Usually I lay out an activity the night before and we work on it together while baby Laney takes her morning nap. Then we go on with our day… errands, pool, hanging out with friends or whatever, but all the while we are in the car or when we have down time I am trying to engage their imaginations. I ask a bunch of questions about that theme and try to be strategic about fitting it in to our day.
The goal is to learn more about the world around us. To create a love of learning I have to teach them how to question things… it’s not just, “This is a carrot, it’s orange.” It’s more like, “Why do you think God made carrots orange? If you could be another color, what color would you want to be? Do you think you’ll turn orange if you eat something orange? What other orange things can we eat?”
We also have an incentive program that the kids love. They can earn stickers for doing things like…
- vacuuming
- cleaning their room
- collecting the trash
- doing a worksheet
- reading a book
- writing a letter (to their grandparents, cousins, the troops etc.)
- sweep the garage
- wash the windows
- mop the kitchen (My 5 1/2 year old LOVED this! We used a Swiffer wet jet)
- having a good attitude
- being quick to obey
- practice writing numbers
When they earn a certain number of stickers they can go shopping at the “Sarah Store.” That’s a really fancy diaper box full of LEGO sets, candy, balls, games, toys etc. that I bought ahead of time. Each item has a different sticker value. They work so hard to earn stickers and I get a clean house out of the gig… win, win!
So are you wondering what our themes are? There are 12 weeks of summer, so our 12 themes are:
- In the Garden (see below)
- Outer Space
- Little Critters/ Bugs
- Little Scientists
- Rainbows/ Colors
- Planes, Trains and Cars
- Weather
- Fun on the Farm
- Beach Days
- Under the Sea
- Jungle Explorers
- Sports
-Bean sorting activity- write out numbers using the number and the letters. Have child glue the correct number of beans to the page.
-Sort dried beans in an egg carton by size, shape color.
love it!!! 🙂 way to go, girl!
LOVE this! My little guy is going off to Kindergarten in the fall (SOB!) so I want to be intentional about this last summer before school starts. I am definitely implementing some of this!! We also have a 6-month old at home, so it'll be great to do things one-on-one while the baby (hopefully) naps. 🙂
It is laid back learning at its finest… and the nice thing is you can use a lot of the things you already have at your house! I'm so glad this plan will be helpful for you! Yay!!