You’ve settled into a midsummer routine.

What does that look like?

For many, it’s time for more rest and sunshine. Taking life at a slower pace, with as much time outdoors as possible. Vacations or weekends are spent at the lake, beach, or local pool club.

For our kids, it’s also a time for creative learning outside of the normal homeschooling schedule. We send them to different camps, they take on creative projects, or even begin those first summer jobs.

All are important, formative experiences that they won’t forget!

What have your kids been doing this summer?

A pair of young twins in my neighborhood have been running an occasional lemonade stand. When they give me change for my purchase, they give me back more money than I paid them, but their parents are helping them figure it out.

They’re learning!

One of my friends’ daughters is making money this summer by taking commissions for watercolor portraits of pets for members in her church community. She’s using her artistic skills and a favorite hobby to make a little money. Not bad!

As a young teen, I wasn’t nearly as creative. I babysat, and at one time I tried a car washing enterprise in my subdivision, which didn’t last long. I did camps and summer school to get ahead on credits, and spent a few summers in Greece visiting relatives.

It’s all good!!

As long you’re not allowing your kids to zone out in front of mindless TV shows or on social media all day, they’re probably learning new skills and are doing just fine.

Do you worry about your kids forgetting their academics over the summer?

It’s going to happen, to an extent. When you’re able to anchor the content knowledge your kids learn to their home or community life -- things that are relevant to their daily lives-- kids remember information better. You have to keep in mind that it’s nearly impossible to do that with every thing they learn.

Films or documentaries that you watch as a family help, especially when you want to reinforce learnings in history, geography or literature. If your kids are readers, non-fiction books on history can be very enjoyable summer reads. A few inspiring favorites include Undaunted Courage, a well-written account of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which gives an easy to follow account of the conquest of the Americas, and Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, an amazing survival story of a crew shipwrecked in Antarctica for two years.

With regard to literature, film adaptations of many works of literature have been made and are available for easy viewing. The film adaptation The Odyssey is about to be released, and it’s supposed to be excellent. This would make a strong precursor to the required high school reading of Homer’s ancient epic poem.

Summer writing practice: a great time for journaling

Please don’t try to force your kids to do formal writing assignments if they’re on a summer break from homeschooling.

Instead, have them do relaxed, unstructured writing, like journaling. Don’t underestimate it! The ability to express thoughts and experiences in writing is an important skill, and it takes practice to do it well. Your kids can focus on grammar, structure and punctuation another time.

Go to your local stationery shop with your teens and buy an attractive bound notebook of their choice. Buy them colored gel pens too. Ask them to fill a page in their journal daily. They can write about whatever they like.

The Isolation Journals website offers free essays, photos of artwork and prompts to help budding writers get comfortable with journaling. The idea came from a young author who found solace in daily journaling during a period of isolation while battling a serious illness. Later, during the pandemic, she began the Isolation Journals.

This site turns the idea of journaling into a creative artistic endeavor with loads of content and inspiration to help your kids become more expressive writers. I recommend a visit!

Summer jobs are an excellent opportunity to practice financial literacy

We don’t balance checkbooks anymore, but we all still need to track our spending, make a budget, and set financial goals. A summer job is an excellent seque into lessons on financial literacy for our teens.

If your kids want to make money, what do they plan to do with it? What are realistic financial goals for them? Mapping that out is an important learning experience for our kids, and those lessons will land more easily under the guidance of parents who’ll help them avoid costly mistakes.

Whole family activities 

There’s lots of learning to be done together as a family. Caring for a pet, raising animals, or planting and maintaining a garden are a few examples of whole family activities that model self-discipline and exercise problem-solving or critical thinking skills. Even small daily tasks like trying out a new recipe can be a collaborative learning experience too.

Enjoy it all!

Lily Iatridis is the founder of Writing Rockstars, an online writing program that prepares teens for college level writing.