Teachers often notice that students experience skill losses over the summer break if they do not continue to be involved in learning opportunities. Our hope is that parents will take the time to do some activities that will help students maintain their skills over the break. My husband and I try to do many things with our daughter to keep her mind engaged during the summer. We also try to encourage our student's parents to do the same thing. There are many ways this can be done with things you have in your home. Take a look:
Paper Plate Pantry Math
Post Paper Plates next to the Pantry or on the Pantry Door. On each Paper Plate, post a set of Problem Solving Questions for your child to answer. For example: Pick two cans of vegetables. Which can weighs more? How much more does it weigh than the other can? Have several plates with several sets of questions. Each day have your child solve the questions on one of the plates. You can even let them create some questions and write them on a plate to post for younger siblings.
TV Time
TV
watching can be a math learning experience. When your child sits down to watch
his/her favorite program, have him/her write the time on a piece of paper or
Post-It type sticky note. Post it on the side of the TV or on the coffee table. When the program is over, add another post-it with that time. How much
time elapsed between
the beginning and ending of the
show? Post the time each commercial comes on. How much time elapses between commercial breaks?
Language Arts Letter Magnets
Magnetic
letters can be found very inexpensively at dollar stores around town. They can stick to the refrigerator, a filing cabinet or a cookie sheet. They have a wide variety of uses for kids of all ages:
ABC
Challenge: Put the letters in alphabetical order
but then pull every five or so letters out of the mix. Place the ‘lost’
letters under the alphabet and ask your child to replace them.
Find
Me….: For the early letter-learners, simply
asking, Can you find me a letter ‘M’? What letter makes the sound… etc.
Family
Names: Start with the child’s name, add Mom
and Dad, family members and pets. Challenge your child to build these names.
Sentences: If
you have several sets of letters your child can create sentences.
Travel Games
Many families take road trips during the summer. This is a perfect time to interact as a family in fun learning games. But even if you are just driving around town, you can engage your children in learning in the car. When you are driving in a city, each
person looks for words on signs and billboards that contain letters of the
alphabet. (Exclude the letters in License plates, that is a separate game) You have to find the letters in order (Ex: A
in Target, B in Best Buy, C in MacDonald’s, etc.) and once one person uses the
sign, the other players may not use it.
The first person to make it to Z is the winner. That same game can be played using only letters found in License Plates. Start at A, when a player locates an A in a license plate they move on to look for B. The first person to make it to Z is the winner. To make these games cooperative instead of competitive, have all players look for the letters together. After someone spots A, everyone looks for B. And the game continues until the last letter is found. Then, celebrate: High Fives for everyone in the car!
All these activities and many more can be found in the Lazy Days of Summer Activities, Games and Puzzle Packet. These activities can be used with your own kids or the students in your class. Choose the pages you want to print and send home with students as a summer packet at the end of the year. This is not an ordinary packet full of worksheets. This product contains many games, activities, puzzles and ideas that parents can use to help their child continue to learn and grow throughout the summer. Here are a few sample pages.
Packet
Includes:
•Cover Page with Parent Letter
•Math Interactive Activities and
Games
•Hundreds Chart
•Language Arts Interactive
Activities and Games
•Summer Reading Suggestions and
Ideas
•Reading Logs for June, July, August
•Travel Games for Riding in the
Car/Plane/Train/etc.
•Summer Writing Journal Ideas
•My Summer Vacation Writing Prompt
Page
•Vacation Maze (two versions-easy
and more difficult)
•Fun in the Sun Crossword (two
versions-easy and more difficult)
•Summer Word Search (two
versions-easy and more difficult)
Click the link below if you are interested in finding out more about this product:
Click here to get Free Reading Response Bookmarks. These bookmarks are great reading incentives. They can help students to track their reading at any time of the year. Print these bookmarks on cardstock and give them out to students when they leave for summer break. Give each student a goal for reading a certain number of books or pages over the summer. As students complete a book, they document the title and date on the bookmark. Then, when students return in August or September, they can return bookmarks to you or the school librarian for a special treat or reward. What a great way to encourage reading and learning over the break!
Enjoy the rest of the summer and I hope you are able to help your kiddoes avoid the "Summer Slide!"
Until Next Time...
What a fab blog post! Love all the different activities and ideas you have come up with!
ReplyDeleteTeaching Autism
Thank you, you are so sweet!
DeleteWonderful activities....so creative!! I will be trying some of these with my children.
ReplyDeleteLaura
www.discoveringhiddenpotential.com
Thank you! I hope your children enjoy the activities. My daughter really loves when we do these type of activities with her.
DeleteThese activities look awesome! Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sasha!
DeleteLove the math paper plate activity! Kiddos learn best with real life experiences and this is great. :) Your Lazy Days of Summer packet is full of fun learning activities. Love, Love, Love :)
ReplyDeleteCrystal
http://wyattswiseowlteachercreations.blogspot.com/
Thanks! Thanks again for hosting the Blog Hop. I downloaded your Freebie! Love it!!
Delete