Making summer learning fun can seem super hard, but it’s actually pretty easy. Use these simple ideas and tips to help your child skip summer slide!
Easy Ways to Make Summer Learning Fun
Make Reading & Writing Fun
- Keep a summer journal
- Join a summer reading challenge. Check your local library and bookstores for free programs!
- Host a movies-based-on-books marathon
- Write postcards to yourself or to friends and family
- Scrapbook
- Doodle
Check out MilKids Ed’s Reading Pinterest board for even more ideas!
Make Math Fun
- Join Khan Academy (it’s free)
- Play games as a family
- Cook together
- Count things, literally anything
- Measure your child, yourself, distances to other places, weights, etc.
- Go shopping and guesstimate the total cost
- Have eating contests: How many gummy worms? How much ice cream or pizza or popsicles? (Just stop before anyone gets sick!)
- Have other contests: running, jumping, swimming, climbing, reading, quiet time
Find more summer math fun on Pinterest!
Make Social Studies Fun
- Plan a trip and use a map
- Connect reading with history
- Visit community locations: library, fire station, doctor, supermarket, police station (perfect for little explorers)
- Make a budget for trips (and double dip this math activity!)
- Go to a museum
- Shadow a parent, another relative, or friend at their work
- Volunteer as a family
- Explore your community and discover facts about history, location, and current events
Make Science Fun
- Do science experiments
- Cook together and learn chemistry
- Go to a science museum
- Visit the beach
- Take a trip to the zoo or aquarium
- Explore the backyard or a nearby park for different plants and animals
- Plant a garden
- Watch ice melt
- Cook in a solar oven
Discover even more summer science fun on Pinterest!
Make Physical Fitness Fun
- Since up for a fun run: color run, obstacle course, glow-in-the-dark run
- Go swimming
- Play mini golf
- Get a strike at the bowling alley
- Sign up for a summer sports league or skills camp
- Play tag or capture the flag
- Take a walk
- Dance together
- Go on a bike ride
Make Social Skills Fun
These are skills you will need to coach and practice with your child.
- Talk to someone new: a neighbor, child at summer camp, or kid at the park
- Order food at a restaurant: practice reading the menu, making a decision, speaking clearly to the server
- Pay for something: talk about budgeting, figuring out tax or tip, and how to exchange money politely
- Ask someone for help: ways to interrupt a conversation politely, how to approach someone new, safe people to ask for help
Make The Arts Fun
- Paint together
- Make a sun print
- Dye flowers
- Tie-dye everything
- Make mud pies and sculptures
- Build a sand castle
- Create a mosaic or collage
- Press flowers and leaves
- Doodle
- DIY jewelry
- Dance
- Join a child’s theater program
There are endless ways to have fun this summer! One of the best ways to organize everything is the Smart Kids Summer Challenge. (That’s the FREE resource!)