The spring flowers are in bloom now and soon summer will be here. Trips, camps, and visits from family are just around the corner. While planning your summer, don’t forget to plan for learning. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
Make the most of trips. Traveling is one of the grandest of learning opportunities. You can calculate miles, discuss historical significance of various places, and even delve into why certain landscapes are the way they are. Language games to be played in the car are limitless! Blank US maps make perfect license plate games – color in the state of each license plate you see. Then try to name its capital and brainstorm all the facts you know about that state. I know of one family taking a cross-county trip that had each child write a report about one of the states through which they would be traveling. When traveling through a state, the kiddo who had researched that state presented their report.
Read! Whether a book at the beach or just some quiet time at home, summer is a great time for reading. Most libraries have summer reading programs that follow a theme and offer related events and activities. It would be fun to keep track of all the books the entire family read for one summer. Make the question “So what have you been reading?” a common at the dinner table.
Experiment with online learning. Kids seem to have a natural knack for technology. Make the most of this inclination by enrolling them in an online course for the summer. One website that makes this a feasible option is United Digital Learning (www.uniteddigitallearning.com). UDL offers 6 curricula in a monthly subscription format. You can choose the curriculum that bests suits your child and pay as you go. Just right for summer learning!
Keep skills sharp. Whether multiplication facts or the periodic table of elements, determine what your child needs to work on and encourage a little practice each day. A fun way to keep math and language arts skills sharp is Study Island. Study Island is an online program that guides students through activities to reinforce their knowledge and skills. Practice comes in the form of downloadable worksheets or games played online. Each student receives as much help and practice as they need to master the skill or concept. Parents can easily track students’ work and progress. Global Student Network (www.globalstudentnetwork.com) offers Study Island for $39 per student, per subject, per year.
Spend time outside. The great outdoors is a great classroom! Observing critters in the backyard, star-gazing, planting a garden – all these are science lessons at their best. Time outside also enhances use of language, as experience becomes the basis of imagery. How can you ever describe a sunset aptly if you’ve never seen one yourself? How can you connect with a nautical book if you’ve never seen the sea firsthand? Summer affords the time and opportunity to learn much from the outside world.
So whether you’re penciling in items on the wall calendar or entering events into your digital device, be sure to give some thought about how learning can fit into your summer plans.
Copyright © 2014 J. Hoffman / Global Student Network
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Email: JHoffman@GlobalStudentNetwork.com