This is a sponsored post for which I’ve received free product and/or compensation, but the opinions are 100% my own.
Guess what? School’s out for summer! You totally just sang that song in your head, didn’t you? No more 6AM alarm clocks and 7:05 mad dashes out the door to make it to the bus stop. No more Sunday night laundry panic when you realize that your kid has absolutely nothing clean to wear that even comes close to meeting the dress code. Best of all: no more rigid schedules!
I am a big believer in letting kids be kids during the summer. I want my son to experience all the joys of unfettered freedom the season has to offer. Of course, I also want him to remember everything he learned over the school year. This summer, I have a few fun ideas lined up to help him get the most out of his vacation AND keep learning all season long! Check out my ideas, plus find out how L’il Critters™ gummy vitamins helps fuel all of Jake’s adventures!
3 FUN Ways to Keep Kids Learning this Summer
Become a mad scientist
While I barely passed science by the skin of my teeth when I was in school, Jake has such a passion for it that he makes me want to learn more myself. We recently made slime together (that stuff is all the rage, after all) and had such a good time that I’ve started collecting more science experiments we can do this summer. The messier, the better! If we set up an outdoor laboratory, it’ll be easy to hose down when we’re done.
Travel the world through cuisine
As I’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, both Jake and I are crazy picky eaters. I’m telling you, if you think your kids are picky, spend a day trying to feed mine! Thank goodness for L’il Critters™ gummy vitamins, right? Anyway, I have this grand idea of creating passports for both of us and “stamping” them each time we try a food from a different country.
The key to making this work with a picky eater: let your kids choose the foods and don’t balk if they choose a bunch of desserts! I’m not saying you should let them eat their way through Europe using only chocolate recipes (hmm, that does sound good though!), but the point is to keep it fun so they WANT to do it. After all, dessert is the best part of the meal when you’re a kid! This isn’t just a great way to expand your child’s palate, it’s also a fun way to learn about different cultures.
Bring their favorite stories to life
Summer reading is a big deal to us, and I’m always looking for new ways to encourage my son to read more. He used to love reading when he was younger, but now that he’s a seasoned tween (12 going on 21), he doesn’t read nearly as much as I’d like him to. One idea that I had is to bring his favorite stories to life in creative ways.
For example, say he reads a book about treasure hunters searching for a lost artifact from a mysterious ancient culture. Obviously, I can’t really afford to hop on a plane with him and jet away to the lost pyramids of Egypt! I can, however, take him to museums filled with ancient artifacts, or create a treasure hunt through our neighborhood. There are so many ways to bring a story to life if you just get creative.
Fuel Your Summer Adventures with L’il Critters™
Like I said, I have big plans for an adventurous summer! Jake is going to need plenty of energy to keep up with me! That’s where L’il Critters™ gummy vitamins come in. I’ve talked about them a few times in the past. They are, by far, Jake’s favorite vitamin. In fact, HE reminds ME when it’s time to take his daily gummies!
He absolutely loves new L’il Critters™ Fruit n’ Honey gummies. We have both the L’il Critters™ Bee Immune Super C Plus Booster and the L’il Critters™ Fruit n’ Honey Bee Active Complete Multivitamin. The Bee Active Complete has all of the vitamins and minerals he needs to keep going strong all summer long. Bee Immune is a great source of Vitamin C, D and Zinc for immune support. ** As the name implies, they’re made with real fruit juice* and honey. Jake is MAD about honey! I really love that neither of the vitamins contain any artificial flavors or HFCS. Just plenty of goodness to help supplement his diet.
L’il Critters™ Fruit n’ Honey gummy vitamins are available nationwide at select mass, drug and grocery stores as well as online retailers. Visit their website to find retailers near you!
What fun learning adventures do you have planned for your kids this summer? Tell me below!
* contains 16% pear juice from concentrate
**These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
These are terrific ideas, I don’t have any little tykes at home right now. Enjoy!
Great ideas! We haven’t tried the L’il Critters brand for my grandsons yet. I bet they would like a change in vitamin brand we’ve been using.
I like the Science idea for my son! He would love to be a mad scientist! I will have to check out things for him to do!
No lie, I totally sang “School’s out for summer” in my head at the beginning. These seem like fun ways to keep the kids learning! WE have a few things planned to do with my daughter this summer especially since she will be starting VPK in August.
These are great ways to let a kid be a kid.
Nice start to the post, great song. I have to try those vitamins for my kids. My son has his summer reading and project already to keep from backsliding.
I have been teaching my daughter to bake and cook this summer. She has been enjoying it a lot, and I like having an extra helper in the kitchen. Cooking involves reading skills to read the recipe and math to measure out the ingredients so it is a good way to use School skills in real life.
These are all great ideas! We homeschool, so while we may have “summer”, we still look for ways to learn everyday. We love science days, and cooking around the world!
I love your idea of stamping a passport when you try a new food! It also helps identify where different foods are from. We were just at a Vietnamese restaurant and my son asked if it was a Chinese restaurant. It opened up a great discussion about where the countries were and what similarities and differences there was in the cuisine.
Learning about different cultures through food and languages is the best. I love your suggestions and the one I’m totally up for is playing scientist all day long. Especially with YouTube videos, it’s so easy to explore at-home experiments.
The passport stamp is such a fun and creative idea! This would be great to include during our family vacations. I can see my son enjoying the slime experient. Thank you for sharing!
I’m loving all of these ideas! Especially being a mad scientist. It reminds me of being a kid. Growing up on a farm, my brother and I were always experimenting with things. My mom too simply smiled and sent us outside to hose ourselves off before coming into the house. Great memories .. thanks for a fun post. x
It sounds like you made some really amazing memories! I would have loved to grow up on a farm, I bet you learned something new every day!
My kids are fans of the Little Critter gummy vites… and I can’t wait to try these out for them. I love that these are sweetened with honey!
They are fantastic! My son is so picky, but he has always loved L’il Critters. He’s also kind of crazy about honey, so these were such a great fit for him.
I love the idea of eating your way around the world, it would be so good to find out more about the traditional dishes of different places x
These are some great ideas. Especially the point about bringing reading to life. It’s a great way to connect while encouraging love for literacy and creativity. And who doesn’t love treasure hunting!?
I so agree about letting kids be kids since summer is here. My boys love anything that deals with scientist.They are already looking forward to making slime. We haven’t tried out the Little Critters gummy vites, but I have seen them before.
I love these ideas! I definitely think summer is a time for relaxing but if I can get some learning in too then I feel like I am doing my job 🙂
MY daughter has made abou 20 different batches of slime in then past couple of weeks. She is all about making that and experimenting with different colors and textures. I never thought about it that way but yeah she is learning and creating. I always encourage experiments, they are so much fun!
I didn’t really even realize that we were doing a science experiment until we were done, lol. Since two out of three of my batches were a total fail, we not only learned what makes successful slime, but also realized what it’s like for scientists in the real world. They fail a million times before getting it right, after all!
I absolutely LOVE the idea of creating a food passport. My boys are gourmet eaters but this would motivate my daughter to try new things.
Thank you!! My son is SO picky that I have to get really creative with getting him to try new things.
Love, love love the food passport. I would love to have someone to do this with!!
Do it with yourself! Hey, nothing says we can’t still challenge ourselves and have a little fun with it when we get older! 😀
I love all three of these ideas. Summer is a time for fun, but the learning doesn’t have to stop. Finding creative ways to bring stories to life or teach your kids about other cultures using food is such a fun idea. You could also combine both for an even more interactive experience.
Very smart idea, combining both! We can read a book that takes place in a different country, then try a food from it!
It’s important to keep them learning especially during the summer when school is out. These are great ideas to do just that! I love making sure that my kids are active, mentally and physically.
I am real big on letting my kids be kids and learn through that process. Great ideas here, I know my kids would love to be mad scientists! Little Critters is the brand of vitamins I buy.
These are such great ideas. In fact one of them is so good that we did it at the library with a bunch of kids. They loved making the slime. We kept having more kids come in to make it. Was a fun time. I definitely am trying to think of ways to keep my daughters mind active.
I love this! My kids have been making magical potions in our backyard all summer long. They love it!
My kids have been making their own slime, making their own crafts and becoming mad scientists all on their own! These are some great ideas!
These are definitely some great tips. My son would definitely like the fun scientist projects and make dishes from around the world. We only use gummy multi vitamins in my house, including my husband and I. L’il Critters is a great brand.
Vitamins are so important for young children. Our girls ask for their vitamins every morning with breakfast!
These are some great ideas. My son is only 18 months, so its like a permanent summer vacation here. Lol. But i think i could do something with bringing the books to life idea. Hungry caterpillar shouldn’t be that difficult to do methinks.
Ooooo just loving the travel
The world through cuisen idea. I’m a total foodie so I will definitely be doing that with my daughter
Slime is a huge thing on Youtube now! Also I really love the travel through cuisine concept to the kids. I am in Bocas right now and I think its another way to educate yourself through food and different flavors and cultures.
Great ideas! Learning doesnt have to be boring, it can occur any time. It is always nice to have hands on and teach at the same time. It is amazing where conversations lead .
Cant wait to do fun things with grand baby when she gets here and gets a little older