How to Keep Your Kids Occupied This Spring Break

Spring Break is just around the corner. You know what that means. Your kids will be at home for a full week, unoccupied and bored, and willing to tell you about it. It stops being cute after the first few complaints. Once the number of ‘mom, I’m bored’s have hit the double digits, you’ll realize just how long a week can truly be. Don’t let their boredom ruin your time together. Keep them occupied (and out of trouble) by encouraging them to play a musical instrument.

How to Keep Your Kids Occupied This Spring Break
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Learning to play an instrument isn’t just a quick fix for Spring Break boredom. If they keep to it, it can become a lifelong hobby with a profound effect on their lives. Music has the ability to have a positive impact on people of all ages – not just young children – as its benefits include physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. A musician earns a sense of community as they develop communication skills, creativity, self-confidence, and team work.

Though it’s true, you’ll notice the immediate effects of how they’re out of your hair during Spring Break, music lessons will give your children more than just something to do. Study after study has confirmed what neuroscientists and pediatricians have thought for a long time: early music training develops the young mind and improves cognitive abilities.

As your son or daughter picks up the violin, guitar, or piano their brain is being put to the test. Synapses are firing on all cylinders as they learn the basics of their instruments and music theory. In particular, the left hemisphere is deeply affected, which, if you remember from your own school days, is responsible for the ability to process language. Reading and playing music strengthens the pathways in this part of the brain. As your child’s musical abilities improve so will their ability to understand and express through word.

How to Keep Your Kids Occupied This Spring Break
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It’s not just in English class that you’ll see an improvement. Music also stimulates the areas of the brain that are responsible for your child’s understanding of spatial reality and mathematics. As they become familiar with timing, your child is training their brain. Eventually, you’ll see a noticeable difference in their ability to process and solve problems.

As the grades on their report card go up, their anxiety will evaporate. Studies have shown that playing an instrument can relieve stress. As children learn to master and coordinate their hands, arms, and lips into making sounds this patterned movement can lower the amount of stress hormones flooding their system. As a result, they’ll have lower blood pressure and a calmer disposition.

A calmer disposition and a more confident one too! They can be proud about the progress they make with their instrument over the weeks, months, and years that they play it. It doesn’t matter if they play the piano or the tuba, their musical instrument has the ability to be an extension of themselves, allowing them to express their emotions in ways they couldn’t before. As they develop their skills, an opportunity to play and create will further improve their self-confidence.

With this many benefits associated with music, it goes far beyond keeping your children occupied during Spring Break. That’s only an added bonus. The main advantages will give them the tools they need to be a successful adult. But getting a child to stick with their lessons is notoriously hard. To find a teacher who can help your children learn to love their instrument and want to play it, sign them up for Long & McQuade music lessons. They supply skilled professional instructors in private and group lessons. Their musical instructors create a supportive environment that encourages them to experiment and have fun. More importantly, they’re available at convenient times to accommodate any kind of schedule – even well into the post-Spring Break madness when everyone’s back to normal.

In the meantime, during their brief week off from school, you won’t have to hear about how they don’t know what to do. With a fun and exciting new instrument to learn and practice, they’ll be too busy to be bored.

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