Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

As I sit here writing this, my two boys are home on the first day of summer vacation. Already, they’re bouncing off the walls. They’re not bored yet, but I know it’s coming. I’ve got a bunch of activities planned for the three long months they’re out of school, but I’m also looking for some fresh ideas.
Here’s what I found.

Summer Learning Programs
This is an excellent audio interview from NPR about summer learning programs that help children retain what they’ve learned over the summer. I was surprised to hear how much information children can actually lose while they are out of an academic environment.

Family Traditions
Here is a neat article about how to start a family tradition, by the folks over at the Not Quite Crunchy Parent blog, which I’ve just started checking out. I really like their style and content.

Summer Reading Programs
Summer reading programs are available at almost every library. The Vermont public school librarians have published an outstanding list for students in grades K through 12. Check it out.

Educational Software Recommendation
Just recently, I purchased an educational software program for my kids. It’s called Jump Start World: First Grade. I promise, this is not a paid review for the product, but I was blown away by how much my kids instantly loved it and how much they were learning. The really cool part is that when you register the product, you can sign up (and pay $8 per month) to get downloadable add-ons to the game. The company monitors your child’s progress and when it sees that a certain set of concepts is mastered, it automatically updates the game with new learning adventures. The Houston Chronicle wrote a great review of the product here. I think my kids will be in great shape for the fall by keeping up with their Jump Start World programs.

Minor League Baseball Games
One of the things we will be doing a few times this summer is attending Minor League Baseball games for our local team, the Traverse City Beach Bums. We’ve never gone to a minor league game before, but I’ve heard wonderful things about how family friendly they are. Minor league stadiums are much smaller than ballparks in the majors, so you get better seats and the prices are lower. Our team has fireworks every Friday evening of a home game, and there are lots of fun contests.

In fact, I heard about a 60 year-old woman at a Grand Prairie (Texas) AirHogs game who won a free funeral service for herself!  Yikes!  She has 30 years to cash in on it. 

Also, if you are interested, here’s a great article about the fun that can be found at minor league games.

Disc Golf
I recently learned that a local ski resort, just 10 miles from my house, has a very cool Disc Golf course that’s open to the public during the summer. The 18 hole course is situated on top of the mountains, and is very beautiful, I hear.. It’s free to play, but you can rent the special disc golf Frisbees and if you want the chair lift to take you up, it costs a few bucks. But if you buy the discs and are willing to hike, it’s a very economical family activity that we will be doing a lot of this summer.

If you are interested in learning more about how to play a golf-style game with Frisbees, check out this link. It has a directory of disc golf courses all over the United States.

Geocaching
I am also considering purchasing a portable GPS unit this summer, so my boys and I can go geocaching. This is basically like treasure hunting with a one of those global positioning satellite devices. I checked out the main geocaching website this morning, and they listed that as of this day, there are 591,790 active caches worldwide. In just the last seven days, there have been 412,438 new logs written by 57,696 account holders. The entire page is very useful and easy to read. Check it out.

Renaissance Festival
For a great mix of both recreational and educational fun, I will be taking my boys to at least a couple of renaissance festivals this summer. In fact, the first one we’re going to is tomorrow (June 7) in Charlevoix, Michigan. Believe it or not, there is an actual castle there, so it should be very cool. There are jousting tournaments, Celtic musical groups, jugglers, and all sorts of old-fashioned entertainment.

To get my boys excited about going, I found that the Texas Renaissance Festival has a great promotional video on their website, which you can see here. Already, my boys have become very intrigued by the history they’re going to encounter live.

As you can see, I’ll be trying to squeeze in a lot this summer. Please write us if you have any interesting summer vacation ideas that you’ve found to be of great value to your kids. I’d love to share them with our readers.

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