For mini explorers (ages five to nine years)
• At the start of the summer, buy your mini explorer
a big scrapbook. Over the course of the holidays,
encourage them to document their activities with
photos, ticket stubs and leaflets and to annotate it
with their thoughts and illustrations. It’ll make for a
wonderful memento of the summer of 2014.
• Choose a theme for the summer – perhaps the
country that you are visiting, a particular author
that they are reading at the moment or even their
favourite food. Create a project on the topic of
interest, researching it online, with interviews,
books and films. Keep it varied by encouraging
them to include facts and figures alongside
drawings, poems and photographs.
• Set up a treasure hunt, in your apartment, garden
or across the whole of Hong Kong. Your mini
explorer can create their own treasure map, clues
and the treasure itself and ask their friends or
siblings to participate.
• Head down to Pottinger Street and buy some fun
costumes and props as the starting point for a
home drama production, written, directed by and
starring your kids.
For older kids (ages eight to 13 years)
• Encourage your kids to set up a mini
enterprise at home – they could make,
market and sell greeting cards or
homemade ice cream to ward off the Hong
Kong heat.
• Have them become a magazine editor,
designing their own summer publication.
They could start by choosing their topic,
then designing a layout, writing articles
and finding pictures to illustrate. Interested
friends can be contributors.
• Encourage them to keep a holiday journal to
write in every day. Have them read famous
diarists like Anne Frank or Samuel Pepys
and think about how to tell the story of their
daily life using different writing styles.
• Have them write, produce and direct their
own short film. From creating the story
to finding locations, costumes and the
cast, this is a great project with minimal
equipment needed; they can use your
iPhone or iPad as the camera and to
edit.
