Sneaky Summer Learning

This is the first week my family is completely off of school. It's nice to have a break. Even though we aren't tackling any formal curriculum, we'll still have a lot of sneaky education this summer.

We've set up our home to be a learning-friendly environment. Part of it is because I love books and now my kids do too, so we have a lot of reading material lying around, whether from our personal or local library. My eldest started reading a Shakespeare collection of stories just because it was out. My youngest is more confident as an independent reader and has been sitting on the couch with a stack of books.

We also try to make arts and crafts materials accessible so the kids can be creative when they feel so inclined. This often produces drawings, cartoons, and stories.

We all love board games, and I'm happy to encourage this activity, since board games are great for strategy and logic. I hope the freer summer days will give us plenty of opportunities to play. My kids have been going on a Yahtzee kick lately, playing multiple games every day. As a result, my youngest is doing multiplication and adding double- and triple-digit numbers. That's sneaky learning at its finest.

I hope we'll be able to have summer adventures as well. Maybe we'll visit an interesting place that can teach us something about science or history. Or maybe we'll go to a festival or performance and learn something about culture.

How about you? What are your plans for taking a break this summer? Will they include sneaky learning?