Turn Summer Moments Into Learning Moments
Jun 16, 2009
Children don’t have to be in a classroom to be learning! In fact, some of the most important lessons in life are learned outside of school.
That’s one of the positives about summer and time off from school—it’s a great opportunity to gather plenty of life experiences. In the summer, life experiences are almost free for the taking! In fact, the opportunity to learn and grow as a person during the summer is one of the best things about summer vacation.
The trick is to know how to harness the learning opportunities that are happening all around, and how to turn those experiences into valuable, useable summer learning that challenges the brain.
Learning doesn’t have to be formal to be rewarding—even the simplest summer activity can be a “learning moment.”
- Read. Active reading—think about the story, the words, and the meaning. Don’t just move your eyes over the page. This keeps the mind sharp and helps develop vocabulary.
- Write a little every day. Keep a journal, create a scrapbook, or write a short story.
- Play games. Games like Sudoku, crossword puzzles, or word games like Boggle, Scrabble, and Upwords are great to challenge the mind. Discuss any strategies used to reach a solution.
- Play a memory game. Gather up a random assortment of items, anything collected from around the house or yard will do, study them for a short time, then cover them up and try to remember the most items. Develop a strategy to help with recall like grouping items by color, or category.
- Recite Alphabet Game. Select a category (e.g. fruits and vegetables) and begin listing items according to the alphabet. The first person gets A (apple), the second B (beets), and so on. Try not to be the first one who can’t think of anything.
- Plant and Grow. Take advantage of the warm weather and plant some seedlings and watch them grow. Create a chart and track their growth schedule.
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