Suggesstions please for fun educational tasks my 7 year old ds can do in the holidays without realising he is 'working'

[DrNortherner]

He is performing below average in numeracy and literacy although he loves reading and being read to.

Dh has the summer hols off with him and needs some structure to to put a plan in place. Dh is fab at the physical stuff but needs a helping han with everything else.

Any suggesstions for games/work/websites much appreciated although we need to get ds writing as much as possible.

We have a library 2 mins away from the house they will visit wice a week, ds will do their reaing scheme and I have bought him a jornal to record and grade the books he has read which he seems pretty excited about.

Ay ideas involving challenges/compeition and ds will love it!

Thanks

Did you see Popyscal's challenge thread for her DS? Think it was yesterday or Saturday.

What are your DS's big likes?

He likes knights, castles, soldiers and war

And sweets and WWE.

Other thread

One of the extension activities my kids' primary school used to do was make them measure big things - the playground for instance, or their classroom. I think that was KS2 though. Might your DS enjoy that? (You could find specific things for him to measure like a castle. Assume from your name you are in the N somewhere - could DH take him to Leeds Armouries or the IWM North?)

Try Bitsize on BBC website. I'm going to try this with my dd who is very reluctant when it comes to litracy....she seems to like it because it's on the computer.

Oh, & Oswaldtwistle Mills includes a sweet factory.

Armouries
IWM North
Stockleys Sweet Factory at Ossie Mills

I tried (and failed I have to say) to get my ds writing his own Captain Underpants comic trip last summer hols. He managed about a page...but then rediscovered it last week and started it up again.

How about a reading challenge where he can choose some books, and write a review to get a treat?

Take him to a (war?) Museum and get him to draw what he likes and write about it in a scrapbook.

Eden Camp?

Mine are a bit younger but we did a series of things about recognising denominations of money, playing shops with real coins and homemade paper ones, spending money (budgeting in the sweet shop) etc.

A few related activities here - eg Knight mazes to encourage counting in 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s, etc.

Knights and castles - crosswords and wordseaches

More similar

Craft

Some great ideas thanks. Hula I am loving those knight worksheets, partic the counting in 2/3/4 mazes - thanks!

we are planning on making a scrap book where my son, also 7 and struggleing, can write his news and stick in pics, tickets from days out etc...

bbc bitesize for maths and english

may not be very pc as I'm not sure of the game age but my ds,7 loves "Age of Empires"PC game and he reads the texts now that are the instructions etc~you build civilisations but there's also a lot of battles.
Audio books from the library.
Local museums have study rooms with books in.
sudoku there's a good childrens one from M&S
writing a diary~mixed results with my own ds
I buy mental maths booklets from our local library ~schofield and sims,10 min tests for different age groups ~he loves them as they are quick.
Games like Yahtzee,Risk,Monopoly,Payday use a lot of mental maths and reading but it isn't "work"

baking is good because it makes you think about quantities

how about woodwork- get him a hammer and saw and some bits of wood and letting him design a toy

the games mentioned b morningsun

Ds has done holiday diaries and these are lovely to look back at! BUT, we did have to compromise as he wouldn't do it everyday! He just had to write at least a paragraph for every outing - where we went, who with, what he liked best etc and then could draw a picture of the best part of the day.
We've also kept weather diaries - although this was mainly just for handwriting practice.

A couple of websites are:

www.teachingideas.co.uk/
www.abcteach.com/

there is always something somewhere for every activity so they can be linked to whatever outings are planned or his interests

We have also used the educational jump ahead and cluefinder software - Ds would happily spend time with these as they made 'learning' fun!

cooking! chemically experiments, then writing them up.