Help your child have a good summer

Get organized

Have children start a collection - rocks, stamps, baseball cards, bottle caps, marbles. Arrange them in some order - in a box, by categories, by colour, or alphabetically, for example.
Ask youngsters to organize photographs in an album by date or activity. Save newspaper or magazine photographs of favourite athletes or role models to create a scrapbook.
Suggest that children swap paperbacks, comics, or magazines with extended family and friends. The local library might help organize a swap.

Ask children to take charge of family recycling (get containers, wash the jars, stack the papers, etc.)
Teach boys and girls how to take care of their clothes, sort and fold laundry, use the washer and dryer or help at the laundromat, sew on buttons, iron, polish shoes, etc.
Have children plan all aspects of a party. They can help decide on the guests, phone or send invitations, plan the food, get the house ready, greet and introduce the guests, and clean up.

Recommend that children keep a diary - a journal of their activities or the family's.
Take time every day for the whole family to read by themselves or together. Even 10 or 15 minutes is fine.
Introduce children to the library's summer reading program.
Have children follow a favourite newspaper comic strip all summer.
Have children write letters or send postcards to cousins, grandparents and friends.
Review cash register receipts. Children can check them for accuracy when you're unloading groceries.
Teach children to add up gas mileage.
Hold a yard or garage sale. Allow children to set prices and make change.

Check the newspaper for volunteer activities. For example, you and your child could make a weekly visit to a nursing home.
Visit the animal shelter, the fire station or a hospital to show children what happens at these places.

If possible, collect photographs of grandparents and great-grandparents. Have children write their names and birth dates on the back of the photos. Tell stories about the family.
Discuss the meaning of holidays with children and find a special way to celebrate.
If you take a trip, visit the historical sites along the way and save the information brochures.
Check out library books and videos to reinforce new learning from a trip.
Visit a cemetery and find the oldest stone. Read the inscription and talk about the past with your children.

Give children a garden plot in the yard, or a window box or planter on a balcony. Be sure the child has full responsibility for the plants.
Read the daily newspaper's weather map. Let children figure out what the weather is where friends and relatives live.
Camp out for a night on the balcony, in your yard, or at a provincial campground.

Source: National School Public Relations Association, It Starts on the Frontline/May 1995