Welcome back! In the first installment of this article, we began the discussion on active summer learning and how you can ensure your child is prepared for the upcoming school year by reading and learning a new skill. In this second part, we will continue the discussion and offer a few more summer-learning ideas.
Take Vacations or Field Trips
Get out and explore! Whether you visit a beach resort, go camping in the mountains, or leave the country on a family summer vacation, don’t simply delight in the luxury of getting away, but take it as an opportunity for your whole family to experience new things. Learn everything you can about where you travel to and allow your children to make comparisons to what is familiar and discover the differences. If you are staying home for the summer, get out into your community for some family field trips. Whether it is the local park for a picnic, the zoo, a museum, or the local botanical garden, there are plenty of learning opportunities right in your area. Adopt the same mindset that schools do when they take children on field trips and teach them something valuable as you go.
Keep a Summer Journal
Have your child create a journal or scrapbook of their summer adventures. Let them highlight the activities that they do, the books they read, and the new places they have discovered. Creating a tangible item that holds all the new things will help them remember and offer a keepsake that allows them to rediscover things they may forget by the time fall comes. Journals and scrapbooks also allow your children to use creativity and express themselves, which is important to their development, and something that engaging in screentime cannot offer.
Attend a Summer Camp or Daycare
Even if you are a stay-at-home parent and have the summer off to explore and learn with your child, there is great value in your child attending a summer camp or daycare. Even if the summer camp is a day camp offered by your local church, youth or rec center, or daycare, your child will have the opportunity to be in a structured environment that will motivate them to participate in activities and stave off boredom. They will be able to explore and learn with children their age, which is important to social development as well as academics. Many camps and daycares have a curriculum or weekly themes that incorporate active learning and play on different age-appropriate topics.
Let Them Play!
Never underestimate the power or importance of plenty of active play time. Don’t worry about filling up summer with a rigid learning schedule and remember the value of play in learning. Turn off the screens and encourage your children to engage in imaginative or active play. Provide them with toys that encourage learning, a plain cardboard box to turn into their own creation or the freedom to explore their outdoor environment. Role-playing and dress-up, playing with dolls or building blocks, or offering craft supplies to allow them to express themselves creatively are all important to learning and development. Inspire their creativity and encourage them to grow and develop through childhood play. Afterall, we are only kids once — never stop exploring!
At Child Time, Inc., we are dedicated to the healthy growth and development of children and approach each child as curious individuals who are capable of constructing their own learning. We provide topics of learning and allow children to be immersed in the theme to discover and learn in a variety of ways. We offer early childhood learning programs for children from infant to elementary-aged children and help to guide each child in their learning journey. To help provide your child with an enriching summer that will promote learning and set them up for success, contact us today!
