School's Out for Summer
The end of the school year brings your children long and
hopefully sunny, warm days in which to relax, play and have fun. They have spent the academic year learning
and growing in so many ways and now it is time for the summer holidays. As Sir Cliff Richards sings "No more
work for a week or two, fun and laughter on our summer holiday, no more worries
for me and you." Children need
this time to play but how can you keep the skills they have acquired and
maintain the progress they have made over throughout the year?
There are many activities in which you can encourage your
child to participate that are learning activities but are also practical and
fun. There are activities that you can share with your child which is something
that most parents and carers may not be able to do during term time.
Cooking is a great activity. Reading and measuring skills are used to
follow a recipe. Children can also write
their own shopping lists and help to shop for the ingredients, which supports
their understanding of capacity and money further. If your child is enterprising they could sell
their cakes; creating their own publicity to market their product and use their
maths skills to budget and to decide how much to sell their products for. Some children will enjoy creating menus for
the family meal or for their favourite celebrity or story character. Collect samples of menu cards for them to
read and evaluate. Creating their own
recipe book with illustrations or photos of recipes that they have used is
another activity that encourages them to use their writing skills. May-be you have lots of cuttings of recipes
that they could copy out or stick in a notebook for you. Generating a recipe book provides a very real
reason to write and your child can consider how to present and organise their
recipes. They could even use a contents
page or a glossary.
Gardening is another activity that encourages children to
use maths, reading and writing skills in very practical way. Children can photograph, sketch and measure
their plants. They may enjoy visiting a farmer’s
market and as with the cooking they could budget, market and sell their
products.
Children can make their own garden ornaments and art. They could try painting stones and rocks or
could even write letters and words on stones that they can use to write
messages or spell out words. If you have
space on a wall or fence or even a large piece of cardboard, why not paint it
using blackboard paint and give your child some chalks to draw or write
with. On a sunny day your child may
enjoy making their own sundial by placing a stick in the ground and measuring
its shadow hourly. Some children will
enjoy looking for bugs, identifying, sketching or take a photograph of the bug
to record in their notebooks. Children
could also use the outdoors to have scavenger hunts, searching for objects that
for example begin with a particular sound, collecting numbers 1 -100 or 3d
shapes, etc.
If your child has a particular interest or collection they could
create their own museum to show case the items and objects. They can create leaflets and labels to
explain these items. Alternatively you could visit local museums or more famous
museums, many of which are free, so that your child can develop their understanding
and knowledge of their interest further.
Some children will enjoy planning the visit, researching bus or train
timetables, budgeting and creating an agenda.
Holidays are a good chance to encourage your child to read
by visiting your local library. Many
libraries will have themed activities in the holidays including story
times. Children can enjoy independently
choosing a book to read. Encourage them
to evaluate their book either verbally or in writing, explaining their
reasoning using PEE. (Point out your
thoughts. Explain your reason. Exemplify
your thoughts). Children may enjoy
acting out the story, create a diorama or make a movie.
As well as reading some children will enjoy writing their
own books. Their writing may be fiction
or non fiction, a story with chapters or a comic. Whatever their chosen genre they will be
using their literacy skills. They can
also create a front cover and blurb for their book as well as illustrating it
with their own drawings, photographs or pictures cut out from magazines. Again some children will enjoy dressing up,
writing plays, singing songs and performing their stories either to a live
audience or recording their play using video or photographs. Many local councils organise outdoor
performances for children throughout the summer months.
Creating their own map is also a way of encouraging
children to use literacy skills. It can
be either from their imagination or based on a story that they know, or using
facts based on a specific topic. Their maps
can then be used as a plan for a story, play or board game. Some children will also enjoy generating maps
of places they have visited or know well.
Looking at maps and maps and atlases builds on a child's knowledge of their
environment and the world, as well introducing them to the concept of scale and
keys.
Children could also keep a journal of their summer holiday,
either keeping a record of the whole summer holiday or a specific vacation
destination. In their journals children
can keep entry tickets, maps, photos, make notes about miles, time tables or
itineraries as well as facts about specific destinations. Encourage your child to consider how they
present their journal using pockets, double mounting, stickers and different
fonts. Their journals can be shared with
family and friends and kept as a memento of their summer holidays. You may even want to consider creating your
own journal or completing one in partnership with your child.
Enjoy participating in the activities with your child and
keep the learning fun. Learning is so
much more involved than filling in activity sheets! Children need to relax and play as part of
the learning process.
"Live in the sunshine. Swim in the sea. Drink the wild
air."
Perhaps all of us need to follow Ralph Waldorf Emerson's
words more often.
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