Summer can be daunting. I miss my kids when they are at school, but I can appreciate having that time already filled with activities for their learning. Even though, for me, it’s only two days a week, those are two days that I don’t have to worry about activities. I don’t have to worry about what they’re learning. I don’t have to worry about their development or whether I’m doing things that are challenging how they see the world. I have the confidence that they already have those things built into their curriculum and their wonderful teachers are helping them!
And then summer comes. And there is the sudden realization that I have more days to plan. I need lists of activities and crafts. I need ideas for excursions. I need fun ideas for my children to explore, grow, and develop.
You can go on Pinterest and find a BILLION different ideas. In a moms group on Facebook, I even saw a “Summer Fun Bucket List” once for our local area. It was intensive and complete. It was almost overwhelming.
So instead of overwhelming you with a million ideas of things to do this summer, I’m splitting this summer activities guide into three parts – Water Fun, Excursions, and Education. Take the guide as a basis for information that you can pick and choose throughout the weeks of summer. I’ll even throw in some activities to help prevent the summer slide and encourage learning through fun.
We looked at fun water activities in our first summer activities guide. Then I posted about the top summer excursions to take in the second of the series. Today, let’s look at some educational activities! I like to do a mixture of educational activities that are obvious learning experiences and some that are not.
Toddler-Friendly Science Experiments
There are a plethora of fun science experiments to do with toddlers and I’ve done several with Little Mister and Little Miss. Though I listed five of mine and my kids’ favorite science experiments in my post 5 Toddler-Friendly Science Experiments, some of them may be more summer appropriate than others. Think about using the science experiments to help explain daily life events. Did you run through a summer rain shower? Have you kids make rain clouds using shaving cream, water, and food dye. Did you take an excursion to the arboretum? Use the celery experiment but substitute white daisies and see the colors they turn! There are so many great ways to use science to reinforce daily life and help them make sense of their world.
On top of the science experiments listed in the previous post, you can also do activities that teach about colors, how colors are created, and how primary colors combine to make secondary colors. You may take previous activities we have done, like the chromatography hearts, but adapt it to a more summery idea, such as creating butterflies by folding the coffee filter fan style and using pipe cleaners around the middle to create antennae.
For discussing primary and secondary colors, be sure to also check out the shaving cream colors activity! That’s the perfect activity of a lazy summer afternoon where kids just want to squish to their hearts’ content.
Goldfish Color Sorting
This activity was born from necessity last year as trying to find something to do one afternoon and looking through my pantry.
I opened my pantry and found…goldfish. I almost wish I’d had gummy bears, because we ate about as many as we sorted, but we used what we had. But for this activity all you need are different colors of construction paper and goldfish (or gummy bears). I poured some goldfish into a bowl, laid out the colored papers, and then we sorted the goldfish based on color. I asked him to tell me what color the goldfish was as he put it down.
For older kids, you could even further this by having them create a graph. How many orange goldfish were there? How many fewer green goldfish were there than red goldfish? There are so many mathematical applications and questions you could ask to further their learning with a delicious treat! Just make sure you sort more than you eat.
Want to take this activity even further? Go to a local toy store and grab bags of tiny animals. We found bags of tiny multi-colored dinosaurs such as this one. You can also use buttons (which is what my mom used to use when I was little). Then, not only could they sort by color, but by type of animal/dinosaur or, if using buttons, by number of holes or shape, etc. The possibilities are endless.
Write and Illustrate a Book Together
There is always talk about encouraging reading over the summer. It’s incredibly important to continue to read books with your kids. Kids are in danger of losing 2 months – that’s 20% – of their reading skills learned each summer. Can you imagine the difficulty of spending time just trying to recoup those losses at the beginning of each school year. Continuing to read over the summer is so incredibly important.
One day, instead of only reading books that are already on their shelf, work together to create a book. Engage their imagination, walk them through creating a storyline, identify characters, and then help them illustrate it. After everything is finished and illustrated, you can either take the book to a local place like FedEx to have it bound, or use yarn and a hole punch to bind their book.
Not only does this activity reinforce reading skills, but it encourages their imagination and helps them work through writing skills and story development. In the end, you’ll even have a lovely book to show for their creativity and hardwork!
Letter Hunt Activity
When you don’t live near the beach, bring the beach to you! Ok, maybe not literally, but figuratively at the very least. You could either purchase a small bag of sand or create your own moon sand using flour, vegetable oil, and Koolaid flavoring (to make it smell good). Either way, put the sand in a small storage bin and hide little plastic or magnetic letters such as these within the sand. Then give you little one a shovel and let them search away for letters. You can even give them a mat or paper with the alphabet so that they can match up the letters they find. Not only is your little one reinforcing their alphabet, but this activity also encourages fine motor skills.
If your kid is older and knows their alphabet, try hiding other things in the sand such as “dinosaur bones” created from Crayola modeling clay or rocks that they can identify the features. The possibilities of things to hide in the sand are endless.
Stargazing
There is nothing quite like laying out on a blanket and looking up at a night sky. There are so many educational lessons that can be pulled from this. From lessons about space, types of stars, constellations, and more.
Additionally, sometimes just laying together, talking about innocent things, your child may just start talking and opening up about all kinds of things and you may get all sorts of questions that show their curiosity in their world.
The dreaded “summer slide” can be daunting. We all want our children’s education to continue, even outside of the classroom. With fun activities such as these, you can include learning in their everyday lives during the summer without much hassle!