How to Keep Your Kids Learning During the Summer

Summer is coming up, school will be out soon--so, how can you keep your child from forgetting everything he learned throughout the school year? Oh, of course kids aren't going to forget the basics, but parents don't want their children to just leave their study habits and eagerness to learn at the school when they leave for the last day. Nor do parents want to become rigid taskmasters over the summer, forcing their kids to read a certain number of books or to complete daily workbook sheets. Is there some kind of happy medium that can be reached? How can parents make sure that their kids are still learning throughout the summer, while at the same time making sure that their kids are able to enjoy their time away from the routine of school?

There are actually a lot of ways to keep kids interested in learning during the summer--the key with most of them, though, is to disguise it as fun. Don't tell your kids that they will be learning, or they may rebel, thinking that they don't want to study anything since school is out. If you make an activity or event fun, however, your kids won't even realize that they are learning--and this will satisfy both of you. Here are some ideas (these work best with kids in the lower elementary grades; however, you can modify them for older kids):

--Take your kids on a hike on a nearby nature trail. Walk slowly, and give your kids a chance to meander along the trail, looking at whatever catches their eye. When you see them interested in something--whether it is a pretty flower, a few stones to throw in the lake, or a rotting log that has icky bugs crawling all over--be sure to stop and examine their finding. Try to identify the type of flower, and if you can't, sketch it or take a photo for you to look up online at home. Take the time to have a stone-tossing contest, and then talk about which stones skip across the water best and why. Grab your camera and take a few photos of the rotting log with its bugs so that you can find out what kind of bugs they are on the internet later, and then ask your kids why they think the log is rotting and where it came from. The idea here is to take a normal event--a hike in the woods--and turn it into a learning experience by taking the time to discover new things about your surroundings through your children's eyes. Let your kids lead the experience, and it will be more fun for them.

--Go to the zoo. Before going, talk with your kids about what kinds of animals they expect to see, what their favorites are, and why. Give them a challenge or two--for example, tell them that you bet that they won't see any camels or parrots. Kids love to prove parents wrong, so they will be bending over backwards trying to spot those specific animals--this will increase their interest. As you are going through the zoo, don't just point at the animals and say, "Oh, there's a bear!"--instead, have your kids tell you what animals they see. If they aren't sure what a particular animal is, have them describe it to you--the color, it's fur or feathers, etc. This helps with their observation skills. You can also have your kids be in charge (or help with) the zoo map--that in itself is a great learning tool. Be sure to take lots of pictures at the zoo of all the animals, and then at home you can have the kids label the pictures with the animal's name and habitat for a family scrapbook.

--Cook with your child. Cooking can be a great learning experience for kids. Start by going through a cookbook with your child, letting him choose a recipe to make. Point out the ingredient lists and the directions for the recipes, so your child will choose one that is not too lengthy or involved (you can kind of guide him a little here). Have your child write out a list of the ingredients and then go to store with you to purchase them--follow your child's lead here as much as possible. For example, you may want to explain how to choose ripe strawberries, but then allow your child to choose the basket he wants to purchase. Do this for all of the major ingredients (not staples like flour, sugar, and the like--and again, you can tell your child what staple ingredients are). Once home, act as your child's assistant--not the other way around. Let your child tell you what they need you to do (within reason, of course--knives are always the adult's responsibility) and help him measure his ingredients. Go through the recipe carefully with your child, making sure nothing is left out. Once the recipe is complete, make sure to give a lot of praise to your little chef--and also take a picture for a summer scrapbook. Your child can then write up a copy of the recipe to keep in the scrapbook with his chef picture.

Now, what about reading? Oftentimes kids get sent home on one of the last days of school with a summer reading list, and this causes their parents to be obsessed with getting the kids to read all the time. Parents sometimes panic about this, forcing their kids to read--and this is definitely the wrong approach...all that does is make the kids rebel against reading even more. So, what can parents do to encourage their kids to read without making it seem like an assignment?

Again, it is all about making it fun for the kids. The first thing to remember is that reading anything is reading--not just books. Your kids can read the Sunday comics, the manual to their newest video game, a magazine, something on a website, or a comic book--all of those still count as reading. With reading, it is all about practice, and any of those things would help your child practice his reading skills--and, in fact, some of those might be more inviting to him than a book would.

But, of course, we all want our kids to read books. One way to make this more fun is to keep reading aloud to your child. Just because your child is old enough to read on his own doesn't mean you have to stop reading to him--quite the contrary! Many kids enjoy spending the time with their parents in this way and like to have books read to them. Also, resist the urge to choose a book for your child. Even if the book you want your child to read is an award-winner and every other kid you know absolutely loves the book, that doesn't mean that your child is interested. Allowing your child to choose his own books is very important.

The library, of course, is an excellent resource for a lot of books. But I have found that a lot of kids read more often when they own books instead of just temporarily borrowing them. Books can be quite expensive, though--how can you afford to allow your child to choose his own books and allow him to buy them? Here are my two favorite sources:

--Yard Sales: Summer is the season for yard sales, and a good percentage of these sales include books. People sell books that their children have outgrown for very cheap--common prices are around 25 cents to $1.00 per book, depending upon the size of the book.

--Thrift Stores: Pretty much any thrift store you might visit is likely to have a book section. Customers donate books that their children no longer read, and the thrift stores sell them. Prices are usually similar to those at yard sales, generally about 50 cents to $1.00 per book.

A great thing about getting books at yard sales and thrift stores is that you can turn this, too, into a summertime learning experience for your kids. Give them a set amount of money that they have to spend, and have them budget their money to buy the books that they want to buy. This will help teach them about the value of money and about how we all have to set limits on our spending.

As you can see from the all of the above examples, the key idea to getting your child to keep learning during the summer is letting your child take charge of his experiences. If you put as much responsibility for the activity as possible into your child's hands, chances are he will enjoy it much more than if you simply tell him what to do. Kids love to be the boss, after all--and what kid wouldn't love the opportunity to tell his parents what to do for a little while? Let go and let your child lead--you'll see, you will have an enjoyable summer with your kids that still includes a lot of learning.