When I taught school, parents approached me at the end of every year, asking for summer learning ideas for their students to keep their skills sharp and avoid the perennial summer learning loss. I’d often direct them to some online resources or tell them to work through the unused pages of our workbooks from class.
You could also consider sending home a summer packet with various activities. It’s a little extra work at first, but you can re-use the packets from year to year, sending them home with all students (if you haven’t maxed your copier privileges, that is).
Now, will they do the work you send home? Not necessarily, but it’s nice to send home a packet of ideas for parents who want to kill some long summer days. Parents will appreciate you taking that extra step, and next year’s teachers will likely see the benefits when the year begins.
If a summer packet is something you’re interested in, we’ve already gotten you started; below is a list of worksheets from our FREEsources library that are printable and ready to go!
Academic Worksheets For Student Enrichment
Writing Activities For Summer Learning
As an ELA teacher, I always recommend that students find some way to do a little “painless” writing over the summer. Here are some recommendations:
- Creative Writing – I liked to tell students to grab a pen pal or two from class, start a story, and mail it along. The pen pal would then add his/her paragraph to the story and mail it back. It could go back and forth/round and round all summer long and turn into quite a tale! Plus, the students experience the ancient joy of snail mail anticipation (and the still-viable art of addressing an envelope)!
- Students can also write a friendly letter to whomever they choose: a thank-you to a grandparent who took them on a trip, a letter to an old friend who moved after the school year, etc. Or they could send a postcard from their vacation.
- Recommend students start a journal. Send home some prompt ideas for those days when they are stuck on what to write about.
Enrichment/Specialty/Other Ideas
Below is a list of activities, lessons, worksheets, and links to websites that you can send to parents as needed. There are some real gems here, and students will appreciate you including something other than typical academics that appeals to their individuality!
- Science experiments – Make ice cream, create stronger bubbles, find secret colors in a black marker, etc.
- Geography – Great for summer travelers – or for those who just enjoy learning about the world around us!
- Music worksheets – For your budding musicians.
- Art worksheets – And your future Picassos.
- Cartoon drawing – Whether it’s political cartoons or regular comics, your artistic students can learn the art of cartoon drawing. Bonus: They’ll be writing without even thinking about it!
- Physical Education – For those students who need to get the wiggles out.
- Enrichment worksheets – To aid in perking up the summer slumps.
And remember, if you don’t see what you need here, you can do a more specific search in our FREEsources library. So make it your own and send it along with students as they head off into the summer sunset.
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