Have you taken the pledge to make it a Smart Summer? We hope so!!
Show us what you’ve been doing, and you can win $100 to your local bookstore or toy store!
I’ve been sharing my family’s Smart Summer activities this week:
- word a day cards — playing with words
- mini-me collages –personalizing Everyday Name books
- learning with cars 2 — maps, trailers, printables
- rush hour, jr — brain games
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 (Me on the Map) 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: $100 to the local bookstore or toy store of your choice from Juice in the City.
Juice in the City is unique because of our mission to save local! Our sales force is comprised of moms who source deals based on their personal experience in local businesses. We believe in supporting the community while at the same time, empowering moms!
Official Rules:
- The linky & giveaway closes at 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, July 7. and then we’ll see you back Friday morning for more fun!
- You may enter as many links as you wish and each 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! http://teachmama.com/?p=3179 #weteach #ece
Know that we LOVE you!
Thank you for taking the Smart Summer Challenge!
Your hostesses,
Candace at NaturallyEducational.com, Amy at teachmama.com, MaryLea at PinkAndGreenMama
fyi: Huuuuge thanks to Juice in the City for providing this week’s giveaway prize and showing how much they value a parent’s role in summer learning!
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My link today isn’t map related but it’s there if needed. We had Vacation Bible School all week so we mostly played home made play-doh and then swam at the beach all afternoon. Next week we’ll get into “Mommy School” full time and I’m excited for all the SSChallenge activities on the calendar. This is so great!
We’ve been talking about Independance Day this week. Monday: We learned about the Declaration of Independance and voyaged downtown to see it. Tuesday: Had a day on the flag, Ft. McHenry (we’ll go later in the summer), Betsy Ross and Francis Scott Key. Listened to the national anthem. Wednesday: Made flags (and painted them) with popsickle sticks. Thursday: Made fireworks pictures. Friday: We’re going to watch clips from 1776 and prep for making an apple pie over the weekend.
I haven’t started blogging about it yet. Every summer I let the girls each choose a topic that they want to learn more about. This year we are doing the moon, space, and butterflies. We have hit the library for all of our moon books, movies, and music. Now to search the web for some wonderful moon ideas to start next week with my girls. I know we’re going to do a moon city out of the recyclables I’ve saved. Love your ideas and am saving plenty of them to keep my 3yo entertained through the school year while her sisters are busy in school.
We love the challenge. The day we went to see Cars 2 we loved waking up to find the activities you posted. The next day we went straight into traveling to Italy and France. We even made a security checkpoint in my living room to check all bags before getting on our flight, today we are off to Spain. Gotta love pretend play with the added education benefits!
I have tried and tried and cannot get the linky to post my pic – it’s my computer blocking the program somehow – I will keep trying – I’d love to post my “passport2Adventurez” world geography “virtual vacations” post-
check it out – http://www.adventurezinchildrearing.com
thanks! kelli
Kelli–I just added it for you. 🙂 thanks so much for trying, and sorry it didn’t work. LOVE the post–so fun!!
The passports are a great idea! Looks like the kids really had fun in Italy.
I don’t have a blog but I have been following some of your ideas. We took the Cars 2 project and printed out coloring pages and the activity pages and learned about the different countries before watching the movie. We just started this week as this is our first week of summer. We also did a few other activities, like marbleized paper with shaving cream and food coloring and learned about mixing primary colors to create other colors. We are learning to read in English so we are learning sounds of letters and today we cut out three of our letters from the marbleized paper to practice cutting and gluing. I have a few pics but not sure where to send it to.
I haven’t had a chance to blog about it yet, but we did a fun related activity the other day: “Where were my toys made?” We looked at the bottom of a whole bunch of my 3 y/o’s toys and sorted them by where they were made. We then pulled out his Children’s Atlas and organized them by where they were on the map (simplified by the fact they ended up all being made somewhere in Asia- not really a surprise…)
FUN!!! How cool is that? I love it–and we may do the very same time on our next rainy day. . .