Summertime Learning Fun happens when you spend some time together, exploring our world and answering all those questions that come up. Like what's that Noise?
What else can you do?
Summertime opens up a whole new world for our children to learn. While the kids are looking to
Learning takes on a whole new meaning when summertime rolls around. No "textbooks" and no real "agenda" means that learning is done on a whatever crosses my path and intrigues me basis. That can even happen at home too! As I am writing, I can hear the toads singing in my pond. I need to learn more about them, so when my grandchildren come to visit, I can tell them some things that I'm sure they don't know.
Be Prepared!
As parents who prepare to take our children on hikes and overnight camping trips, we need to be ready to answer questions that are sure to pop up. Like "What's that noise?" Even a trip to the zoo can be filled with questions that need answers. Be prepared to either answer the questions or make note of the questions and when you are home again, look up the answers together, so that both you and your child will have learnt something new and you will have done it together. This is what makes family memories. We still laugh at some of the things that happened when we went places with our children. Now they are doing the same thing with their children and telling stories about when they were younger. It's time to pass on family history as well as having time to enjoy nature.
Playing games with the kids can be so much fun too. We would take ours camping and find that the welcome station had many printouts for educational purposes. We would make the most out of these "handouts". One camping trip, they had a print out of all the birds that nested in the area, with hints for the kids. We would go on hikes and try to spot nesting areas and then spotting the birds too. There were print outs of the different trees and their leaves. We made a collection and even did bark rubbings. Have you ever stopped and looked at all the different types of bark on trees? It is fascinating! When the kids found what they were looking for, they would take a picture to go along with their leaves and bark rubbings, carefully noting the type of tree and all the nuances of it's growth. So much to learn, just from a tree! Birds and reptiles, amphibians and mammals of the area were all duly recorded. If we needed to learn more, a note was made in our notebook to look it up when we got back home. The kids loved their nature hikes, because it wasn't just walking through the woods, it was stopping and seeing what made up those woods. The trees, birds, bugs, flowers and everything that was in our path, was food for our "Discovery Book".