Have you taken the pledge to make it a Smart Summer? We hope so!!
Show us what you’ve been doing this past week, and you can win a HUGE prize pack from our friends at LeapFrog!
I’ve been sharing my family’s Smart Summer activities this week:
- getting ready for kindergarten — summertime prep
- visiting a local theater — wolf trap’s theater-in-the-woods
- alphabet letter splash — keeping cool with the abc’s
- how to teach kids to search the web — read, research, evaluate
- breakfast time reading — cereal boxes and more
Share YOUR ideas! We’d love for you to share your ideas–you can add a link to a post on your blog or even a photo set on Flickr or any types of publicly viewable “journal” entry on a social media or community site.
Not a blogger? If you do not have access to posting entries on any public site, you can also leave a comment on this post, sharing the learning opportunities you incorporated into your week with your children.
Your post (or comment) can be something from your archives that speaks to our theme for the week (Forest Friendly Fun) or it can just be a general post about how you are fitting fun learning into your summer activities. You can find our weekly themes on our calendar of ideas but ANY learning activities, big or small, are welcomed!
Just add your link(s) (as many relevant links as you would like) to a specific post or page (i.e. http://teachmama.com/2011/06/smart-summer-challenge-make-summer-learning-f-u-n.html NOT http://teachmama.com) to the link widget below.
WIN PRIZES!
Every link you enter in the widget below (or your comment) during the week will also enter you to win our AWESOME prize of the week: $230+ worth of LeapFrog games and toys! 
We are totally in love with LeapFrog over here–we have the Explorer and Tag and Tag Junior and the US Map-and I firmly believe in these products because they make learning fun and engaging for kids. LeapFrog knows the value of helping children establish a strong literacy and math foundation, and their products do just that.
In this week’s prize pack, the winner will receive this CRAZY, fabulous assortment of products:
- 1 Leapster Explorer
- 2 Leapster Explorer games
- 1 Tag Reader
- 2 Tag Reader Books
- Tag US and World Maps
Official Rules:
- The linky & giveaway closes at 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, July 28. –so you can enter any time between now and the 28th–and then we’ll see you back Friday morning for more fun!
- You may enter as many links as you wish and each link will count as an entry.
- Comment entries are limited to one per person.
- US Shipping only for prizes, due to sponsor requests, but international friends are still encouraged to play and add their links!
- Winner will be chosen at random from valid entries.
- You retain the rights to all entries but grant us permission to share your links along with a short excerpt and thumbnail entry.
- We reserve the right to disqualify entries at our sole discretion and change the rules or prizes without notification beyond updating the page.
Spread the Word!
Sport a button: Please feel free to link back and/or grab the code for the Smart Summer Challenge button (on the right sidebar) to show every parent the impact they have on their child’s learning–and how easy it can be to make summer learning sneaky and fun!
Visit us on Facebook: Feel free to also post photos, questions, and ideas — http://www.facebook.com/smartsummerchallenge.
Tweet: I’m making it a #smartsummer thanks to the Smart Summer Challenge and @leapfrog ! http://teachmama.com/?p=3362 #weteach #ece
Know that we LOVE you!
Thank you for taking the Smart Summer Challenge!
Your hostesses,
Candace at Naturally Educational, MaryLea at Pink And Green Mama and me!
fyi: Huuuuge thanks to LeapFrog for providing this week’s giveaway prize and showing how much they value a parent’s role in summer learning!
It’s been too hot here to do much with the Forest theme, but we did make rainbow rice and have “rainbow day” where we drew rainbows and had a rainbow fruit meal, went to the Children’s Museum, read lots of books, and our ladybug larvae arrived for our new ladybug house.
We checked on our backyard veggie garden for outside time today, it’s coming along well! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2261246137710.2136722.1445152254&l=8936d2c0a2&type=1
Last year, my MOMS Club had a “MOMS Club Summer Camp Series.” Each week, we planned 3 days worth of activities to keep learning fun in the summer (and provide a free summer camp-moms came too, no drop offs). I taught a week on trains since my son loves them. We sang songs, read books, went to the train musuem, and decorated cardboard boxes to make a train at the park. The kids had a great time learning (and learning about topics they might not learn about in school, other topics included camping, farm animals, ocean animals).
Hi
http://www.wegivebooks.com – a great web site for parents and children to share together. This is and opportunity to read books on-line and for each book read, a book is donated to an organization of your choosing. Parents could read to a younger child – a Preschool or Kindergarten child could listen to a story and then look for alphabet letters or sight words. An older sibling could read to a younger sibling. Give it a try!
We have the Leapster Explorer, but the only game we have so far is “Mr. Pencil saves Doodleburg”. It came preloaded with a limited version of the Pet game, which he really likes. Br (3) sometimes gets frustrated that it needs the lines a little too exact in some of the tracing activities for his current motor control, but definitely some neat activities. We got it because a friend with a son one yer older raved about it!
It would be awesome if we win to get some more games, plus Br LOVES maps!
What a great summer it has been so far! Thank you for providing a home for all of these fabulously creative ideas. My kids are having fun (and so am I!).