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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I have a hard time fighting summer learning loss in my home….usually send them to VBS and the library programs.
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This summer with my 8 & 4 year old, I have packed a small container I had that has a handle on the lid with material for each child, so we can have it on hand wherever we grab a spare minute! That way, even one worksheet at a time, we get all our work done and the kids can still do extra fun stuff for the summer. They have not been as disagreeable to cooperate when they know we dont have to do more than one at a time, and we were surprised how often in our day we have a 15 minute window to work on some handwriting! 🙂 LOVE the bridges books. I used them last year for my 8 year old, and I think, if anything, she was farther along than at the end of the year!
I decided to school year-round. After too long of a break due to post-partum depression, I realized that schooling year-round with frequent breaks would help ease the burden. So, summer will still happen with camping and swim lessons and neighborhood friends, but so will school. 🙂
We have been unofficially homeschooling and she still thinks school is fun and doesn’t understand the whole summer break idea. We try to mix things up a bit in the summer by adding additional fun activities. We always do the summer reading programs, and jr. ranger programs. Plus we try to have our own “summer camp” with lots of themed units and even more fun.
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