With another month of summer yet to go, many parents are wondering how and where to snag some last-minute (and affordable!) learning opportunities for their kids.
As part of the American Rescue Plan, $30 billion can be used for after-school and summer programs to help kids catch up, according to Aaron Philip Dworkin, chief executive officer for the National Summer Learning Association. “There should be and will be more opportunities for kids to partake in programming, like never before,” he says.
How you and your family take advantage of that will vary. What it should be for you and the children in your life is engaging, enriching and fun. If you’re not sure where to begin, look no further than the child in front of you.
“You’ve got to start where the child is,” says Amanda Alexander, chief academic officer at Scholastic. Allow the child to lead the way, she says, build off their interests and what you see they gravitate to, and go from there.
Here are some ideas to get you going.
The energy, curiosity and joy with which young children explore and delight in the world around them is boundless. Every parent has a story about a child loving a cardboard box far more than anything ever inside of it; remember this the next time you think you need to buy something new or schedule one more activity.
Surround them – and OK, everyone in your family – with books that resonate with them.
“I think kids like books, just like adults, that they can relate to,” Alexander says. “Any sort of text-to-self connection that they can make I think makes books meaningful to children.”
Noting that children’s books “need to be about the world in which they live,” Alexander adds that sometimes there are some “uncomfortable” truths of our past with which we need to reckon. There are ways in which you can engage in conversation with children about these things that are developmentally appropriate, she says. As a parent, it would make sense to try to get ahead of that and help inform children’s thinking and processing around difficult conversations, rather than allow them to stumble upon it on their own, she says.
For inspiration, check out these resources:
“I think there’s a great chance to do skill-building around passions,” Dworkin says.
Summer also provides families a chance to be in a different routine and connect with each other in different ways, Dworkin says.
“Summer is a great time to make things happen,” Alexander says, noting that we’re not bound by the constraints of the traditional school day. Maybe it’s worth going outside and taking a hike at night and looking at the moon and talking about what’s happening outside, she suggests.
She also mentions checking out your local library to see what opportunities are available there. So many museums are also free, she says, or have programs that allow families to visit for free on certain days of the week. The National Summer Learning Association provides this tool to search for programs in your community.
For more ideas, check out these offerings:
As children get older, more summer camps may become options. Dworkin notes that for high school kids, summer learning can take the form of jobs and internships.
As children explore literature, Alexander says parents should serve as guides in terms of ensuring balance and genre. “You don’t want to suppress one’s reading journey or one’s literate life,” she says.
For more suggestions, look into these ideas:
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