Summer Notebooks: The Return

Even though my kids still have almost a month of school left, I spend part of every day prepping for their summer vacation. Some of it is just figuring out what summer activities they are going to do, since I don't send them to regular summer camp. But the rest of it is planning their summer notebooks. I'm not a fan of too many worksheets, but I'm even less of a fan of my kids forgetting what they've learned all year.

It wasn't until last summer, when they didn't have regular camp and I couldn't pretend that they were going to be learning enough all summer, that I realized that I needed to take action. But every time I looked at workbooks, even the "summer bridge" or ones by companies I liked, I got frustrated. Or rather, the teacher in me got frustrated. Tasks were too simplistic to be useful or were geared for kids who struggled with things my kids didn't struggle with. So last year, basically at the last minute, I made my own.

By next year I'll probably have mini binders and all kinds of stuff, but now I'm just using spiral notebooks.

Every morning, they have to do a certain number of pages (usually 2 or 3) before they can have their beloved screens. They can do extra pages if they want to earn more screen time later in the day. I correct it as soon as I can, and I make them come back and fix their mistakes.

Hugmonkey's summer notebook tends to be more similar to worksheets:

Last year there was a lot of tracing and matching uppercase and lowercase letters. This year we'll be focused on counting skills, beginning sounds in words and sight words. I also like to have him draw pictures of family activities as an introduction to journal writing. He can't read the directions, but his siblings can read them if I'm not there, so it works out well.

For the older kids, there will be a lot of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division fact review. (Even though Lovebug won't officially be learning multiplication and division until the fall, he's got the process figured out so he might as well start memorizing). I also have them write sentences about family activities or to answer questions we've been talking about as a family. My favorite thing to do is to gather up non-fiction books, assign them pages to read and have them answer questions pertaining to the pages.

They are both far more into fiction (as am I), so it's a good way to work on reading comprehension and get them out of their comfort zones.

I'm thinking about doing a summer series on my kids' notebooks, detailing how and why I have them do certain things and how to make summer notebooks for your own kiddo. But then I remembered that some of my regular readers are teachers or former teachers, so I'm not sure if the series would be useful. What do you guys think? Is that something you'd want to read about, or would you skip those posts?

Beyond the Worksheet

Hugmonkey loves worksheets. His teacher has started sending some home for homework (no comment) and he has the best time doing them. There was a time when Lovebug and Ironflower felt the same way, but that was before they completed a couple hundred of them. Now, if I want them to learn at home - which I definitely do, at least during the summer - I can't exactly hand them a grade level workbook. 

Well, I could, but I want them to actually enjoy learning.

• The whiteboard. You can use it like you would a worksheet - have them copy words or practice math facts, but for some reason they find it way more fun. 
• Let them create their own worksheet and answer key for any subject. Then you or a sibling can complete it. 
• Make an alphabet book. For little ones, this can just mean writing a letter at the top of a page and drawing a picture of something that starts with that letter. When that's too easy, they can think of several words for each letter and draw those words. For older kids, they can research a favorite topic like sea animals or monster trucks and complete an alphabet book about that subject, with facts and a drawing for each letter. 
• If you've got kids close in ability levels you can have them create and trade math story problems. 
• If you still get catalogs (and if you've got an American Girl-aged girl I know you do, I'm pretty sure they have a contract with the NSA to be alerted of all 7 year old girls), give your kids a budget and let them pretend to shop from the catalog. 
• Have them figure out how to double and/or halve their favorite recipes. 
• Make them create a book, play, poem song and/or dance to help practice math facts, state capitals or whatever else they need to practice. 
• Encourage kids to take surveys and compile the data in different ways. If your family has a holiday gathering every year, let your kids ask all the family members for their favorite desserts, then create a graph depicting that. 
• Create a website. Have kids make a book review blog and encourage them to post at least once a week. 
• Encourage them to create a math picture dictionary. They can devote each page to one math term and include its meaning and an example. 
• Develop a family journal and let each kid be responsible for recording family activities one day a week. 
• Use a "number of the day" concept. Choose a number and encourage kids to come up with number sentences that total that number.