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Our preschool summer routine is going to be fun! This Summer is our last before Squeaks is officially “school aged”. Since she’s a January baby and only just turned four years old we’ll be doing another year of preschool type activities. I don’t want to rush her through childhood and I’d rather she be an older kindergartner. And with Little Dude just shy of three years old, he likes to do what big sister is doing, but he still very much prefers play over structured learning (which is how it should be).
We’ve been enjoying our morning basket and Busy Binders mostly, and Squeaks finished her journal a few weeks ago, so I think it’s time to take a little Summer break before setting off on our second year of preschool. Our summer routine will be mostly play (as it has been so far), but we can still mix in some educational games and activities to keep things fresh in her mind. Plus, kids don’t care what time of year it is. Learning is fun and new for them all year round!
Here’s what our preschool summer routine will look like:
I’m going to let the kids dictate learning time.
If Squeaks says she wants to play school, we’ll play school. In the past I’ve structured learning time a little more, bringing out the morning basket even if the kids didn’t ask for it or telling Squeaks it was time for school. For the summer months though, I’ll put her in charge. If after breakfast she and her brothers fall into a nice playing routine, I’m not going to interrupt. If she sits down to color and it turns into a handwriting lesson, I’ll follow along. Maybe she wants to count rocks in the backyard so I’ll count with her, but if she looses interest after five minutes, or changes her mind about an educational activity I’m fine with that too. It’s totally up to her.
Bible time will continue.
I don’t really see Bible time as a school activity. It’s a life activity. So Squeaks will continue to read her devotional with Daddy at bedtime, but since Awana is done till September, I’m also adding this devotional for her and I to do together during her brother’s nap.
I’d also like to continue learning hymns together. Little Dude sometimes looses interest in this though so Bible coloring pages might be printed for him while we practice.
And of course, we’ll continue to play our Ten Commandments memory game. I have other games like this formulating in my head and I can’t wait to get them designed.
We’ll do as much hands-on learning as possible.
There are tons of opportunities to go out into the world and learn! We intend to visit the beach, mountains, and go on lots of walks. We’ll incorporate learning into our vacation to Tahoe in July too. There’s an awesome children’s museum there that we look forward to visiting. The lake and all the hiking trails alone lend themselves to some great interactive learning too. At the preschool age, you can really make any outing educational on some level (even the grocery store).
There are so many great options to keep the kiddos learning while we’re at home too. I’ve put together two months worth of activity ideas for July and August (62 different activities in all). There’s a good mix of art, science, outdoor, indoor (for those really hot days), educational activities, and even some recipes.
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These are just ideas, mind you. I don’t intend to be strict about keeping to this schedule. Plus, quite a few of these activities can be repeated. Going to the library, writing thank you notes, going to the park, or even any of the fun science experiments can be repeated as many times as you’d like. I also only listed one activity per day but you could always do more than one. The sky is really the limit. Well, the sky and your toddler’s attention span. Ha!
I created the calendars as an interactive PDF so you can click on some of the activities to be taken to instructions on how to make/play them. Enjoy!
View our Summer calendar here!
Play will be king!
Even with these calendars, in the end, our summer routine will be no routine at all. These calendars are really just suggestions and a way for me to be ready with an arsenal of fun things to pull from when we’re in the mood. Play is the first order of business though, and I’m really looking forward to watching the kids imaginations grow. We’ll take one day at a time and I’ll gauge how many activities we’re up for. If we end up doing nothing but playing in the backyard, that’ll be good too. It’s going to be a great summer!
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