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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Our family loves books. In addition to library visits and reading clubs, we spend a good deal of time each day reading – either aloud or to ourselves.
In addition, this summer, my eight year old son and I are challenging each other to learn the state capitals. I know I learned them in elementary school…………but that was so long ago 🙂
Take care,
Alison
I also subscribe to your blog via email.
Our son has reading delay and autism so we’ll cut back on what we usually do but we have to keep up with his reading on a weekly basis or he loses what he learns, even if we just skip a week of reading. Other than that, he has had a bad habit all year of constantly asking “Are we done yet?” every few minutes on subjects he needs but doesn’t like and even tells us he’s done his assignment when he really hasn’t so he’s behind on what he was supposed to accomplish this school year. I don’t know if we’ll keep going until he’s caught up or let it go until the beginning of the next school year. We haven’t decided yet. My gut tells me he won’t learn by not having to finish what he was supposed to do and continue on with this behavior next year so we’ll probably keep going until he’s finished his studies for this year. So, it will be up to him to either get busy and finish so he can have at least some of a summer break or he can keep on what he’s been doing and end up having a year round school this year.
I absolutely love your emails I get. They have given me several ideas of activities to do with not only our son but also our grandson! I’ve even forwarded a couple to friends and suggesting they sign up also.
I added Carson-Dellosa to my like list. Well, I think I did. Did you know there are three options for the company? When I did a search I got all three options!
We’re doing a few workbook pages each day to create focus for my rambunctious 4yr old and keep his fine motor skills steady. We participate in the library’s summer reading program and I’m hoping to do some fun simple science experiments I’ve seen in blogs. We’ll also be doing art & craft projects and visiting zoos, museums and science centers. (We get free kid’s admission tickets to lots of educational places through our local PBS kids club, IPTV. Those places are 2hrs away since we’re in a rural are, but they are great to go to!) My son loves puzzles, so we do lots of those and I just got several Kumon books to focus on several types of skills. I’ve never seen these books before but plan on getting them even if I don’t win now that I’ve looked at them on amazon.
I follow by email subscription.
I added ericashomeschool @ericahomeschool to my tweet list! Just getting into doing it so I’ll be honest, I don’t go there very often.
We do crafts, reading lots of field trips family fun