I know with school nearing a close for many of you, you’re wondering what you’re going to do so your kiddos don’t forget all those precious tidbits you so carefully lodged in their brains over the course of the year. While I don’t plan anything super hard core for summer (we all need a break, me included!) I do keep the kids reading over the summer, mostly fun books. They get to pick what they want to read and as long as it’s appropriate for them, that’s fine.
Just to keep all of the other subjects fresh in their minds, we also do some activities out of the Carson Dellosa Summer Bridge activity books! They’re literally ZERO planning on my part, and great for keeping kids skills fresh over the summer.
Keeping up with your students reading, math, and other basic skills over the long summer break is important. I’m not sure if this happens to your kids, but it seems like a few weeks after school is out my kids seem to forget everything they’ve learned the previous year.
Depending on the day, I usually have the kids are do 1 lesson per day out of their workbook. I don’t usually force the issue too much, there tends to be a time each day where they start getting bored, and the Summer Bridge activities are the perfect solution! The great thing about them, is that they’re colorful and fun, so it’s not hard to get them to do a page or two.
Just to make it a little more fun, we use our Educational Insights Smens pens to make it a little bit more fun. They LOVE IT!
And I kid you not, one of them said “Wow, this is so much more fun than regular school!” and the other came up later in the day and actually asked me if she could do some school in her new workbook! Are you serious? YEAH!
Interested in some summer bridge activities?
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My plan for this year is to have the kids red daily and due a summer workbook just like this one.
We take a lot of trips to the library and read, read, read! My kids are 5 and 3 so reading and learning to read is our primary focus. But we try to throw in math throughout the day. I call out numbers in the car and have my oldest break down the number into place values and then using the same numbers turn it into another number (ex: 97, 9 groups of 10…7 ones. new number = 79, 7 groups of 10, 9 ones).
We school year round to keep their skills fresh, but we change things up in the summer and find more things we can learn outdoors. Math and reading, however, are non-negotiable.
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I would love to win this! This is our 1st year homeschooling so I don’t have a lot of tips on keeping the kids from forgetting stuff. I do let them watch their math, science and Bible DVDs in the car while we’re driving and I think we’re going to be year-round homeschoolers so our break won’t be quite as long as the whole summer…
We read lots of books from the library, enter summer reading programs, go to museums, and buy dollar store workbooks.
This will be the second summer for our homeschool family. My son will be finishing 1st grade this month! This summer we will go to the library a lot and participate in their Summer reading program. I also plan on doing at least one science experiment a week, completing Artistic Pursuits since we weren’t able to during the year, and having my son make a summer journal to practice his handwriting and spelling. He will also either illustrate the journal or we will print out a picture taken of an event.
Over the summer, we have the kids (3 of them currently, one on the way) pick out a book and plan a two-three week exploration on it. This summer our oldest choose a book about the Revoluntionary War, so we are cooking period foods, going to make paper dolls, spend a day without electricity (that is going to be terrifying), make homemade candles and few other things to tie in with the period. They each participate and have bridging assignments as well, like a short story about what it was like to live during that time, word searches, math problems, other such things. Each book is very different, as are our children. We also read a bunch of other books relating to the subjects they choose, but the main book is our jumping off point. If money and time allows we will go see some historical sites, but since we live in Guam, its doubtful I will find anything relating to their subjects this summer!
I read to them, I also have my six year old read to me now. Bible story activities and learning through nature.