No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher’s dirty looks

So goes the chorus of Alice Cooper’s anthem, School’s Out, that gets ample airplay each June.

I am A-OK with doing away with the teacher’s dirty looks, but I’m a firm believer that the books and pencils should not be discarded just because school is on hiatus. . . In fact, at my house, we go through a lot more of them, and the learning continues. I am not a year-round school advocate, but instead, a proponant of year-round learning with the parents taking the role as educators.

I used to refer to this as “summer school,” or “playing school,” and my kids enthusiastically climbed into the dining room chairs and completed their writing or worksheets. As they got a little older, playing school got a little old, so I made some alterations in the “curriculum,” moving away from the activity books and worksheets to more hands-on experiential learning, and journaling activities.

Something you might try or alter for your own purposes:

  • I have taken the kids to the zoo and after we enter, I ask them to take a look at the map and to choose an animal that they want to know more about. They then visit that animal, read the guide material on the animal, observe it, and make some notes in a small notebook or on index cards. When make a stop at the library within a few days for more information, then I assign them to write a short report on the animal. I’ve had them illustrate it by hand, and at other times, take photos. This activity encourages reading and writing, and teaches some basic research skills. It also helps them to feel the authority that writing gives them as authors…To add a tech-twist, you could assign them to make webpages, or add their observations and photos to a blog.
  • Purchase summer journals and set a time to write in the journal every couple of days. I always take these on vacations–my son writes stories in them and makes some notes in them about things he wants to look up at a later date.
  • Another part of summer study is the Toledo Lucas County Public Library Reading Club, which rewards readers young and old for the number of hours they spend with books over the summer months. We make the libary a weekly stop, as part of summer learning.

 Check out your local library offerings. If they don’t offer an incentive club, make your own. One summer, I created a chart for my daughter and one for my niece that set a goal for them to read 100 books over the summer. They used marker and filled in the bar chart each time they reached a milestone. You could try offering prizes or field trips for achieving a certain number of hours reading.

And if you don’t have the time to create a plan or curriculum, there is a wide variety of resources available on the Internet and in bookstores–I’ll follow up this blog with a list of links and recommendations. No matter what you do, or no matter if you choose to do nothing else–make sure that your kids are reading this summer, otherwise, you might find some of the lyrics of the Alice Cooper song will ring all too true:

Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not go back at all