After being cooped up during the wintertime, children often have lots of extra energy in the spring—and it’s likely that yours are no exception. So here are even more activities to keep them busy and engaged during the spring break and Easter season.
If your family celebrates Easter, there are plenty of Easter activities in Northeast Ohio, from egg hunts to pictures with the bunny. To make it easy for families to find the right ones, NortheastOhioFamilyFun.com has listed activities, along with dates and locations.
Here are two more ideas for the season.
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
As the zoo website points out, you can travel the world just by visiting the zoo to see some of the exotic animals: from the giant anteater to the grizzly bear, the emerald tree boa to the sleek cheetah, and the hissing cockroach to the western lowland gorilla. And, in April, the zoo will “unveil multimedia campaigns rebranding the zoo to reflect the depth of its commitment to conservation here and around the world.”
Some parents and grandparents surely remember the zoo keys, when a child could insert a key into boxes around the zoo to hear stories about the animals? This program debuted in the 1960s. The Cleveland Metroparks has partnered with Key Bank to bring ZooKeys back! Starting in April, there will be more than two dozen boxes where children can use their keys to learn more about the animals.
Spring Poetry
When parents need to work around the house, a focus on poetry is ideal to keep children engaged. Whether they realize it yet or not, children are natural poets, and springtime is the perfect time for poetry as flowers, birds and more are terrific topics. Another benefit of poetry: Even children who don’t yet like to read often become interested in poetry, most likely because of its rhythms and wordplay.
Head to your local libraries and make poetry books available to your children. Here is one list of the 50 best poetry books for kids, and your librarian may have even more ideas to add to the list.
Poetry helps children develop crucial pre-reading, reading and communication skills, including phonological awareness. This is just a fancy way of way of saying that a child becomes aware of and begins to understand the sounds of language. Your child is developing phonological awareness, for example, when he or she realizes that cat and car both start with the same sound, and that dog and fog sound similar.
Poetry also helps children develop a rich vocabulary that will help with reading skills and learning in general. Encourage your child to also write poetry. Here are tips on helping your child to write spring poems.
You might be wondering why we have included ideas as different as a trip to the zoo and writing spring poetry. Here’s why: At Horizon Education Centers, we believe in providing children with a broad range of experiences and building up diverse sets of skills. If you agree and you’re looking for quality child care, enrollment is now open.
