Summer Slide Busters - Resource Round-Up

As we move through the heat of summer, I want look back to see how well we have been busting that summer slide! Camps, lessons, and summer activities can make it hard for parents to make time for enrichment at home. Holidays and a compressed schedule make planning a challenge for summer classroom teachers, too. Since we have been posting activities for each day, I wanted to compile them in this post so you can come back to those activities when you have time. Be on the lookout for more new resource suggestions on Friday.

The following activities focus on music and math, two subjects that can often be intertwined. These were featured on the Gateway the past few weeks on Music and Math Mondays.

• Melodies and Math: Creating Music with Non-traditional Instruments: An online introduction to reading music and hands-on instrument building activity
• Geodesic Gumdrops: A toothpick and gumdrop tower-building challenge that introduces concepts in math and engineering
• Build a Band Challenge: A string-instrument building activity for kids of all ages
• Teaching Note Values with Note Cards: A fun visual way to connect musical rhythms and notation to fractions
• Playing Fraction Pies: An online rhythm building tool that also reinforces the concept of fractions

A healthy lifestyle and appreciation for nutrition is important for kids of all ages. Each Tasty Tuesday, we recommend resources about nutrition, cooking, and healthy eating for kids. Here are the suggestions so far this summer.

• Choose My Plate: Activities to introduce the USDA’s new healthy eating guidelines. See my original post for ideas to make a decoupage MyPlate for kids to use at the dinner table.
• A Balanced Day: A guide for creating a trail mix that teaches about the different food groups and comparing the different ingredients found in snack foods
• Reading Food Labels: An online game that introduces food labels and choosing balanced meals.
• Reading Labels: Which Snack is the Best Choice?: An activity that will get kids moving! This activity from PE Central uses the labels from kids’ favorite snack foods and combines reading the labels and comparing nutritional values with exercise.

Science activities are often a favorite among students. We have been choosing fun experiments that help encourage kids to use the scientific method for our Wacky Wednesday suggestions.

• I Wonder…: An enrichment guide with 3 activity suggestions for students to practice using the scientific method
• This Gateway search for scientific method resources might also have the activity you’re looking for.
• Gummy Bear Experiment: An experiment with gummy bears in different liquids. In our test, the students designed and ran their own gummy bear experiments.
• The Scientific Method from The Biology Corner: A big variety of activities for teaching the scientific method.
• ZOOM Egg Drop and Egg Drop Contest: Resources to help you design an egg drop challenge with your kids
• Egg-cellent Adventures: instructions for conducting three experiments with eggs: Biochemistry of the Egg Shell, Diffusion and Osmosis in Animal Cells, and Flying Pizza Pan Egg Drop.

Each Thursday, we are suggesting reading and writing resources that encourage literacy throughout the summer.

• Movie in the Making: Create a movie version of a book. There are simple and fun activities that lead up to the actual creation of the movie.
• FutureMe: An online tool where kids write themselves a letter that will be emailed to them in a date they choose in the future.
• Popcorn Book Report (for younger kids) and Bag It (for older kids): Activities for students to write and draw pictures about a book following a certain format on a lunch bag. When they are finished, they get to fill their bag up with popcorn and watch the movie.

I hope that collecting these resources in one spot will be helpful for you. If you want more information on any of them, please see my three original posts here: week 1, week 2, and week 3. I also hope your summer has been full of fun and learning so far. We will be back next week with more new suggestions!