Summer Badge Album

Remember how much fun you had collecting badges for Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts?  Or maybe you currently enjoy collecting POGO badges for games. (If you have young children, though, who has time for online gaming?) Anyway, the bottom line is that kids love to collect things - bugs, leaves, even stamps and coins.  With the easy way to print your own badges using the Avery round stickers, think about creating your own sticker album, individualized for each child.  Have them decorate the cover of their album made from construction paper, then add plain pieces of computer paper folded in half for the pages of the album.  Connect them with yarn and you instantly have a sticker album.  Consider adding a photograph of the completed project and a written description with the badge for a summer keepsake.

Here are some ideas for stickers:

1. Reading badges (One for each book completed and summarized on an album page)
2. Chores completed badge
3. Helper badge
4. Wildlife badge (found and identified a new bug, leaf, or other wild thing!)
5. Astronomy badge (identified five different constellations)
6. Cooking badge (made muffins from the ubiquitous zucchini crop!)
7. Mechanics badge (fixed a broken toy with or without adult supervision)
8. Math badge (practiced five pages of age-appropriate math problems - easy to get online)
9. Veggie badge (finished all veggies on the plate)
10. Craft badge (completed a craft kit)

The idea behind these badges is to encourage completion of activities.  So often, kids begin something, find a new activity, and abandon the old activity without completing it.  The badge system helps children see the value of seeing a project through to completion.

What badges can you think of that will be good for your children?  Encourage your children to develop their own badges, too!

Kids’ Summer Curriculum Sampler

During the summer, children relish the lazy days without homework, projects, and early rises for school.  However, by September, their teachers bemoan their lack of memory for common math operations and English composition rules.  Consider these inexpensive suggestions to keep your children’s brains engaged over the sunny summer months while they exercise their bodies on the playground and at the pool or beach, so they are ready for their teachers in the fall.  It’s a sampling of each class your children encounter in school:

1. Math – If your grocery story doubles coupons, tell your children that for every coupon they find and you use, you will give them the grocery store’s contribution.  The only catch is that they have to calculate their profits before you hand over the money.  Also, encourage them to live by the 1/3 rule: 1/3 now, 1/3 for savings, and 1/3 for charity.  If you want suggestions for the charitable giving, read my book, Helping Kids Help, available at my website: www.reneeheiss.com/hkh.html.
2. English – Your children will be prepared for the inevitable “What I Did During the Summer” essay if they keep a sensory journal.  Either buy or make a fun journal. Then on each page, have your children describe the sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and textures of summer they encounter every day.  Reward them for their journal participation with stickers for particularly descriptive entries.  For help with the sensory imagery, go to The Colors-Shapes-Textures Thesaurus.
3. Geography – Going away this summer?  Then show your children on a map where you are headed.  Have them plot with you the route by car, plane, train, and bus, even if you’re only using one means of transportation.  Learn the names of cities along the way and any notable landmarks.  If you belong to AAA, get their TripTik, which is very helpful.  Otherwise make your own version of this travel tool.
4. History – Believe it or not, most kids don’t know the local history.  Take a photographic journey through your town.  Mount the pictures in a real or digital album.  Then help your children discover the history behind each landmark.  If you create a digital album, consider creating your own book at http://www.snapfish.com/
5. Reading – Your local library probably has its own reading program for children, so sign them up to join the fun.  If you don’t live close enough to your library, create your own fun by making a Bookworm Bulletin Board.  Start with an apple in the middle, one hole for each of your children, and then begin adding segments of a worm (circles cut from construction paper) for each book the child reads.  For extra fun, invite the neighborhood kids to participate, too!
6. Foreign languages – Have a weekly worldwide lunch (or dinner) day.  Find a food with a funny name and then have French Day, Spanish Day, Australian Day, etc. each week.  Encourage your children to research what they want to eat on that day and let them help prepare and clean up.  Post words from the foreign language with the translation around the table.  Everyone needs to create a different sentence from those foreign words.  Here’s a fun place to start:  Mama Lisa’s World Blog.
7. Science – Hold your own science camp.  Check out books from the library on science experiments kids can do with everyday items.  Designate each day of your camp for a different science topic: biology, geology, botany, astronomy, etc.  The next week, encourage your kids to develop a science fair.  Invite relatives for a barbecue to view their science fair displays. The homeschool network always has fun things the kids can do at home to encourage learning during the summer: http://homeschooling.about.com/library/blsumsci.htm
8. Practical and performing arts – Give your kids lots of room to explore with this topic.  Encourage them to learn a new skill – sewing, decoupage, working on a car engine, cooking, metal working, etc.  Caution: This activity is contagious and could develop into a lifelong love of the activity!  Enchanted Learning has thousands of ideas.  Maybe your children can begin to make gifts for winter holidays.
9. Philanthropy – Most schools recommend, and some schools even require, that children give back something to their community for the greater good.  Help your children to understand that giving money for charity is good, but doing something is better.  Find places where you can volunteer your efforts, if even for one hour a week.  Studies show that when children volunteer, they develop into caring, successful adults.  To see how one girl hosts a charitable birthday party based on the Care Bags Foundation, read Somebody Cares!

So what are you waiting for?  Summer’s just around the corner.  Consider assembling boxes of fun related to all the topics above.  There are nine weeks in the summer and nine topics.  Even if you pick only one day a week, instead of an entire week of topical fun, you will have increased your children’s potential for success in September.

Please post your own idea for extending children's learning during the summer.  Your idea may find its way into my new book on this topic ;-)