Give Your Kids A Smarter Summer

Summers are meant for sticky, drippy popsicles, running through sprinklers, camping in the woods, and lazy afternoons of reading on the lawn. But they’re also a perfect time for learning.

Meaningful learning doesn’t necessarily mean your child needs to attend summer school or spend all day hunched over a book. There are all sorts of fun and creative ways that you can keep your child’s mind active. Many of these methods make learning fun so that your child won’t even realize that he or she is learning!

Take Advantage of Teachable Moments
Keeping your children engaged in learning doesn’t have to be forced, nor does it have to take up a lot of their time or yours. If you’ve got a trip to a baseball game planned, spend some time with your child calculating batting averages or slugging percentages to keep mathematics on their mind. Cook with your child at home to learn to follow directions and measure fractions, adjust recipes for portions, etc.  Take a trip to the zoo and have your child read the animal descriptions aloud to you to keep their reading skills fresh.

Encourage your child to create a journal about their summer adventures.  Draw pictures or add photographs and then write a few sentences together about each one. Bind the book together and you have a treasure that you can read together over and over again.
 
Headed out to dinner?  Have your child calculate the tip.  Ask him or her to assist in making a budget for grocery shopping. Any little bit makes a difference, and each of these activities will help in maintaining your child’s current skill level in math and reading. What’s more, demonstrating that the skills they learn in school have actual applicability to real life will make their learning that much more valuable and meaningful.

With a little bit of effort, your child can enjoy the leisure and pace of summer and still uphold a summer learning routine. There are opportunities to learn something new and fuel curiosities all around you.