Create an exceptional summer experience for your family! While your children deserve some real R & R, spending the whole summer on the couch is NOT a great option—they’ll go into the next academic year disengaged and at a disadvantage. That’s why it’s important to offer them opportunities to stimulate their minds in entertaining, low-pressure ways.  Here are some of our favorite suggestions for summer activities for 2022:

• Get Lost: Orienteering can be a great way to get outside, get active, and work on spatial reasoning. Most people tend to avoid wandering into the woods or unfamiliar terrain, but that's part of the fun of orienteering. Orienteering is a collection of sports that requires navigational skills and tools, such as a map and compass, to navigate from point to point. Have the kids plan the route for a summer road trip and calculate mileage and expected travel time (not with google maps).

• Crunch Some Numbers: Getting children involved in the family’s finances can be a great way to teach necessary life skills while also stimulating the math brain. Try involving your children in the family budgeting—have them clip coupons and calculate savings. Encourage them to compare prices and get comfortable being strategic about purchases. Maybe they can use the savings for an end of summer reward? Or give them a summer-fun budget to manage for real. 

• Grow Together: Plant a raised garden bed with your children. Depending on the size of the garden you want to plant, there are a number of layout options and vegetable varieties. Let your kids take part in planning which vegetables to plant (and how much of each one), tending to the garden, and eventually helping you to cook some simple garden-to-table meals over the summer. 

• Do it Yourself: Break out fun and easy projects for kids to get their creative juices flowing, hands dirty, and minds busy. Fun DIY projects—like making soap or bubble gum —can be entertaining and stimulating. There are a lot of great activities available online at Michaels and Target, too.

• Be Bookish: Reading shouldn’t stop just because there are no school book assignments. Summer can be a great time to find books on topics your kids love, articles from age-appropriate magazines, or exciting newspaper clippings that will interest even the most resistant readers. Games or competitions can also be a great way to get your kids consuming language. 

• Problem Solve: Inspire creative logic and problem-solving skills by completing number games like Sudoku. Or create some friendly competition by hosting a weekly estimation/calculation (balls in a jar, distance to a destination, etc) and offer small prizes. There are also offers some fantastic word games, in addition to classic crossword puzzles. Games like Scrabble,Take a Letter, and Quiddler are fun and competitive but can also stimulate your child’s vocabulary.

• Learn Something New: It’s easy for kids to get lost in TV, social media, and video games over the summer. Instead of allowing all these distractions, help your child develop a new skill that will set them up for success in school and beyond. Check out project-based coding, exciting STEM-based electives, hands-on and off-screen activities, epic week-long team challenges, theme days, and more. 

It truly is important for your kids to thrive in and out of the classroom, and summer is a great time to enjoy quality time with your children. Remember: the idea is to just be. Whatever the activity—even if it’s just hanging out at home—be present. Choose an allotted amount of time and just focus on the here and now. No cell phones, no work emails, etc. Summer is your chance to make it exceptional for your children