How to Continue Learning in the Summer

Now that school is over and summer has begun, it’s time to find some simple ways to keep your children engaged in learning. Many children will attend summer camp and other fun adventure, but we keep ours home throughout the summer. Mostly, we just want to spend more time with them and have some wonderful family experiences together. We also want to keep our children learning in their second language too. Dual Language Skills in the Summer gives practical ideas for engaging in the target language too.

We find the key to success is building a general layout of ideas that can be used again and again. Each of our ideas below is easy to implement, but also easy to vary from week to week. The last thing you want to do is put in a ton of work for the activity to be a flop. Instead, flip that work around. You decide on some easy to implement ideas and let your children do all the work.

Keep Learning

Even with all the family fun, we make some time to keep learning throughout the summer. First, we keep to our daily reading minutes from the school year, or even read a little longer. No slacking on reading in this household. Plus, my children get to see me read. Throughout the summer we even read the same books together so we can have a book chat. To keep this habit up, we spend a lot of time in our local library and even visit some other libraries around the area.

School Computer Programs Learning

We are so blessed that the computer based programs that our children use throughout the school year are still available during the summer. So we continue to utilize these during our summer break too. For example, we love Lexia, dreambox, RazKids, pathblazers, epic, and prodigy. And with the dual language program, the district added istation and learningespanol. These just happen to be the ones our district has available, but definitely check to see if the programs used in your district continue throughout the summer months. Such a great opportunity to do a little a day to keep them ready for school in the fall.

Khan Academy Learning in the Summer

Then, we add in a few other things to mix it up and keep them engaged throughout the summer. I sign them up for Khan Academy to brush up and prepare for next year’s math work. This is a great way to introduce new skills to your child so that when they learn the concept in school, they have some knowledge to build on. Khan Academy also has some science, language learning, and even reading programs. It’s free and easy to use, plus it is quick – so it only requires a few minutes a day or every few days.

Math Talks for Learning

We spend a little time working on math without the algorithm or traditional math method. For this, we take one math problem and discuss as many different ways as we can to find the answer using mental math. Sometimes we will draw out pictures, sometimes we discuss the words in the problem and what they tell us, other times we use strategies to fluidly manipulate numbers in different ways.

There are so many awesome websites to get problems from but we love youcubed. Jo Baler is a professor at Stanford University. She has lots of different problems for children to preserve in solving and look at math a little differently. We love using these problems, even repeating them from summer to summer. My children always find new ways to work them and the best part is that they are usually multi-age problems so you can have children with different math skills trying these problems.

You can even make up your own problems. Any word problem or even operational problem will do. Try mentally figuring out 147 + 293 or 531 – 385. Turn these into word problems to add even more of a challenge. You could try some multiplication and division too. Timmy is baking cakes. He has 3 boxes of cake mix, but figured out he only needs 2/3 of the box for each cake. What is the most amount of cakes Timmy can bake? Yes, we could do the division, but how you could solve this mentally.

Act out a story

Pick a favorite picture book or short story. Let your children’s imagination run wild with creating a way to act out the story. They can write the script or even change the story to make something new. Then they should decide how to show the characters. For example, make simple masks for each character using paper plates and yarn. Another example is to make simple puppets from paper bags or socks. Moreover, you could copy pages from the book or even find coloring pages to turn into the characters.

This works on so many different skills that you might consider a story for each week. If your children are faster or the weather is poor, you might try a different story each day. Not only are your children reading, but they will need to write a little to plan their play or performance. Then they are creating using art and possibly even music to add to the drama of their presentation. Finally, they will need to listen and speak as they perform.

Summer Research

We also tend to incorporate some in-depth research projects that are child driven. They pick a topic of interest to them and we browse the library looking for books and other resources. Then they get to learn about their topic and make their own presentation. Sometimes the presentation is pictures, sometimes a poster, sometimes a movie, but really it can be anything to share what they have learned. Totally child driven and if they start a topic and dislike it, no worries. Scrap that one, head back to the library and find something else.

We love to use some of this time to explore science and social studies more in depth. Our children’s school tends to spend much less time on these subjects, especially with the addition of learning a new language. So we tend to find our children are lacking in these areas. We love to explore concepts in history, geography (especially Spanish speaking countries), and politics.

And if your entire family is working on the family concept together, we find car rides are a great time to learn together. Not only is everyone in the car and since we are driving, we really can’t focus on much else. So we ask one child to read aloud, then we talk about the concepts more in depth together.

Summer Playground Tour

We also love to use research to find new ways to explore our hometown and neighboring towns. This summer we are going to embark on a playground tour. I ask my children to all agree on a playground they want to try each week. Then we spend an hour or two exploring this playground, maybe even pack a lunch to extend our time. Not only do they need to look at playgrounds, but they need to find the address and directions. This works well with math also because they need to determine when we should leave based on the time it takes to travel to the new park.

And hopefully, your children will make some new friends along the way. They may find a new piece of equipment they love. And they might just build some physical strength and stamina too.

Nature Hikes

We love to take our children on a tour of our town or local towns. We plan a bike ride, walk, or nature hike together. Often times we ask our children to research a new place they want to explore or an old favorite they wish to revisit. We love to explore science and history on these hikes. The best part is that many of these are free.

Our learners can explore biology and physics while we enjoy our stroll. We talk about the different plants, animals, and relationships to focus on biology. We also share about the different ways things move and the different states of matter we encounter. Sometimes we get lucky and find ourselves near a water source. This is a great place to discover chemistry with your child.

If you are new to hiking, or just want to double check that you have all the best supplies, head on over to our Hiking with Family Guide. We include all our must have hiking supplies to ensure safety as well as our family hiking rules and tips for hiking safely with kids.

Recipes

My children love cooking and baking. So I let them explore the cookbooks and pick out recipes to try. Then they get to go shopping to find the ingredients. If your child really needs a challenge, teach them to double or half the recipe. Not only do they often need to work with fractions when cooking and baking, but they also need to read and follow directions. Plus there is a lot of time management and organization skills used too!

Tie this to a summer sale of some kind. Let your children set up a lemonade stand or treat stand. They will need to create signs for their sale to attract customers and let customers know what they are selling. They will also need to have an idea of any allergens in their product. Moreover, math is a must. They will need to determine the cost of the product and then figure out how to price their product to actually make a profit. Lastly, they will need to interact with their customers by listening and speaking.

Summer Goals

Help your child to set summer goals in any area of their life. For example, these goals might be to practice their musical instrument, read a certain number of books, improve in a sport they love, begin to run a mile, or even master a new skill like tying their shoes. To turn this into a learning activity, have your child pick a timeline to master their goal. Then they will need to divide up their goal into manageable chunks with specific expectations at each point. This adds a math component.

Next, they will need to develop a tracking system for their goal. Here they will need to document or write about their progress and they may even turn that in to a visual display such as a graph or chart. Using their documentation or visual display, they will need to evaluate their progress. Finally, they will analyze their goal, determine if they need to change their goal or set a new goal once the original one was met.

Summer Writing

Finally, we try to incorporate some writing. This can be in writing to friends and delivering handwritten letters. Always so fun when they receive them in the mail. We journal about our reading or things we have done throughout the summer. They love to write their own recipes and even enjoy writing the occasional story. Our writing tends to be simple but just enough to keep them practicing. For some great writing templates, check out Easy Writing Templates.

Final Thoughts

The trick with summer learning is not to stress about it! If you do some learning activities one day and not another, that’s perfectly wonderful. Your child don’t need to be doing formal learning activities to be learning anyways. Helping day organize his tools can be just as educational as that math program. Helping create a garden can teach so many more skills that any program that you would need to force your child to use.

So use the programs when they work, try other things when those lose their engagement. Any little bit that you do is more than they would have gotten without your support. Plus it’s summer, and we all want to relax and spend some quality time together. Leave a comment below to share your favorite ways to keep your children learning and practicing their skills over the summer months.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.