About 19 million students across Türkiye studying in preschool, primary, secondary and high schools will take their first semester report cards ("karne") and enter the semester break Friday.

The first semester of the 2022-2023 academic year, which started on Sept. 12, 2022, will end with the ring of the bell on Friday and students will be sent for the winter holidays until Feb. 3.

The Ministry of National Education (MEB), by expanding the scope of the summer school organized last year, will open free courses during the semester break for the first time this year. In this context, free courses will be implemented for the first time in the winter period and will start on Saturday, Jan. 21 and will continue until Feb. 5.

During the semester break, free courses with fun and innovative learning approaches will be opened in four areas: science, art, mathematics and English.

Students and teachers will be able to benefit from the courses opened in their provinces. Various activities will be organized for children in all provinces, starting from Istanbul, Kocaeli, Ankara and Gaziantep. Kocaeli Congress Center in Izmit is already ready for art and fun workshops organized by Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality reported Ihlas News Agency (IHA). Some 118 events are set to be held in 24 different workshops, during a five-day period in Kocaeli.

Apart from this, for the first time, five different digital materials will be available to students for the semester break for preschool, primary and secondary school levels. The MEB will make the new digital education materials available on the official website for students who receive their report cards on Friday.

The materials to be used in the free courses are designed in a way that allows students of all levels to have both an instructive and enjoyable time by experiencing the learning process differently and according to their needs and development level.

A new mathematics program with innovative approaches for high school level courses is to take place during the semester break as well. Through activities titled "The adventure of data," students will be able to create their own password algorithms and get an introduction to coding.

Science and Art Education Centers (BILSEMs) will be open to all students between grades 2 and 12. Some 55 different workshops in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, software development, aviation and space, renewable energy, scientific research techniques, and mind games will be presented to students in different regions of the country.

After the two-week semester break, the second semester will start on Feb. 6 and will conclude with the end of the academic year on June 16, 2023.

As the semester break will last for two weeks during the winter period, and most of the children will spend a long time indoors, some educational specialists placed an additional warning for the parents on the matter of avoiding excessive usage of digital objects during the period.

Professor Tuncay from Sivas Cumhuriyet University (SCU) Faculty of Education Department of Educational Sciences Lecturer and President of the Association for Combating Digital Addiction said: ''Families should be careful about this because, with the hypnotic techniques offered there, our children's perception of value degenerates. In addition, children's commitment to digital objects causes them to deviate from the standards of their own culture. There is an alienation from our universal human values laying underneath technology."

Giving information about what children and their families should do during the holiday, another educational specialist suggested that parents should try to answer the question "How should we evaluate the holiday" and try to build approaches, activities and programs that will help children to rest and to establish a relationship of trust with their parents. ''A safe family climate and communication skills with their children are extremely important,'' Dilci said.