Summer Fun - a Summer Intentional Learning Play Group

During the summer I've been hosting Little Learners, an intentional learning play group.  This week we were able to do our Summer Fun curriculum.  Find the free Preschool Summer Packs and Tot Packs here (just scroll down a tad to download them). 

 Days like this are a lot of fun as kids get to explore and play as they like and as parents we focus their attention on little things along the way.  I believe it is important to engage children in gardening and for our lunch we were going to have BBQ Zucchini sandwiches.  You basically cook some shredded zucchini and mix it with your favorite BBQ sauce and use it as sandwich filling.  We love it!  As a group we headed into the garden together to find some zucchinis that were ready to be picked.  Engage little learners by having them find and pick and hold the plants that you're after.  Engage bigger learners by having them "teach" the littles what we're looking for.

 Because the theme was "Summer Fun" we had out the swimming pool and the water wall toys.  (Check out the DIY Water Wall here.)  I love that they all grabbed pipes and were blowing bubbles into this small container together!

 I encourage our intentional learning groups to try to include as many elements of learning as possible.  We had a couple letters to review and had out some do-a-dot markers to decorate the letters.

 It's also a time that I use to demonstrate to parents the introduction of a new concept.  I think of it as teaching parents how to teach their children concepts they wouldn't have thought of.  This week's math concept was "graphing".  We were working with kids as young as 2 and as old as 4.  There were kids who'd never been introduced to it yet, kids who've seen it but not mastered basic graphing, and kids who new exactly what to do.  I love that homeschooling in a small group gives us the beautiful age range where kids can work together to be successful.

 A great large motor activity for younger kids is bouncing them on a large ball.  Hold their hips and bounce them to the front, side to side, and to the back.  This helps them develop different balancing muscles.

 Even CJ (my 4.5 year old) really likes this game even though he's comfortable bouncing on the ball by himself.  EMan just wanted to ride the horse, and that's ok.  Learning and skill development should always be fun and never forced.

 I ABSOLUTELY love this next activity. On a nice warm day, provide your child(ren) with goggles, a small hammer and cubes of ice.  They love to smash those ice cubes!

 Enjoy summer, and happy learning!