Ah, summertime with the kids. We love it, but it can also require some huge adjustments. The kids are home all day, or on a modified schedule, and trying to keep the household operating while also luxuriating in lazy days is a precarious balance.
In our house, we also try hard to battle the “summer slide” educators warn us about. While we aren’t setting up a homeschooling room for summer months, we do want to teach our children to be lifelong learners. Learning is fun, and it doesn’t have to be restricted to at-desk-in-classroom learning.
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Here are some ways we plan to keep our kids’ brains engaged this summer:
- Keep them reading! There are so many wonderful ways to encourage kids to read. Barnes & Noble offers a very simple and easy summer reading challenge for kids. We do this every year and it is always exciting to our children. If they read eight books (any eight) they earn a free book from the store. Many libraries also have summer reading challenges where children can earn for what they read.If your child is motivated by screentime, check out the Epic Books app, where they can not only read digitally (and some books have a read-to-me option for early readers), but readers can take quizzes to test comprehension and earn badges and points.Battle of the Books is an incentive program to get (and keep) kids reading. The 2018 reading list is great!If you are looking for help picking the right book, don’t discount nonfiction books,and then don’t forget our list of 65+ chapter book series for kids, as well.
- Podcasts for kids. For our kids’ ages, which is elementary school, we adore Brains On. It is a fabulous podcast that is entertaining for all while also educational. But Common Sense has a great list of 20 podcasts for kids. It may take some time to find the right fit for you, but once you find one that works, worlds open.
- Activity Books. We love activity books. We use them for road trips, plane trips, quiet time, and during the summer. We generally let our children pick which books they prefer (with some gentle guidance). But options run the spectrum from word games, mazes, crosswords, sudoku for kids, to how-to-draw and creative writing. There are curriculum books created by states advancing grade-level requirements, too. The best way to start is to pop into a local Barnes & Noble to see what is available but you can also spend some time browsing Scholastic.
- Board Games. Any board game at all will help your child’s brain development in some way. But there are learning games available. Consider Smath or Perplexis, the classics like Simon or Scrabble, or new options like the single-player Code Master.
- Creative Writing. We use the Q&A Day to encourage our kids to think creatively, but we there are also online prompts to use. We don’t push this too hard since we want it to be a fun outlet and not a requirement that pushes them away.
- Journal. Our children always have a blank journal that we encourage them to use daily (“Oh did you say you are bored? Go get your journal.”) This isn’t necessarily a place where we mandate creative writing, but it is a place for them to unload whatever is on their minds (think more like a Bullet Journal). Inside their journals are lists, drawings, games, silly phrases, true journal entries, new board games they want to design, sketches for a treehouse, or whatever they desire. Last summer, Mom even joined and would journal alongside them every day,
- Puzzles. We have taken to having a 500-750 piece jigsaw puzzle going in the living room at all times. Not only is this fun and something the entire family can get involved in (for a minute at a time or a whole evening), but puzzle-solving has great brain benefits for kids and adults. Read more about the benefits here but it includes improved memory and increased productivity.
Some other ways to keep the brains engaged this summer: volunteer as a family, go visit museums, visit some parks. While it can be hard to run around town as a family, especially if both parents must be in the office daily, these are great ways to expand minds during the summer if you can.
We’ve got some other summer hacks and plans up our sleeves, too, but you tell us what we should consider when it comes to keeping the summer successful, and fun.