Summer Learning Ideas for Kids

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boy leaning against tree and writing with bicycle in background on the grass | summer learning ideas for kids

We are proud to share this guest post by Anindita Gupta, who draws on her experience teaching young children during the pandemic at SST Northwest to create more summer learning activities for kids.

Summer is an opportunity to renew yourselves, and prepare your little ones for the next school year. I have prepared sets of activities that you can do with your kids this summer that will help build confidence to be independent learner, facilitate social and emotional development, and engage in fine motor activities and writing. Based on my experience as a kindergarten teacher this past year, these are the activities that will best prepare kids for the coming school year, while still having a fun summer.

For more fun activities to do with your kids, there are even more posts like this in the Charter a Voyage of Learning guide, including a post I wrote last summer about summer learning activities for young children.

Summertime Learning Is Fun

How can you help your kids learn independence, grow socially and emotionally, and strengthen their hands for writing—while having fun this summer? These slides will show you how. Below, there are three more sets of slides that give you more details about how to engage your kids in each activity, and how to adapt the tasks for different ages.

Its Summer-Time When Learning Is Fun Anindita Gupta

Word Work: Learning to Work Independently

This school year was very different from a regular school year. Children who participated in online learning did not get the classroom exposure.

Hopefully, next school year we are going to have a more normal set up. Looking at a normal classroom, it is very important to help our children to be self confident and independent. Please remember to approach with baby steps.

  • Ask your child to make use of letters, sight words, word family charts to complete the tasks independently. Children and parents can create these charts together as well.
  • Once you see your child is completing a small task confidently, make the work little more challenging.
  • Be sure to be around in the beginning and eventually let your little one work independently.
  • To form a habit please practice working on at least one activity everyday.

Early Elementary Word Work Activities Anindita Gupta

Here are some tips for making this word work activity go smoothly.

  • Materials: Keep materials and resources available.
  • Explain: Explain what you are expecting, and provide one or two examples.
  • Celebrate: Start with easy work, and reward them when work successfully completed.

How Do I Feel? Express Yourself

How is your mood weather today?

This school year children had to balance a lot. Participating in online and onsite work, maintaining social distancing—they had quite a lot on their plates. The big change in children’s social interactions has often brought anxiety.

Being able to understand the emotional state and being able to redirect negative emotions to positive ones provides them more power and control over themselves.
As parents, we need to be able to facilitate kids to express their emotions.

How Do I Feel Express Yourself Anindita Gupta

Let’s Grow Love for Writing

Why is writing so important?

Writing is not just an activity to develop motor skills, but also critical in developing coherent thought process and expression of ideas. It promotes creativity, as well as language and vocabulary development, among other things.

Writing has been an important part of everything the children did in class. It will be helpful to have the children be prepared for next school year as well.

Since early last year, more and more students’ have been reliant on working with computers.  While computer skills are necessary, I highly recommend making writing and pre-writing activities a part of a child’s daily routine.

Let’s Grow Love For Writing Anindita Gupta

The Charter a Voyage of Learning guide has even more fun activities to do with your kids, including a post I wrote last summer about summer learning activities for young children.

Charter Moms Chats

Watch Anindita Gupta, kindergarten teacher at School of Science and Technology—Northwest, discuss summer learning activities with Inga Cotton on Charter Moms Chats on June 24, 2020 at 4:00 PM Central live on Facebook and YouTube.

Hello! I am Anindita Gupta. I teach kindergarten at the School of Science and Technology—Northwest, in San Antonio. Go Narwhal Nation!

I have a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Masters in History, and I am certified as teacher in Texas and in India.

I also have two little girls who attend pre-K and 2nd grade at SST-NW. As a teacher and a charter mom, I enjoy sharing resources with parents to help children to keep busy during summer, just as I try to do with my own kids.

Happy Summer!

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