The Best Summer Learning Activities
Wnat to make sure your kiddo goes back to school stronger than they left?
Summer is a great time to help your kids hone their skills and actually start school ahead of the pack.
This is a bit of a round up post of my best summer learning activities posts that are proven to help your kids get ahead in their academics.
1. Promote lots of Reading
How many books your kids read has a direct correlation to their academic success. There are lots of ways to encourage reading, whether your kids naturally gravitate towards books or not.
- Listen to audio books to get kids to love stories. Kids who struggle to read spend so much time decoding the words, that they are not really comprehending the story.
- Visit different libraries in your area. It can be super fun to see what different libraries offer during the summer. Visit other libraries in your local library’s network and you can even check out books!
- Give your kids an allowance to purchase their own books. $5 or $10 dollars can go a long way if you visit second hand book stores and garage sales.
- Let your kids see you reading. The best way to get kids to do anything is to lead by example. Make an effort to talk about what you are reading. Keep your books out, in plain site for all to see.
2. Be Intentional about summer Screentime
The hard cold fact is, we need to be intentional about our kids’ screen use. The long, lazy days of summer get filled upp pretty quickly with screens.
This may be unpopular, but I believe we should steer clear of those cute printable screen rules – you know the ones where kids have to do all sorts of things BEFORE they get screen time. They take the emphasis off the fun activities in the middle and make kids rush through all the good stuff, just to get to have screens.
But how do I tame screens over the summer?
- Help your kids pursue screenfree activities they love.
- Use old school tech – listen to CD’s or audiobooks on an old Ipod.
- Give your kids the gift of boredom and let them come up with things to do.
- Get outside as much as possible.
- Make a bit of room for screens in your routine – screens allowed from 4 to 6 pm OR an hour of video gaming daily, etc.
- Model being off a screen yourself (BIG ONE!!)
Less is Better, when it comes to screens
You can start with a conversation about screen use over the summer, express your expectations and come up with some family “rules” around when it’s okay to be on a screen.
While these will vary from family to family, my advice is that less screen time is always better.
3. Find a good workbook alternative
The summer slide is a real thing. If kids do not keep up over the summer and practice their skills, they will have a harder time transitioning back to school in the fall.
But, hey, I get it!! Most kids do not love to sit and work on a workbook. There are other activities that you can entice them with that have just as many benefits – and arugeably, even more!!
Great workbook alternatives include:
- Puzzle books that promote focus, and persistence through a difficult task
- Origami books that increase kids visual perception, confidence, and frustration skills
- How-to books for builders help kids with planning, spatial awareness, fine motor skills, confidence and concentration.
- Step by step drawing books help kids learn to follow directions, build confidence and see that practice improves a skill.
See loads of the best workbook alternatives HERE.
4. let your kids be bored
Being bored is one of the best summer learning activities out there! It helps our kids in a few big ways:
Boredom helps our kids regulate their emotions and develop frustration tolerance– it’s not always fun to be bored and kids have to push thru and manage those initial feelings.
Being bored helps our kids develop planning and organizational strategies….a big plus for our kids that often struggle in this area and can use lots of extra practice.
Having kids come up with their own plan fosters self-esteem and creative thinking.
If you need some ideas for this, keep reading…..we’ve got some good tips below.
5. Teach Your kids how to occupy themselves
This idea is so important, I wrote a whole blog post about it. Getting kids to be more independent and learning how to entertain themselves is such an important skill.
“Independent Leisure Time” saves me Every summer
The idea is easy:
- At a time designated by you, declare it to be “Independent Leisure Time”
- Everyone in the family finds their own space to retreat to, whether it’s their bedrooms, sofa in the family room, kitchen table etc.
- Everyone has their own activity to pursue – no screens allowed. Reading, drawing, playing with legos, listening to audio books (on an old iPod, tape recorder, or CD player.)
- The biggest “rule” is that no one bothers anyone else for the entire time.
- Start with the amount of time that kids can be successful with. I think ours was 10 minutes! But, you can add a few minutes each day, until you make it to 30 or 60!
Not only does this afford you a little breather, but it teaches kids how to occupy themselves.
Tips to make this successful:
Having a timer for each kid can help with the anxiety some kids might feel. We kept a TimeTimer outside their bedrooms so they could glance and see how much time was left. But this was not needed as time went on and they got used to the idea.
You can have activities that you save just for this time, so they are fresh and appealing. Keep a box with art supplies or books, a yo-yo,etc. that only comes out for Independent Leisure Time.
