Summertime can be both play time and study time

As summer and the holidays are just around the corner, the children look forward to walking barefoot, picking cherries straight from a tree, eating ice-cream for dinner (and on occasion or two, also for breakfast), and sleeping in tents under the warm summer sky. Parents look forward to breaking from routine and enjoying more carefree days (and on occasion or two, also eat ice-cream for breakfast). They look forward to summer bringing so many learning experiences their children simply can’t acquire in the classroom or kindergarten. Summer sparks their innate desire for learning through play and fun – so here are some activity ideas to change play time to learn time. They are appropriate for children aged 2 to 5, and for all parents who will forever stay young at heart.

Activity 1: dice game

→ Skill: number recognition, counting, learning addition, colors

Get a die (or two) with numbers, instead of dots. If you don’t find it at a store, you can easily and quickly make one yourself with a marker. Have your toddler roll the dice and practice number recognition from 1 to 6 or 1 to 12. Then encourage your child to find the same number of objects around them, for example, stones, shells or flowers. Older children can throw two dice and practice addition up to 12, before colleting the same number of objects.

Bonus activity: kids can draw on the pebbles or shells collected to brush up their art skills and color recognition.

Activity 2: tracing over letters with water

→ Skill: literacy

For this activity, you will need chalk, water, a plastic container for the water, and a brush. Go outside and write a letter or a short word on the sidewalk. Say the letter or word out loud and have your toddler first repeat it, then paint over it with water and brush. The best part of this activity? Absolutely no mess. Not to mention children love anything that has to do with playing with water.

Activity 3: home-made ice-cream

→ Skill: science, sensory, food recognition and preparation, motor skills, patience (unfortunately, they will have to wait for the ice-cream to freeze)

This activity is an absolute must. After all, is summer without ice-cream summer at all? In this article, we will not list hundreds of ice-cream recipes you can use, from those packed with fresh fruit vitamins to one-ingredients variants like the banana ice-cream. But we will sprinkle this activity with some bonus ‘learning chocolate chips’ – while your toddler waits for the ice-cream to freeze, you can set-up an ice-cream stand where they will sell you the un-eaten ice-cream (if any will be left) and get their first valuable lessons in business and personal finance.

Activity 4: sink or float experiment

→ Skill: physics

At the end of each summer day, your toddler probably has grass or sea salt in his hair, dirt behind his fingernails and all other sorts of summer-spent-outdoors evidence on his body. So why not turn the necessary bath time into a fun learning experience, too? Gather about ten different objects and let your toddler toss them into water one at a time trying to guess, if they will sink or float before they hit the water. Explain density and buoyancy in a way that child understands. At the end of the activity don’t forget to have extra fun – by making waves and splashing!

There are infinite other activities you can do with your toddlers in summer, depending if you want to encourage fine motor skills, math’s skills, language skills … too many to fit into this article. But don’t forget that summer also teaches all of us how to slow down and relax. It teaches us how to marvel at the fireflies blinking in the evening sky. It teaches us how to lay in the hammock with our eyes closed and listen to the wind in the tress or the waves crashing against the beach. It teaches us about, as the Italians say, Dolce far niente – the sweetness of doing nothing.