The last six weeks of our Smart Summer Challenge have flown by–it’s hard to believe we’re at the finish line! Hopefully you and your family found it a valuable and fun learning experience–I know we did!
It’s time to link up for the very last time–and though each week’s prize has been pretty awesome, this week we have several awesome prizes for our participants–
Show us what you’ve been doing, and you can win one of our HUGE, last-week prizes:
- $150 to your local toy store or bookstore from Juice in the City
- an HP mini 210 computer from Hewlett-Packard
- one of 5 subscriptions to Pixie 3 from Tech4Learning
I’ve been sharing my family’s Smart Summer activities this week:
- fun with pixie — writing, creating, imagining
- learning about the moon — phases, flipbook, cookies
- Busch Gardens and candle making — day 2 of our Virginia trip
- Colonial Williamsburg & Jamestown — day 1 of our Virginia trip
- easy frugal backyard water fun — keeping cool and playing in h2o
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:
Prize 1: HP Mini 210
The HP Mini 210 is a portable (3 lbs.), long-lasting (10 hour battery life) notebook that features Beats Audio and a wireless internet connection, making it an ideal PC for students of all ages.
The HP Mini 210 is available now at HPDirect.com.
The winner of the HP Mini 210 (valued at $300) will be determined at a drawing to be held by the hosts of the Smart Summer Challenge on [date: August 12, 2011]. This game is sponsored and administered by hosts of the Smart Summer Challenge. Prizes and promotional support are provided and delivered by Hewlett Packard Company headquartered at 3000 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA (HP).
Prize 2: $150 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!
Prize 3: 5 subscriptions to Pixie 3, from Tech4Learning
Pixie is exciting creativity software students can use to share ideas, imagination, and understanding through a combination of text, original artwork, voice narration, and images. Whether you work alone or in a group, Pixie is the only canvas you need.
Official Rules:
- The linky & giveaway closes at 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, August 11, 2011.
- 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=3364 #weteach #ece
Know that we LOVE you!
Thank you for taking the Smart Summer Challenge!
Your hostesses,
Candace at NaturallyEducational.com, MaryLea at PinkAndGreenMama, and me!
fyi: Huuuuge thanks to Hewlett-Packard, Tech4Learning, Juice in the City for providing this week’s giveaway prize and showing how much they value a parent’s role in summer learning!
Another idea you might or might not have featured (or could apply to your outside kitchen) is to save all of your expired, old or unwanted goods from your pantry. When you have a good stash, fill the pantry outside with all of the goods. The kids can then make cakes, use sprinkles, etc. outside and you can just hose it away. It is a favorite pastime for my kids. If someone is strapped for cash, they can ask friends and family to stash old flour, sugar, cake mix they forget to use in time to add to the collection.
Our favorite summer activity thus far has been MandM math! We started by reading various MandM math books (from McGrath math) and I went ahead and made worksheets tailored to my kids’ age- my 4yr old had a color-coded graph in which he grouped by color, counted etc. My 8yr old had addition and subtraction word problems which became more complex. My 10yr old had to find mean,median,mode and compare data with her siblings! We also estimated together, did some impromptu probability problems… Some days we used 1 bag and divided among the three. Other days they each had their own bag– thus more “numbers” to work with. Our favorite twist to hands-on math with a treat upon completion! Possibilities are endless.
We spent the week talking about volcanos. We read the Magic School Bus story about finding a new underwater volcano, made volcano pictures with tissue paper fire and capped things off with a true exploding volcano science experament project my son got for Christmas- totally cool!
This has been such an awesome experience: to see all the amazing ideas other mommy’s are doing (boy, have I added to mt “to-do” list!), and to be inspired to really focus on expanding my own children’s curiosity. Thank you so much to you, MaryLea, & Candace for “sponsoring” the Smart Summer Challenge & providing this awesome venue to share!
Happy summer!
Gwen @ Buttercupsbabies.com