Summer is here! Nature is calling, and everyone wants to be outside.
Many moms worry that the long, lazy days of summer will undo all the academic progress their children made during the school year. Some even consider homeschooling through the summer, just to keep the momentum going. But let's be honest, after months of lessons and routines, children are eager to run barefoot through the grass, splash in the water, explore the outdoors, and simply be kids. And if we're honest, many of us are ready for that change of pace too.
Here's the good news: you can keep reading, writing, and arithmetic skills growing without worksheets, busy work, or workbooks. Summer learning doesn't have to look like school at all. These foundational skills can be woven naturally into your family's everyday adventures.
Maintain a simple daily rhythm. Keep meals uncomplicated. Resist the temptation to overschedule every moment. Choose just a few intentional activities and leave plenty of room for discovery, imagination, and family memories.
This summer, think outside the box. You may be surprised how much learning happens when life becomes the classroom..
A Baker's Dozen of Fun Ways to "Summer School Outside the Box"
1. Summer Reading
Reading is one of the easiest ways to keep learning alive.
Daily Family Scripture Study can keep reading strong. We let everyone participate, even non and emerging readers. Confident readers read five verses, and had assistance if needed. We would stop and discuss what we had just read. Non and Emerging readers lap read one verse with me and then we would stop and discuss. I ran my finger under the word and read very slowly. They would say the words they could.
Daily Read Aloud Time is for the whole family. This is an opportunity to expose them to great stories and living books. Then take time to ask questions and discuss what was read. So much can be learned, even from reading aloud. Even fiction has themes that can lead us into history, geography, science, finance, personal health, understanding human nature, frugality, gardening, and more.
Get creative with summer reading:
- Create a Family Passport and travel the globe through books.
- Play Family Reading Bingo with genres like scripture, historical fiction, westerns, biographies, fantasy, how-to books, and more.
- Designate a cozy outdoor reading spot with a hammock or blanket under a shady tree.,
- Join your library’s summer reading program, or create your own!
One summer, our family launched a themed reading challenge called "Fly Me to the Moon, Let Me Play Among the Stars!" We created a paper solar system on the wall, and each family member had a spaceship that moved from planet to planet as they logged pages read. Prizes included things like making s’mores, camping in the backyard, or hosting a movie night. Everyone could participate, even little ones who were read to.
2. Gardening for Growth
Gardening teaches science, responsibility, and patience.
- Let each child choose a root vegetable, an above-ground vegetable, and a berry to grow.
- Create Themed Gardens, like pizza or salsa gardens, with ingredients kids love.
- Try Scrapy Gardening, by regrowing vegetables from organic store-bought produce. Plant seeds, regrow celery, plant green onion roots, suspend sweet potatoes in water to start slips, plant sprouting potatoes, onions, and garlic. Try growing herbs from cuttings..
- What if you do not have a lot of space? Try Perimeter Gardening, planting along the last two or three feet before your property line
- No yard? Do you have a patio or front porch? Consider Container Gardening, Gutter Box Gardening or Grow Box Gardening and use vertical growing techniques, with tomatoes, a squash plant, a cucumber, melons, strawberries, and peppers.
- Grow an Herb Garden and learn to grow, cook with fresh herbs, and preserve the herbs.
Check Pinterest for container garden or small space gardens. Researching ideas and making a plan is half the fun. There are so many kinds of creative gardens they could be a blogpost on just on types of gardens:: Theme, Chaos, Volunteer, Heritage, Literature, Moon, Rose. Pizza, Salsa, Friendship, Tea, Honey, Bird, Color Wheel, Alphabet, Fairy, Native Plant, Cutting, Stone Soup, Butterfly, Pollinator, cultural, orchards, and more.
By spending time in the garden, children get to enjoy the sun and fresh air while also learning about science. They can conduct nature studies in the garden, drawing plants and bugs, taking photos, and learning about various plant species, birds, and insects. They could keep a garden journal or even create a book documenting their gardening journey. Growing something from seed to table is a rewarding experience they’ll never forget.
3. Summer Entrepreneurship
Business basics put reading, writing, and arithmetic into action..
Summer is the perfect time for entrepreneurship. While children work for neighbors, they gain valuable work skills. They also continue to strengthen their math skills as they budget for resources to use as entrepreneurs and manage their income. Summer entrepreneurship doesn't have to be limited to just a lemonade stand..
Some creative business ideas include:
- Pet walking.
- Vacation pet feeding.
- Vacation indoor plant watering.
- Vacation yard and garden care.
- Taking out full cans and bringing back empty garbage cans on garbage day.
- Weeding.
- Lawn mowing.
- Dusting and vacuuming for neighbors.
- Babysitting.
- Selling popsicles in the neighborhood.
- Artisan bread baking.
- Baking summer holiday pies.
- Organizing birthday parties for young children.
- Teaching art classes to younger children.
- Holding a yard sale.
- Prepping Freezer meals for busy neighbors.
Help children make a simple business plan, estimate costs, and learn how to keep records tracking their work, expenditures, income, and taxes.
Encourage children to keep an idea book to write down ideas for improvement, things that did not work, and ideas for future streams of income. This kind of planning and record keeping uses all three basic skills, of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
4. Summer Photo Journals
Capture summer memories through photography.
Most of us have cameras on our phones. Allow children to capture pictures of the activities you engage in during the summer. These activities can include service projects, gardening, and even doing dishes together.
During one summer, I purchased inexpensive clear vinyl photo books at Walmart and some hardcover ones at the Dollar Store. A two-page spread can hold a picture or collage of pictures on one page and the other page can provide space for a short write-up about the activity. This creates a summer treasury, and you can even include ticket stubs or receipts from the places you visit.
5. Family Blog
Your childrens can become digital creators and storytellers.
Let your children document your family’s adventures. Blogging can be your family’s own version of a digital newspaper. By treating the blog as a family news channel, children can share their experiences of both ordinary and extraordinary moments as a family. They’ll develop writing skills, learn basic keyboarding, and even dabble in photo editing and layout design.
6. Backyard Family Camp
Turn your yard into a campground for a week of fun.
Camping can be fun! You can start by organizing a backyard summer camp. Plan a week of activities! Include crafts, a neighborhood nature scavenger hunt, star gazing, learning how to read a compass, cooking and eating outdoors, acquiring outdoor skills, engaging in an outdoor skill competition, playing water games, croquet, lawn bowling, and enjoying evening campfires with singing, storytelling, and s'mores.
It's a good idea to create a camp motto and song, and even design a camp t-shirt and flag. Encourage children to keep camp journals. They can decorate their own journal covers. Backyard camp can become a cherished family tradition, and as children grow up and get married, even grandchildren can join the fun at Camp Grandma!
7. Poetry or Literary Luncheon
Enjoy a simple lunch paired with poetry and literature.
A luncheon does not have to be expensive. It could be very simple: finger sandwiches, berry lemonade, and chilled fruit. Family members could read "Poems for Two Voices." Each family member could recite a poem they memorized the previous week, or share a poem they wrote.
Host a potluck “Mom & Me” book club and have a potluck luncheon, inviting other families.
8. Family Recital Night
Celebrate talents and practice public speaking.
Family recital nights can be great fun, especially when Mom and Dad surprise the children by preparing something to share. The recital can be as simple as scripture recitations, a musical piece someone has been working on, or something they have crafted with their own hands. Alternatively, they can draw random topics from a bowl and give a stand-up two- to three-minute speech or perform a song based on that topic.
If your family has members learning instruments or singing, you could organize a family recital and invite neighbors or grandparents to join.
9. Afternoon Art, Crafts, & Family Art Exhibit
Dedicate time to create art or crafts, then show it off!
Is your family passionate about creating art or crafts? Let the children have art & crafts afternoons.
Host afternoon art and crafts sessions where children paint, sketch, sculpt, create needle work, make candles, and more.
End the summer with a family art and crafts exhibit in the yard, complete with refreshments and guests.
10. Author, Author
Challenge your family to write and illustrate their own books on their favorite topic.
The book can have hand illustrations. Watch a documentary on hand bookbinding. Let the family create their books on the computer, or insist that they are completely done by hand. Book pages can be handmade, photographed, and then assembled into a photo book. However the books are created is entirely up to you. When books are finished, have a book signing party.
11. Puzzles and Games
Keep your children's minds sharp over the summer with puzzles and games.
On those hot July and August days when children do not want to be in the heat, consider puzzles and games. They provide opportunities to practice logic, strategy, spelling, math, and even history, without a single worksheet in sight.
You can rotate through different types of games during the week:
- Board games like Ticket to Ride, Scrabble, or Settlers of Catan build all kinds of skills.
- Card games reinforce math and logic (think Uno, Pit, Mille Bornes, King's Corner).
- Puzzle races or collaborative 1,000-piece puzzles can build patience and focus as a family.
- Try designating one evening a week as Family Game Night, and let each child take turns choosing the game.
You get the idea! Any kind of game that requires keeping score uses math, some more directly than others. Some games teach strategy and can help hone their observational skills. Others test their general knowledge, some test their geographical knowledge, and others are great for spelling.
12. Wild Days
Children can become wild things when they are all cooped up inside. Many of us suffer from NDD (Nature Deficit Disorder). This can impact our circadian rhythms, hormones, physical health and our mental health. To me, Wild Days are a non-negotiable, and not just a reward or incentive. Many of us think of outside time as optional, when in reality it is foundational. Sunlight, fresh air, and movement are essential building blocks of good health. Nature sounds speak peace to our bodies and help us down regulate cortisol.
Early morning sunlight supports healthy circadian rhythms, benefits our eyes, and creates a cascade of positive effects throughout the body. Movement can strengthen the body’s core, develop dexterity, integrate the brain, build Executive Function, and learn risk management. The nature they experience is a foundation for science and fertile ground for keeping nature notebooks, which bridge and expand interest, art, literature, science and even reading, writing, and math.
Consider spending as much time as you can outside each day. Don’t just send them, join them.
Eat meals outside, when you can..
Go to local play parks, State parks, and National Parks. Most cities are getting free public walking trails and have shaded city parks.
There are many free opportunities for learning, outside. Wild days can be as simple as a walk around the block, or going to a park and letting children crawl, walk, run, climb, jump, spin, slide, swing, balance, and brachiate (overhead ladder). These things prepare children for learning. Actually, they are learning profoundly, in ways they could never learn at a desk.
By the time we moved to our current home, we had a lot of experience with outside time. We had been daily walkers for over a decade. We built a garden. We created outdoor spaces where we could eat.
We took advantage of close walking paths and the cool Provo Canyon. My adult daughters wanted their children to experience the Provo Canyon. One daughter told me that this was one of her fondest memories of her childhood.
12. Crazy Days
When I was a child, I would ask mom where she was going. Her response, "Crazy, wanna come along?' It was quite genius, really. She could count on our curiosity to keep us engaged. Sometimes, it was to the store or to get tires changed. Other times it was to a museum. Other times she had matinee tickets to a concert, musical, or play. You do not have to be out and about every day, but perhaps, once a week.
Crazy Days aren't planned by the children or built around a bucket list. They're spontaneous, full of surprises, and always a learning adventure. Sometimes, it may be an errand and other times it is a field trip. These Crazy Day Adventures in learning are the perfect thing for Summer Photo Journals. The children can make Crazy Day Journals and take note of one thing they learned, and the one thing they enjoyed the most. It is Ok if the thing they enjoyed most was you, time together, or the road games you played on the way. If dad did not come with you, perhaps you could have an evening news cast by the children. They can give him the scoop on what they learned and the fun they had.
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During the summer, your children have countless opportunities to preserve—and even strengthen, the academic skills they've worked so hard to develop. When learning is connected to real life and fueled by curiosity, it often becomes more meaningful than anything found in a workbook.
By thinking outside the box this summer, you'll keep growing healthy bodies, active minds, and strong family relationships while creating memories your children will carry into adulthood.
Summer school doesn't have to look like school at all. Sometimes the very best classroom is a garden, a hiking trail, a backyard campfire, or the front porch with a good book?
How does your family "summer school outside the box"? I'd love to hear your favorite traditions and ideas in the comments below
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