The Trip Clip Blog

Are your kids asking for screen time all the time now that school is out?  Surprise them and tell them yes!  They can pick from any one of these excellent creative activities using screens. You can also easily edit this list to make it just right for your family.

Although my kids do spend a lot of time on screens, I comfort myself with the knowledge that many of the skills that they are gaining really are skills that they can use in the real world. With a little encouragement, they can be geared towards screen time that will help them gain the right kinds of skills. This blog post is all about how digital devices can promote creativity.

There are plenty of artists who still paint with paper and brush, take pictures with film cameras, or write music using a guitar or a piano. But as our world becomes more digital, more and more artists are enhancing their art digitally, or even creating it digitally.

In the business world, presentations, videos, marketing materials etc are largely created digitally.

Even at school, my kids are using their computers to create materials for presentations and reports online more and more often.

So instead of saying no to screen time, try asking your kids to use a screen to be creative, or to enhance their creativity. Just remember, art is never wrong! Let your child explore these tools and their personal vision to create whatever they want.

Painting and Drawing

There are many ways kids can use digital tools to create visual art.

• There are lots of great drawing apps on the iPad. Here are some recommendations.
• Drawing games can be fun and educational. My family likes to play Draw Something on the iPad. It might seem like just a game, but expressing yourself visually so that someone else can understand what you’re drawing is actually a good skill to gain!
• Understanding how to use digital paint tools like Paint.NET (you can download it for free here) is a great skill to have. Kids can use this tool for homework projects too. Ask them to create a picture on the computer, or make a hybrid picture that they draw on paper, transfer to the computer (by scanning it or photographing it), and then adding digital effects online.
• You may also want to start with a picture they create on the computer, print it, and then add to it with crayons, markers, or any medium they like. This could be as simple as drawing a picture on the computer and then coloring it on paper. But your kids may have wonderful ideas about to extend this concept in ways that never even occurred to you.

Taking Pictures

Photography these days is one of the art forms that has become the most digital. If your kids want screen time, send them on a walk with your phone to record their outing. Give them a goal (take pictures of 10 living things,) or just let them snap away at whatever they find beautiful. Teach them about framing a picture, taking close-ups, lighting the shot. With a phone they can take as many pictures as they want to get practice and find the beauty in the world around them. There are also lots of apps for having fun with and manipulating digital photos. Your kids can also learn about editing photos for color, brightness, red eye correction, cropping, and much, much more! There are so many photo editing tools out there you won’t have any trouble finding a good one.

Making a Movie

Digital devices have made movie making accessible to everyone, even very young kids!

• To start, they can simply record video using your phone or an iPad. Have them write a script and try to tell a story with the videos they record.
• For something a little different, have them make a stop motion video using an iPhone or iPad and their toys – LEGO works great for this. Stop Motion Studio is a really good app for making stop motion videos that even young kids can master.
• Help them move their videos to a computer, and use an editing tool like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie to edit their video.
• Encourage them to find or create their own audio for their movie. You may all be surprised by how much difference good audio makes! And they’ll have a blast searching for and listening to all the crazy sounds they can choose from to make just the right ‘kersplat’ sound.

Write a Story

Having your kids write a story on a computer when they ask for screen time is a great compromise. It can feel like screen time to your kids when really they are working on their language skills, story telling ability, and even their typing! Give them a lot of free rein to help make it fun – they can play with the fonts, colors, and page layout, or use an online thesaurus. Scholastic.com has a wonderful story starter website to help get your kids on the right track. Taking the time to turn their creation into a physical book they can hold, draw pictures for, and make a cover for (on the computer of course!) will also help be more fun for them. You can find good instructions for doing this here or here.

Music

Making digital music is a little trickier because you need more tools, but there are some easy ways to get started:

• Your kids can play an instrument, or simply sing, and record themselves using a mobile phone.
• Many digital keyboards can record the music you make, or upload it to the computer.
• A microphone can be plugged into your computer to record voice or any instrument. Here’s a digital microphone that might help you get started.
• You can use apps to compose music.  Try Notation Pad on your iPhone or iPad.
• Kids can use software to mix tracks.  Some high quality free tools are Pro Tools | First and Audacity.
  

Play a Creative Game

And finally, even video games can promote creativity. Anyone who has listened closely to an involved story from a kid who has been playing Minecraft can attest to this. For many reasons (see my post about working collaboratively online for more on this) I do not consider time playing Minecraft equal to time spent watching a TV show. Not all screen time is equal. TV watching is very passive screen time, but games like Minecraft that don’t necessarily have an end goal are wonderful for encouraging creativity. Minecraft is a building game (think LEGOs), except it’s online, and the only limits for what you can build are your imagination. Like LEGOs, you are limited by the blocks that are available in the game, but if you can think outside the box (literally), you can do crazy fun things. Check out this list of impressive creations, including a playable guitar!

Step 6 is about making a loose schedule for your days.  You can plan time for all the things you want to fit in this summer – fun activities as well as reading time, or chores, or whatever is important to you this summer. You don’t have to follow it to the T every day, but a little structure can be great for everyone.

If you haven’t yet, look through the first 5 steps so that you know what things you want to include in your Summer Schedule:

• Step 1: Make Summer Bucket Lists
• Step 2: Set up Summer Chores
• Step 3: Plan Some Summer Learning
• Step 4: Set Summer Reading Goals
• Step 5: Make a Boredom Plan

Once you know what your goals are, you can set up a schedule that gives your days a little rhythm.

For me, I want to make sure that chores like walking the dog and emptying the dishwasher happen early in the day. And I like to use the mornings to get some work done, so I put screen time and play outside time right after chores so that I will have time to focus on the things I need to do. I also really wanted to schedule in time for the kids to help with dinner so I can get them into that habit which I hope to continue during the next school year.

Whether you’re trying to accomplish learning goals, or make sure you have time to work, or just save your sanity, a summer schedule can work wonders.  You can use The Trip Clip Custom List to create a schedule that’s just right for your family.

If a daily schedule isn’t your thing, you might trying setting a weekly plan instead:

With The Trip Clip’s weekly schedule, you can easily create your own version of this chart with ideas of all sorts of fun things you can do this summer.

If you create a summer schedule that works great for your family, send it to me at molly@thetripclip.com.  I’d love to see it!

For all those moments over the summer when your kids can’t think of a single thing to do, try one of these free, printable Bingo Bored Boards.

I created these by generating a random Bingo Board on The Trip Clip, and then brainstorming ideas for things they can do based on each picture.  I recommend printing out the boards, and when your kids say they’re bored, hand them one of the Bored Boards and tell them they have to do enough things on their board to earn a Bingo (5 in a row).

You can also easily make your own! There are over 800 images to choose from, and you can choose any image and edit the text for all the squares.

As an alternative, if you want them to work on making their own fun, try simply removing the text under each image, and ask them to brainstorm their own fun based on the picture. You may be surprised by how creative they can be!

I also wrote a post last year about other ways you can use the Trip Clip Bingo Boards to help keep the boredom at bay over the summer.  Check it out!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched google for

• What to read if my kid loves Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• What to read if my kid loves Harry Potter
• What to read if my kid loves Rangers Apprentice
• What to read if my kid loves Big Nate
• What to read if…

It seems like I am constantly looking for more book suggestions for my kids.  Sometimes Amazon is good about making recommendations, but occasionally for these big series, all of the recommended books are just more books in the series, and what I really want to know about are OTHER series.

So here is my list of book series that your kids might like if they like any of the books listed above!  My kids are both boys, with an affinity for humor, spies, animals, and adventure, so you’ll see those themes appear a lot.

On the Younger Side

• Snarf Attack (4 in the series)
• My Weird School
• Encyclopedia Brown
• Anything  by Andrew Clements, start with Frindle
• Beezus and Ramona (and all of the related books)
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (and all the related books)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Warriors
• Spy School (and related books)
• FunJungle books

Series (these are all the first book in a series – I recommend the whole series for all of them!)

• Harry Potter
• Percy Jackson
• Ranger’s Apprentice
• Mysterious Benedict Society
• Gregor the Overlander
• Stormbreaker
• H.I.V.E.
• The CHERUB series
• The Giver
• The City of Ember

Comics/Graphic Novels

• The Amulet series
• Origami Yoda
• Fox Trot
• Calvin & Hobbes
• Big Nate

Books My Pre-Teens Loved

• Ready Player One
• The Martian
• Ender’s Game
• Hatchet
• Where the Red Fern Grows
• My Side of the Mountain
• Because of Winn Dixie
• Dewey the Library Cat
• The Hobbit
• The Hunger Games
• BOMB (non-fiction)

If your kids have similar taste and you have recommendations for ME, please leave them in the comments section below!  I am always looking for more good books for my kids to read.

If you want tips for finding more great books for your kids, or encouraging them to read, try my post about Summer Reading.

Summer can be a great time to catch up on skills that aren’t as solid as you’d like them to be, or maybe get a little ahead for the upcoming year. My kids are usually pretty resistant to worksheets of any kind, but occasionally that’s what’s needed.  You can also find lots of ways to sneak some learning into fun activities without your kids realizing what you’re doing.

I like to spend some time at the beginning of the summer thinking about what I most want my kids to work on during the summer to set them up for a good school year. Sometimes I can just sneak the learning into other fun activities, and other times we need to set aside some regular time every day or each week to make sure it happens. Otherwise the end of the summer comes and before I know it we forgot to work on anything!

For a more complete set of ideas, check out my year of blog posts: 52 Weeks of Learning with The Trip Clip.

Here are a few Trip Clip Activities that are best suited for summer learning:

Writing Practice

Handwriting practice – you can even enter your own words for your kids to trace!

Print out a handful of story template pages, staple them together, and ask your child to write a book for you.

 Math & Science

Practice those times tables! You can also create unlimited worksheets for addition, subtraction, and division. Whatever your kids need!

Math games are a great way to keep your brain engaged and hone your problem solving skills!

Practice simple graphing with a paper version of battleship – all the fun of the board game without the tiny pieces!

Geography

Going on a road trip? Do a little geography practice along the route. It’s fun for the whole family!

 Spelling Practice

Word search puzzles are a great way to do spelling practice – you can find word lists by grade online.

Your kids won’t know they’re learning – but playing hangman with them is an excellent way to practice spelling and handwriting.

Crossword puzzles can be good spelling practice – there’s also a setting to make it just for first letter sounds!