Make Your Summer POP!
What Will Today Bring?
Another summer day is rising along with another day full of memories to make together. Each year feels that summer gets shorter and shorter, and I love to squeeze every drop of joy from our summer freedom.
What will this summer day bring?
Happiness, laughter, and fun!
As a homeschool mom, I am continuously planning and creating learning activities, games, field trips, and creations centered around our learning. A summer break is always welcomed, but over our past summer breaks, I've realized how important it is to keep some measure of learning going- in whatever form that looks like. From reading goals, games, or otherwise seemingly "disguised" learning activities, I needed to keep their minds at a casual work pace.
I had always heard of the "summer slump" but had never quite experienced it first hand until starting back our homeschooling after our first year. We certainly had a lot of fun over the course of that summer, and all learning hadn't completely left the building, but there was definitely a degree of our learning that had been swept away with the summer beach tide. I knew I was going to keep our traditional summer break schedule in our future, being as how I also needed a rest, but I didn't want to lose the progress we had made during the homeschool year, so I needed a plan.
Making It POP!
What I came up with was a way to make our summer (and restful learning) POP!
Easy and quick things to include over our break that were fun and entertaining for them, but also exercised their minds so that getting back in the fall routine didn't feel so out of sorts.
Here's hoping that this idea sparks a new summer tradition of your own, or that you enjoy ours!
Make Your Summer POP!
One of my kiddos' favorite things is the magic of "the reveal". If a toy, activity, or game includes some kind of secret reveal, they are captivated! The intrigue of what's inside or what is it going to be, really sparks them, so I used this concept to my advantage.
I quickly whipped up a calendar style sheet, that included a range of different activities, experiments, art exercises, spelling games, and more.
If you would like a FREE downloadable copy of our "Make Your Summer" PoP! Visit HERE.
To keep the element of surprise, I cut out a weekly strip from the calendar and cut out the boxes from the strip.
After strategically stuffing the square inside a balloon, I then blew up the balloon. The greatest thing about this, was that the ideas were already there- each day I didn't need to come up with something to do, as the hardest part of thinking up ideas was already done and in the balloons!
Another aspect we liked about this idea was its flexibility. Although I had laid out five weeks worth of fun things to do each day, the week that I was going to use them was completely up to us. If we tired, we could take a break, on the other hand if we were bored, great things were already waiting in the wings.
Once I had our week's worth of balloons staged, we were ready for our summer (and brain exercises) to POP!
They loved the excitement of popping the balloons to see what fun was in store for us to do that day, and it also kept me guessing as to which item I had placed in the balloon!
Some summer days can be tricky when you run out of ideas, but the desire to do something is there. This solved that issue and kept our summer POPPING!
If you would like a FREE downloadable copy of our "Make Your Summer" PoP! Visit HERE.
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