With rodeo season in full swing, it’s a wonderful opportunity for parents to stimulate young minds and celebrate the season with activities.
We spoke to Kelly Pritchard, owner of Children’s Lighthouse of Lake Houston, about ways to keep your kids engaged during Spring Break. She tells us Children’s Lighthouse aims to nurture young minds by instilling lifelong learning skills through its value-based C.A.R.E.S curriculum, which stands for:
- Character-building values for social-emotional development
- Active engagement through exploration
- Research based on current early education best practices
- Embedded content in activities and lessons
- Skills based on national and state benchmarks
Pritchard shared some rodeo-themed activities that align with that curriculum:
- Cowboy hat crafts – Kids can create cowboy hats using construction paper, markers, and stickers.
- Rodeo collage – Provide children with magazines, scissors, glue, and poster board. They can cut out pictures of horses, cowboys, bulls, and more.
- Rodeo word search – Print out a word search featuring rodeo vocabulary or create a custom theme. Kids can take time to find the words with crayons or markers.
These activities are a great way to foster creative and artistic expression by experimenting with colors, shapes, and designs which prompts creative thinking. Exposing children to these crafts is also a great way to build their vocabulary related to the topic. For example, they may learn words like “cowboy”, “rodeo”, “horse”, and “lasso”.
Lastly, drawing, coloring, and cutting out designs help improve fine motor skills, which is essential for tasks like writing, tying shoelaces, and buttoning clothes.
Children’s Lighthouse has over a dozen schools in the greater Houston Area.
