Fourth of July Activities for Kids

It's the Summer Vacation and the 4th of July week. Most families are happy spending the holiday together bonding over food, jokes, visits and play. The summer is a good time for kids to get off schedules, enjoy family and just float. Such times are even better if time can be spent with grandparents. Connectivity and bonding increases between the ‘grand’ generations!

By Mike Licht from Washington, DC, USA (Capitol Hill 4th of July Parade 2014) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Working parents find it hard to carve out a chunk of time for their kids. There's always someplace to go, something to do, some food to rustle up and some work to be wrapped up. Holidays are good times to let the schedules be and dance to a different music!

Talking History

Kids need to have a sense of belonging. Understanding history helps in giving kids a sense of rootedness. As they grow, this helps in creating good citizens. History need not always be learnt at schook. in fact frequently history which is explained like a story either at home or in a class, is what gets kids interested in history as a subject of study. By grandparents and parents talking about history, the same event sometimes can have two perspectives. Especially war. The ones who go away to war might bear the brunt of the front, but kids and other family members who stay behond bear the difficulties of the war by way of missing parents, skewed families, food shortages, mental and physical burden and a general loss of childhood. 

It's an easy way to comprehend history by watching movies, reading comics, hearing stories of valor, listening to poetry and listening to anecdotes. Kids will find it more interesting to talk about why the flag is the way it is, or why an episode is called a 'tea party' if families talk about anecdotes from history. 

Playing Games

Teachers hand out kindergarten worksheets for real young kids for all activities. But sometimes, playing games is better to introduce history to kids. Kids are adept at playing games, be it real world or virtual history games. So it makes sense to use this. In school this might not be very easy given that classes have many kids, but this is real easy at home. Kids could dress up like in olden times and play games or they could decorate the play space to look like it's from those times. Families could even speak in the old fashioned way!

There are places which are done up like earlier times. It could be fun day at some such place. When kids eat their snack, it could be a good time to talk about how we have changed in our food habits too. You could talk about why it has changed and get the kids to explore new areas of interest. 

Such holidays are not just about the holiday, it's a starting point for a variety of interraction and conversations which introduce kids to the world around. Enjoy the Independence Day celebrations!