Summer Vacation

Yay it's finally summer! Maybe you have a few more days of school left, or maybe you ended your school year a month ago. Any way you look at it, it's summer vacation time!

There is an endless list of things you can do to continue your child's education throughout the summer and they won't even know they are continuing their education.

Here are a few ideas:

• Games - for example, the vintage game of racko helps kids learn sequencing - you can find the game on amazon or ebay.
• Open an updated version of the lemonade stand - buy sodas, bottles of water, and bottled juice and keep it cold in an ice chest full of ice. Having a yard sale? The little ones can sell the beverages during the yard sale.
• Gardening - it's never too late to plant something and watch it bloom! Even just a container with a couple plants is fun for any child.
• Check the library for summer time activities.
• Some of the local fast food and pizza chains have summer reading challenges. Or set up your own. For example; 30 minutes of reading every day for a month = a personal size pizza. I know, food as a reward isn't always a good idea, but once a year I think it's okay.
• I'm a huge fan of scrapbooking, give your child a camera for an outing and then print and scrapbook the pictures. Be sure they write some journaling into the scrapbook. It doesn't have to be a lot, this is a fun project, not a term paper.
• Go camping - rough it for a full day. It can be fun even in your own back yard! They can pretend they are out on the wagon trail back in the 1800s.
• Have them help bake a cake, cookies, or brownies. Instead of food you could mix up some playdough, or slime. Look online for recipes or check out the Crazy Concoctions books on ebay or amazon. Make it a fun mommy and child time so they don't feel like it's "fractions 101" during their summer break.

Those are just a few ideas. Remember, you don't need to tell them the project is about a particular lesson. Keep it simple, make it fun, and let the kids enjoy summer!