Summer
Savvy: Use Vacation to Prepare for School Year
Adrian H. Cline,
Superintendent
Summer vacation is a great time to plan exciting learning
adventures for your children that will keep their skills sharp and prepare them
for the next school year.
Here
are a few ideas:
Communication
Skills
·
Encourage
your children to keep journals of daily events.
·
Learn
another language together. Play
audiotapes of beginning Spanish, French, or Italian lessons.
Physical
Activity
·
Team sports
are great. So are activities such as
swimming and miniature golf.
Geography,
History
·
Visit
places of local interest. Also teach
children about the larger world.
·
Let your
children help plan trips by mapping the route and reading guidebooks and
tourist brochures.
Art,
Music, Drama
·
Play CDs
and/or tapes of different kinds of music.
·
Have your
children invite friends over to act out musicals and skits, play games, and
read books.
Science
·
Get books
from the library to help your children identify and classify the different
flowers and trees in your back yard or neighborhood.
·
Help them
plant a garden, and teach them to care for it.
Math
·
Give kids a
bucket of water, containers, spoons, etc., and teach volume and measuring skills.
·
Measure a
room. Draw a map. Design furniture to scale.
Technology
·
Word
processing helps strengthen motor skills and compensate for difficulty in
writing.
·
Encourage
youngsters to watch National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, or other
educational programs.
Entertainment and education are important during the summer
months. A combination of the two will
give your children a great summer vacation and a head start on the next school
year.
Letters
from Mom
H. Jackson Brown Jr., author of P.S. I Love You, says
his mother kept him on the right track in life by adding a postscript at the
end of each letter she wrote to him.
Included are the following messages:
·
Be smarter
than other people; just don’t tell them so.
·
To change
everything, simply change your attitude.
·
Praise is
satisfying to receive, but it never teaches you anything new.
·
Almost all
unhappiness is the result of comparing ourselves with others.
·
You’ll learn
more about a road by traveling it than by consulting all the maps in the world.
·
Don’t be
afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where
the fruit is.
The Office of Adrian H.
Cline, Superintendent of Schools, is open from