The summer break is almost upon us, the kids can’t wait to finish school and you can’t wait to fill your weekends with lots of sunshine, family time and of course a well deserved holiday. Although it’s not always easy to keep everyone entertained during the summer months – and if you’ve had good weather in the build up to the summer then you might have cashed in your summer activity ideas prematurely! So, I’ve come up with 5 simple and budget friendly activities that everyone can enjoy!

Gardening

You don’t need green fingers in order to do a bit of gardening! It’s the perfect excuse to get out in the garden and enjoy the sunshine. Remember, if you’re spending long periods of time in the sun, then you need to make sure you’re protected from UV rays. Make sure you have a good sun cream, sun hat and a pair of high quality sunglasses, like these Aviator Eye glasses. Sunglasses will help protect your eyes from damage and you can find out more about high quality eye wear, here.

It doesn’t just have to be gardening, the kids could decorate their own flower pots, plant their very own sunflowers or even a selection of summer veggies!

Head to the library

It’s pretty common for children’s reading skills to slip a little over the summer break; they’re just too busy having fun in the sun! But, did you know that during the summer months, the library is the place to be? Not only can everyone take out books to enjoy in the sunshine or during a rainy afternoon, but the library will be full of activities throughout the summer. Including reading challenges, pop up movie theatres, travelling shows, guest authors, various creativity workshops and so much more!

Go on a nature walk

Most kids groan when you mention going for a walk. But once they’re out there in the fresh air and running free, they soon forget all about their tablets, smart devices and the TV. Get back to nature and see what creatures and creepy crawlies you can find; you could even create a checklist to tick things off as you go. Take a picnic and you can enjoy a whole day in the fresh air.

Camp out

You don’t have to travel to a camping site to experience the great outdoors. Why not make a night of it in your own back yard? The kids will love playing in the tent during the day – it’ll also provide some much needed respite from the sun – and then you can all snuggle up on an evening and try a little star gazing. Bliss.

Try a little vlogging

Remember those old home movies we had when we were kids? Well, why not make your own? You don’t have to have the latest camera or vlogging skills like Zoella – just document a few “days in the life”, let the kids get behind the camera too and capture some family time. You can edit it with free online software and then sit down together and watch it as a family.

You are your child’s first teacher and will impart impactful and lasting messages that influence his or her growth. Set a good example for your children so they may grow into successful, fulfilled, and conscientious adults. Here is a list of important traits that you can model for your children:

Generosity and Community Involvement

The idea of giving back is one that often goes unexplored when your own life is hectic and has many moving parts. Slow down and take the time to think about how you can give back to your community and be generous with your time and available resources. Community engagement and philanthropic work will look different for every family, depending on where you live, your income, your talents, and your passions.  For example, you can volunteer and support non-profit fundraising events, like serving as a water-station monitor for a run that donates its proceeds to a worthy cause. You could also donate money to individuals who serve the community and try to make society a better place. Show your kids that it’s worthwhile to reflect on how you can help those around you and assist with the running of school fundraisers thus becoming a contributing member of your community.

Work Ethic

Work ethic begins with the right mindset. Show your child that hard work is rewarding and requires you to think with a growth mindset. For example, you and your child should try to learn something together, like mechanics, ceramic-making, or another artisan skill. When the learning becomes tricky or if a mistake is made, explain to your child that messing up is part of the process and helps grow your understanding of the task. Show them that working hard to achieve the end result takes dedication and persistence.

Fulfilling Career

Your kid will be greatly influenced by your attitude and relationship with your career. Make sure your job offers you a balanced lifestyle and doesn’t cause you too much frustration. A career that allows you to be flexible in your hours and engage in entrepreneurial work will be a positive thing for your kid to see. Through companies like Amway, you can set your schedule to accommodate your busy life and have time to engage with your family. Making money with Amway will show your children how they can take initiative to start their own business and take their career into their own hands.

Respect

Respect can look different in many cultures and depends on the situation that you’re in. Talk to your child about what respect looks at home, in the classroom, in restaurants, with adults, and with his or her peers. Practice code-switching and acting with respect through role play at home. Additionally, model respect toward others by listening when others are speaking, acting kind, giving people grace when they make mistakes, accepting others’ differences, and never speaking poorly about people when they aren’t around. Your child will quickly pick up on your family’s cultural norms around respect and will display the same dispositions. Child Ventures offers additional ideas about why it’s important to teach your kid about the virtue of respect and how to do it.

Morals

You want your child to know the difference between right and wrong. Show them how they can be loving, kind, conscientious, honest, trustworthy and giving. If you notice that your child isn’t acting with integrity or displaying the aforementioned virtues, know that he or she is developing his or her capacity to regulate and reflect on behaviors. Psychology Today offers parents insight on child development of morals: “Around the age of five or six, children have developed a conscience—which is actually an internalized set of rules that you have taught them. Your regulations become her inner stop sign and will direct her. (Though it may be hard for you to believe, someday she’ll actually throw those dirty socks in the hamper.) Initially, she adopts your rules to please you. Later on, following these directives becomes a part of who she is.”

Social Emotional Literacy

Social-emotional learning is gaining a larger presence in schools; however, awareness and mindfulness should be modeled at home as well. When you become emotional—angry, sad, happy, energized, frustrated—engage in a dialogue with your child about why your feeling these emotions and your strategies for processing them. Explain to your kid that some emotions and ways of being are important for different activities. For example, high energy and aggression can fuel football players to perform well, and sadness can be important to identify what moves you and what is important to you. The ability to recognize emotions and regulate behaviors will help your child succeed in many realms of his or her life, from personal relationships to academic environments.

Think about the virtues that are most important to you and consider how you can model those for your children. Your lead will help them shape their own set of values and establish habitual behaviors. When you are your best self, your child will strive to do so as well.

Summer can be an exciting and chaotic time for families with children. With your kids out of school, the entire routine that you have had gets thrown out of whack. There is less structure during the days. To ensure that your kids do not forget everything that they have learned during the year, there are many things that you and your family can do to ensure that your kids’ brains stay active. There is no activity that does not connect to learning in some way. Here are some things that you can do with your children, of any age, to ensure that they continue learning all summer long.

#1) Vacation

While many people believe that vacation is all about having fun and building unforgettable family memories, vacations can be even more beneficial. Recent studies have found that children who go on vacation with their family tend to do better in school the following year than those who did not go on a vacation that summer. Going on vacation helps children connect the things that they learn in school to real life. Children who go to the beach, an amusement park, a neighborhood park, the mountains, or any other place are able to connect what they read about to real-life events. This encourages their reading and participation in class.

#2) Interactive Television Shows

While we do not want to just sit our kids in front of the television all day long, we all know that it provides us with a much-needed break during the day. If you sit your children in front of the television for an hour a day you should ensure that they are watching the best kids educational shows possible. These shows typically encourage learning, spelling, reading, math, science, and social studies. No matter how old or young your child is, you can find an education television show for them to watch.

#3) Visit A Local Bookstore

You should encourage your children to read during the summer if it is not already mandatory by your school. Even if your child has to read summer reading books, you should still encourage them to read books that they find interesting. Some local bookstores, like Barnes & Noble, offer storytime each Saturday to encourage children to read. Children are able to connect with their peers, read along while they listen to a story, and look at other books while they are there. Some bookstores also give children a free book if they read so many books during the summer. This is a great motivator for some children.

#4) Cook or Bake With Your Children

If you are looking for a creative and fun way to work on math skills with your children this summer, you can cook and bake with them. Following recipes and measuring ingredients is a great and fun way to connect math to the real world. No matter how old or young your children are, you can find engaging ways to have them help you in the kitchen. For younger children, you

can ask them which is bigger, a tablespoon or a cup. Older children may have fun converting between ml and cups. If you are looking for a great recipe that is also healthy for you and your children, you can try baking banana oatmeal applesauce muffins. These muffins make the perfect breakfast or snack and can be shared with their friends if you are looking to set up playdates.

#5) Keep A Journal

If you are looking to improve your children’s writing and reading skills, you can encourage them to keep a journal this summer. Each day you can look to do something new and exciting with your children so that they have something to write about. If your children are young, you can help them write a sentence or two each day. If your children are older, you can encourage them to write a paragraph or even a whole page, depending on what you did that day. Keeping a journal not only helps them practice their skills, but it will be a fun thing for them to go back and read when they get older. You can encourage them to write each day by giving them stickers to decorate their pages with. Stickers are a great motivator for children of all ages.

How Life Today is Set Up

Life today may be one of the most advanced structured societies that ever functioned. Everything is systematically arranged in a way that not only makes sense but balances out almost everything about our existence to a science. We have grocery stores for our specific nutritional needs, gyms for our active needs, and libraries for our various ideas or questions. We are very fortunate to have lived in such an organized period in time that actually allows us to function close to our fullest capacity.

Different Types of Awards

Awards can be some of life’s most amazing experiences. Awards come in many forms that usually come with the acceptance of growth and responsibility. Examples of great rewards are: · Trophies or glass awards can symbolize a beautiful representation of your accomplishments.

· Events or parties can be held to bring about reinforcing praise that adds emotional value and support.

· Accomplishments in themselves can be great rewards that can almost have a positive addictive effect on you and your life.

Use Time To Recognize Your Strengths

Now, we can address the topic of today. What are your strengths? What are you good at? It is amazing how we all are different. We may have things in common. We can even share common experiences with others. But we know that no two lives are ever completely the same. In order to thrive in any possible way, we must find our strength.

Our strengths were embedded somewhere in our DNA for specific reasons. They help to give us confidence, satisfaction, and even happiness. Some may be good at sports, music, cooking, and so much more!

School Can Be Used To Help Us Reveal Our Strengths

One thing that should be stressed to today’s youth or anyone who is in school is that school is a wonderful place to define and sculpt your strengths. I am sure we can all relate about classes that we just could not stay awake in or topics in lectures that you absolutely dreaded. This is just a part of life that most of us should take heed to and never overlook.

Neither should we overlook when we are doing great! Almost everyone can relate to this as well. We all have strengths that we just have to find. This is not always the easiest task. Our strengths can be an ability to combat the fear that we had to reveal from experience. It can even be the

ability to make people laugh that was revealed after facing really hard times. Your strength is your reward in life that will continue to reward you for eternity once it is received.

Sports Are Another Way To Reveal Strengths

The adrenaline pumps to your veins as your fans call your name. Remember to plant your feet, focus, breath, swing. 1,2,3 and there it goes! The ball is out of the park! The crowd goes wild!

This is a snippet from the day in the life of anyone who plays sports. Sports are constructed to teach us how to channel our feelings and drives to work properly and give us results! We must learn how to train and function in ways that stimulate ourselves as individuals. The most exciting sports advantage is that we get to share these experiences with a team. Most of us play sports with peers who are learning and experiencing similar things in life. So, this enables us to exercise and express our individual strengths in the ways that will most likely be highlighted in society.

Showcase Your Strengths In Business

Business is the big league of life. Most people will have to use all of the prior discussed situations to enhance their performance in the business world. Those who have successfully mastered their strengths and weaknesses will find themselves in manager positions. Those who know how to go above and beyond to beat fear and setbacks may even become CEOs.

Engaging in business is a way to enhance good qualities. The rewards of it are money plus other forms of gratification that make life better.

Time and again you enter a sweepstake or a giveaway and you can’t walk away with any reward or prize money. By then you will probably have concluded that sweepstakes or giveaways are nothing more than a scam or a scandal to waste people’s time and only create brand publicity simply

Well, the truth of the matter is, sweepstakes actually work and winning them is possible, so long as you are persistent, patient and maintain a positive attitude. On top of that, you need to practice the right methods to employ to your advantage. Fortunately, we’ve got all that covered right here in this article.

Make use of the following strategies and start winning:

1. Create Facebook Interest Lists

One great way of constantly entering giveaways is to create Facebook lists that include pages that regularly hold giveaways. To create a Facebook list, all you have to do is:

a. Scroll down to the left sidebar until you see Interests.

b. Hover the mouse over to Interests and click the More link. You will then see the news feed change to show you lists that you’ve subscribed to or created. But if you’re starting out, you won’t see much on those lists.

c. Then click the +Add Interests button at the top of the page. The news feed area will change to show you a list of interests.

2. Follow Bloggers

Another great way of entering giveaways is to ‘like’ pages of bloggers who regularly hold and promote plenty of giveaways for items in your area of interest. But because Facebook doesn’t really show you pages of the posts that you ‘like,’ it’s a great idea to interact with your favorite Facebook pages by commenting and liking, which then tells Facebook that you’re interested in that type of content and you want more of it.

When you follow a page by liking it, you can use the settings on Facebook to ensure that you see only that page’s posts first or even get notifications for it.

Other than that, you can also subscribe to a blogger’s newsletter or just to their blog. This way you will receive an email about a giveaway every time something new has been posted.

3. Visit Giveaway Link Ups

Most bloggers will have a page that specifically lists giveaways. Some bloggers visit these pages and list their own giveaways.

4. Follow Social Media Hashtags

You can also find giveaways by following hashtags on multiple social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just click a hashtag that you like and you will see all posts that related to that hashtag. You can click on generic giveaway hashtags such as #ContestAlert and #Sweeps.

5. Avoid Fake Giveaways and Competitions

Sometimes, clicking on a giveaway on Facebook could be nothing more than a well-thought-out scandal meant to extort money or other personal credentials from you. For example, there are posts that say “if you like this picture, you are eligible.” This is obviously spam and ads that promote contests like this are definitely setting you up to exploit you.

The best advice that we can give is only to enter competitions that are sponsored by a legitimate source, brand or company.

6. Enter as Often as Possible

The bigger the catch of fish you get in your net, the better your family will be satisfied at dinner. Likewise, the more you enter yourself in regular sweepstakes and giveaways, the better your chance will be at winning. It’s a simple formula that is basically common sense.

It’s also a good idea to keep track of the giveaways that you enter yourself in. Therefore, you should create a Google Docs spreadsheet just so you know which sweepstake or giveaway you’ve entered and when the winners will be announced.

Bonus tip: You can also participate in surveys and win prizes as well. And if that’s your thing, then click here.