Summer Reading Fun and Activities

This summer, try a reading challenge or create your own reading program! Your local public library is a great place to start, as many sponsor reading challenges such as this summer's "Unearth a Story." They offer incentives and prizes, plus charts to track your reading journeys.

For information on "Unearth a Story," see CSLP's site at this link: Reading Challenge.

For a Free Book Giveway, see Barnes and Noble's site at this link: Reading Challenge.

For Summer Reading Suggestions, see Amazon's lists at this link: Summer Books for Kids.

For Best Children's Books Suggestions, see Good Read's list at this link: Best Children's Books.

For More Fun, create your own reading challenge for the whole family. Design your own tracking charts, come up with incentives that appeal to you and your children, create a list of books that sounds interesting, visit your library and seek new authors and new topics, and see how much learning occurs as you read your way through the summer!

For Fun Summer Activities, click any of the links below under "Labels" then scroll down the pages for more ideas!

Best wishes for a safe, happy, enjoyable summer!

Summer Activities

Here are a few Summer Activities your children can enjoy:

* Travel Maps: On short day trips or long vacations, map out the routes you travel and label your map with the places you see along the way. Research the places you see or visit, to learn even more about them.

* Summer Constellations: Select a good book depicting the summer constellations, such as Constellations of The Night Sky or Glow-in-the-Dark Constellations, and use the illustrations to locate and learn about summer constellations.

* Creative Writing Activities: Use summer themes, such as picnics, parks, pools, beaches, flowers, sunshine, cookouts, fireworks, ice cream, camping, hiking, to stimulate creative writing and drawing ideas.

* Insect Crafts: Make fun, simple, or imaginative crafts that mimic summer insects. Discuss each insect, where or how it lives, and try to find them outdoors, too.

* Create a Summer Time Capsule: Make a shoebox or tin-can time capsule and include items that depict this summer's adventures and events.

* Remember to Read: Summer reading programs began in the 1890s, to encourage children to read during summer vacations. Reduced reading over the summer results in lost reading skills. Yet, reading skills are important for comprehending topics across the curriculum. So visit your library often, and encourage your children to select a wide variety of books to read this summer!

If you have suggestions, see our Home page at EverythingHomeschooling.com.

Happy homeschooling!

Summer Homeschool

For most homeschool families, summer is a time to relax, take a vacation, or enjoy a couple "get-away weekends." This doesn't mean that learning has to be suspended for two or three months, though!

Vacations or day-trips can provide plenty of learning opportunities. It's usually easy to include geography, history, and science themes during most trips. Include math concepts, too, by figuring distances, speeds, miles per gallon, costs for attractions, lodging, meals, and the total cost for the entire vacation.

Even if you don't leave home, there's plenty of activities to keep children learning all summer long. Join your library's Summer Reading Program. Books can open doors to new worlds, new experiences, and new knowledge -- a wonderful way to gain an education!

Become involved in 4H or summer programs at the local Parks & Recreation Department. Try new hobbies. Try old hobbies! Take art classes, music classes, woodworking or weaving classes.

Visit local museums, nature centers, zoos, state parks, and other areas of interest. Then create crafts and activities based on the places you visited and the things you saw there.

Make a list of all the new things children want to learn, then learn them together. Jot down fun learning ideas on paper, cut them into strips, then place the strips into a jar. Draw a "learning idea" strip from the jar each day, then create fun ways to learn about the topic.

Use books, such as 365 Simple Science Experiments or The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book for educational science projects. Check into the Summer Smarts Activities or the Summer Bridge Activities books, too.

Our EverythingHomeschooling.com site provides dozens of learning ideas! And new summer learning ideas are added all the time!

Happy Homeschooling!