6 ways to stop the Summer brain drain

As much as I am looking forward to the School holidays I have been thinking how to help my children having the dreaded brain drain. They have had their Class Swap morning at school and know who their new teachers and class mates will be. This will be a slightly different Summer for us as my husband is currently in hospital. He will be out of action for a good few weeks so we will be staying local for most of the holidays.

I’ve been looking for ways to stop the Summer brain drain as they have both learned so much this academic year and I really don’t want them to stop exercising their brains. They had brilliant school reports so I can keen for them to continue learning at home.

So I have drawn up a list of 6 ways to stop the Summer brain drain, this will be replacing our usual Summer holidays bucket list.

1). Sign up for the Summer Reading Challenge. We’re huge advocates of local libraries, and have been pretty much weekly since my son was a few months old. They both enjoy the Summer Reading Challenge and this years The Big Friendly Read looks great, tying up with the anniversary of Roald Dahl.

2) This year we’re going to be keeping a joint smashbook. In previous years we’ve kept a scrapbook but this year it will be a smashbook. It’s a great way to practice writing, make a note of the books we read, fun crafts as well as tickets and mementos of any special days out.

3) Twinkl have kindly given me a free subscription to try our their website which provides planning and resources. I will be using this a lot over the summer holidays. Everything is organised by year group so it is simple to find the age appropriate resources for English, Maths, crafts or topics.

4) I’m hoping for some decent weather so we can explore some of The BFG Dream Jar Trail. We’ve already found one of the jars in the West End but more are being installed later this month and we can’t wait to go and find them.

5) Trips to the cinema. There are so many films coming out that we can’t wait to see. I love going to the cinema and think  this is screen time that benefits us all. The BFG and Finding Dory are top of our list but I wouldn’t mind seeing Ghostbusters too!

6) Summer camps. For the first time we have booked the children into organised Summer camps. On our recent cruise ship adventure we saw how much the children enjoyed being with their peers and with adults. As my husband will be recovering from his operation we have decided to send them off for a few day camps. I can’t wait to hear how they get on.