Board games offer many benefits for children including lessons such as strategy and fair play. Some games take education even further by providing opportunities to learn important skills such as reading and math.

Educational board games are fun to play, give you quality time with your child, and are good for summer fun and learning.

We love Rummikub in our house, it teaches kids to add up and to know their numbers and number combinations really well.

Gardens are a wonderful way to teach children about the plant life-cycle as well as the eco-system of birds, insects and plants even in a small space.

Kids that actively engage in nurturing a garden also learn responsibility and the pride of seeing a tiny seed grow into something that can be consumed or shared with others.

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There are a number of different organisations that are encourage kids to read and some even offer rewards to children that join and complete their summer reading programme.

Here’s a list of summer reading challenges for kids, many offer book suggestions by age.

As your child reads encourage them to write down a list of new words they come across and look up their meanings.

Another way to stop the summer slide is to help kids expand their vocabulary. This can be easily done by hanging a new word on the refrigerator and then keeping tracking of who uses it the most in a week.

You could also run a Family Spelling Bee competition every week for a bit of fun and word practice.

Or how about a regular game of Scrabble or Bananagrams together?

One of the benefits of the internet is the ability to explore the world…from the computer.

Possible virtual field trips include the Arctic, a chocolate factory, Macchu Picchu, or how about a day at The Louvre?

You could get your child to make a travel diary of their day out to the amazing place they pick to explore. What did they eat? Who did they meet? What did they see? How did they travel there?

Games like Sudoku or logic puzzles can keep kids engaged while also practicing important math skills.

Mathplayground.com has a variety of games covering topics such as addition, multiplication, fractions, geometry and pre-algebra.

Or for older kids, Ken Ken offers challenging math puzzles designed for junior high and high school students.

Kids generally have an abundance of free time during the summer. One way to fill that time is to engage children in interesting projects that they can make themselves.

There is a growing Do It Yourself (DIY) movement focused on kids and includes interesting projects like learning to code and remixing music videos.

How about making a Stop-Motion Movie? Or maybe your child would enjoy a fun home-based Engineering Project?

Lemonade stands are always an option, but there are many ways for kids to experiment with entrepreneurship over the summer. From washing cars to making cupcakes to walking dogs.

This will teach them about costs and pricing, they will learn about buying materials to make what they sell, they will have to calculate change and so on.

There are some great apps that can help kids learn everything from geography to science to new languages.

Here are Educational Apps for kids aged 8-12 and Science Apps recommended by parents.