Ideas for summer learning fun

Offer recommendations for active learning experiences. Check with your local department of parks and recreation about camps and other activities. Find out what exhibits, events, or concerts are happening in your town over the summer. Create a directory or calendar of local summer learning fun to share with your students and their families. (Be sure to note any costs involved.

Encourage parents to build reading and writing into everyday activities. Some ideas to pass along: (1) watching TV with the sound off and closed captioning on, (2) reading directions for how to play a new game, or (3) helping with meals by writing up a grocery list, finding things in the grocery store, and reading the recipe aloud for mom or dad during cooking time. More ideas at PBS Parents (in Spanish, too) and ReadWriteThink.

Encourage writing. Give each of your students a stamped, addressed postcard so they can write to you about their summer adventures. Or recycle school notebooks and paper into summer journals or scrapbooks. Check out the pen pal project at Schwab Learning or these "writing through the summer" tips from Sylvan Learning Center.

Enter a contest. Create an original 60-second video on how to help the environment. Or submit original creative writing to Teen Ink. Older kids and tweens can find a rich collection of contests in the Just for Fun section on AdLit.org.

Everyone's blogging! Arrange for a safe, closed community so that your students can blog over the summer. Edublogs offers teachers and students free blog space and appropriate security. Students will need an e-mail address in order to create an account. Free, disposable e-mail accounts are available at Mailinator. Students can create an account there, use the address long enough to establish the blog and password, and then abandon it. Or have parents check out SparkTop (originally created by Schwab Learning) for blogging and other writing opportunities.

Be an active citizen. Kids who participate in community service activities gain not only new skills but self-confidence and self-esteem. Help them zoom into action! Resources from ZOOM can help them get the most out of helping others this summer.

Help parents plan ahead for fall. Work with the teachers a grade level above to develop a short list of what their new students have to look forward to when they return to school. For example, if rising third graders will be studying ancient cultures, suggest that parents check out educational TV, movies, or local museums that can provide valuable background information on that topic.

Ideas for summer reading fun

Make sure kids have something to read during the summer — put books into children's hands. Register with First Book and gain access to award-winning new books for free and to deeply discounted new books and educational materials or find other national and local programs and organizations that can help.

Get your local public library to sign kids up for summer reading before school is out. Invite or ask your school librarian to coordinate a visit from the children's librarian at the public library near the end of the school year. Ask them to talk about summer activities, educational videos, and audio books at the library and to distribute summer reading program materials. Colorín Colorado has tips for parents in English and in Spanish about visiting the local library.

Let parents and kids know about the free summer reading incentive programs sponsored by publishers and booksellers such as Scholastic's Summer Reading Buzz, HarperCollins Children's Books Reading Warriors, the Brain Food program from Book It!, or the Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Program.

Active bodies. Active minds. Major League Soccer's Summer Bridge Activities website includes a "get active, get moving, get smart" section to help families find a good balance between physical activity and reading time during the summer months.

Encourage parents to start a neighborhood book club with other families this summer. It's a great way to keep the summer learning social and low-key. Warmer weather can inspire some not-so-run-of-the-mill meeting places, too: a tent or picnic blanket in the backyard. If the book club catches on, it's something to continue throughout the school year. PBS Parents has a wonderful collection of tips on how to start a club and encourage great discussions.

Online resources for parents

Share examples of good interactive educational websites that parents and young kids can explore together. Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) has an excellent bilingual site called "Let's Read as a Family" designed to help Latino families read, sing, and share stories together at home. National Geographic Kids offers great nature videos, activities, games, stories, and more. Take a trip through an amusement park of math and more at the extremely interactive math website CoolMath4Kids.

Suggest audio books as an alternative to print, especially for kids with learning disabilities that make reading a struggle. You can now download stories to iPods and other mobile devices, perfect for car rides or a lazy hot afternoon. AudibleKids has an extensive collection of downloadable books, and some of them are free through a partnership with RIF.

For students with vision or learning disabilities, tell your parents about Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which allows their children to listen to books over the summer.

Suggest to parents that they set up a summer listening program which encourages their children to listen to written language. Research shows that some children with learning disabilities profit from reading the text and listening to it at the same time.

Print and share resources for parents

Distribute a checklist for parents that provides tips on how to find a great summer program. This one, developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning, is a good basic resource.

Build background knowledge. Put an article about summer learning in your school or PTA newsletter.

Give parents a tool to help them promote healthy and balanced media use at home during the summer months. The PACT from the National PTA may help families come up with good screen time compromises. (The PACT is also available in Spanish.)

Offer reading reminders to parents with these tip sheets from Reading Rockets available in 11 languages.

Print and share resources for kids

Promote simple, fun items that support the reading habit. Reading Rockets has created a "Warning! Reading Rocket in Orbit" door hanger in English and Spanish. And HarperCollins Children's Books has a colorful collection of click-and-print bookmarks.

Offer recommended reading. Books about summer stuff are fun summertime reads. The Association for Library Services to Children, a division of the American Library Association, provides updated lists for summer reading. Or ask your school or public librarian for an age appropriate reading list.

Some students enjoy doing worksheets while others get very excited about puzzle books and word scrambles, so you might send home a few of these types of activities as an option. Teacher Planet offers loads of links to summer-themed printable activity sheets. And HarperCollins Children's Books has literature quizzes, games, and printables in their Games & Contests section.