Summer Learning Activities

• Parents often want a way to help their child retain the knowledge that they learned the previous year as well as continue learning or advance in a loved activity over the summer months.

• Grade-bridging workbooks, in-person and online summer camps, online learning resources, and personal creativity are all great ways to achieve summer learning success.

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Keeping Learning Alive During the Summer

Summer at my house is usually spent having water fun, going on family vacations, visiting with family, and just relaxing at home. What I also like to do during the summer is have the children spend a little bit of time every day, or at least every weekday, keeping their brain sharp with some summer learning activities. I particularly like grade-bridging workbooks and the local library’s summer reading program, but there are many different ways to help your child retain the knowledge that they gained the year previous, or even gain early experience in the knowledge they will be learning in the next year. Here are some ideas if you are looking to keep your child learning and growing over the summer months.

Grade-Bridging Workbooks

Grade-bridging workbooks review lessons learned in the grade before and gradually introduce new ideas that will be taught more thoroughly in the next grade level. Most of the books cover, or at least touch upon, the 4 main subjects of English language arts, math, science, and social studies. A few also include hands-on science project ideas, physical activity guides, health education articles, interactive game templates, and more. Elementary grade workbooks usually come with stickers for a fun and interactive incentive for completing pages. Some books are divided into daily pages where your child will start with day one and continue from there with each day including a little of all 4 subjects while others may have the subjects separated and you can work through them as desired.

You can have your child work for 15-30 minutes a day, or however long you would like, to help them retain knowledge over the summer as well as give them something productive to do during their summer off time. I personally like and use the Summer Bridge Activities books but there are also BrainQuest, Highlights, Summer Link, and other summer workbooks available.

Online Learning Resources

If you are looking for summer learning activities that you can find online there are many to choose from. IXL, Education.com, Time for Learning, Generation Genius, and PBS, are just a few that offer some kind of summer learning resources. Some may have a limited number of free resources without paying for membership. If the resources hidden behind the memberships are something that you are interested in, then keep in mind that most can be paid for just for the duration of the summer months. While some resources are strictly interactive online pages, others provide printable resources. Your state’s (or other states) Department of Education usually have some ideas for home learning or worksheet packets to print as well.

In-Person Camps

One resource that I feel gets overlooked by homeschooling parents is local summer camps. While most are not branded as “learning-based” and instead are seen as a fun, safe space for working parents to leave their children during the summer months, most do provide some learning opportunities such as hands-on science experiments and reading times. They also provide a social aspect that a lot of homeschooling children miss out on being schooled from home.

Also available, and worth looking into, are STEM/STEAM type camps. These are often science, math, technology, or art-based camps that be found throughout almost every state. Most only last a few weeks and offer either a pay-per-week option or a pay -per-camp option. There are also wide-spread tutoring style camps such as Sylvan Learning and Mathnasium. These generally offer a summer program to help keep your child on track for the upcoming year. NASA also offers space camps at some of their space centers across America if you have a future astrophysicist or astronaut on your hands.

In-person camps, while great for learning, offer a chance for your child to get out in the world and make friends outside of their homeschooling community. It also gives them the chance to take directions from and learn from people who they are not familiar with, which is a life skill that is hard to teach in a homeschooling environment.

Online Camps

Similar to in-person camps, online camps offer the opportunity for your kids to meet (online) other children who are interested in the same types of activities that they are. Also similarly, most online camps are STEAM based. They provide daily or weekly online group classes paid for by week or by the entirety of the camp. Some also provide individual learning opportunities such as private lessons or one-on-one tutoring. A few examples include CodaKid which caters to coding and includes classes in Minecraft and Roblox as well as AI lessons and game and app development, Outschool which provides many STEAM-based classes but also include subjects such music, YouTube creator, writing and ASL and include live video chat classes which can be either individual or group learning sessions, and Scholastic which teaches literacy skills and well-being development as well as leadership skills.

While these are some of the more popular options for online summer camps there are many, many more out there. All online camps are a great source for summer learning activities and fun.

Other brain-stirring Opportunities

While the categories mentioned above are the most well know summer learning activities, there are many others available. Local libraries offer summer reading programs, and for incentive, usually award students with a free book of their choice and/or chances to win other prizes. Many local schools offer a summer worksheet package that can be printed from their website. Some schools even offer summer activity ideas that can be done at home.

And, of course, there is no limit on your own creativity or the creativity of your children to create and do learning activities from your own home. Do a backyard ecosystem study, plan to do at least one hands-on science experiment per week, enjoy daily crossword puzzles either in book form or from an app on your phone, have a how-many-multiplication-questions-can-you-answer-in-30-seconds match daily to see who has to wash the dishes, visit local museums (most have at least one discounted day during the summer months), or get together with your local homeschooling group parents and make your own summer camp. Really, the sky is the limit when it comes to learning.

During Those Long Summer Months

I whole-heartedly believe that children should be allowed to play, have fun, and rest during their summer holiday. So much so that I wrote a blog centering around summer activities for children. However, I also believe that it is important that they retain the knowledge learned in the previous school year so as to not regress at the beginning of the next school year. Spending just a few minutes a day to review concepts will cut down on time spent reviewing materials at the beginning of the school year and will allow you to progress through lessons easier. It also gives your child something productive to do during the long summer days and, more often than not, something that they look forward to year after year.

Have you come across different engaging summer learning activities for your kids? Leave a comment down below to help out fellow homeschooling familes find something that they may enjoy.