air breaks resound their swooshing presence. It’s time for rest. This very break carved like a turkey out of our family’s school calendar year is crucial for parents and kiddos alike.
Being an educator who has credible experience in both home and public schooling, I feel very strongly about the presence of time away from concentrating learning opportunities. Children need space. They need places to stretch information wide inside their growing minds. These holiday breaks are times for rest, better yet, learning just the same.
So as Moms do their celebratory whip & nae-nae from time away from long nights of homework help and those overwhelming class projects, it might put a little extra shimmie in our Mama shake to know that our kiddos are, in fact, still processing academic information while playing football with family after that big ole Thanksgiving meal.
Children process information the more they are able to absorb new ideas in the following order:
- informational intake
- creative application
- time to process
- REPEAT CYCLE
All four components rely heavily on the other. It’s also important to note that without all steps in place, the brain becomes marginalized for thought patterns and begins to calcify, thus clinging to simple memorization and mundane routines. True, dynamic learning has a healthy balance of memory recall embedded into the above cycle of quality learning.
So breaks? Yep. Kiddo wouldn’t thrive without them! Allowing the mind to process away from the content is not only good, but best.
And Mamas? While enjoying your time sans school, why not get some great holiday shopping taken care of for those growing minds?
The following are a list of wonderful thinking games for elementary and middle school children that help promote the creative application of learning while at rest:
Three cheers for no school bells! High fives for time with family, too. Enjoy one another and trust the time away from that red schoolhouse. Your kids deserve it. Better yet, they need it. Moms, you do, too!
