6 Summertime Teaching Tips That Work Year-Round!

(Written with Marjorie Wild)

This month, we want to share some ideas for activities you can use in your classroom and home this summer - or any time of the year!  We hope you enjoy these ideas for outdoor play, early literacy, art, science, and gender-neutral environments and toys.  Please comment to share your own favorite teaching tips or activity ideas - there are so many wonderful ways for children to learn through play!

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Here are some ideas for exploring the outdoors with young children:

• Play shadow tag on a sunny day
• Observe bugs (from a safe distance when necessary!), move like bugs
• Climb rocks, trees or hills - Navigating nature’s structures allows children to develop motor planning and large muscle skills
• Explore dirt and grass: walk through grass or sand barefoot, or roll down a grassy hill!
• Dig, scoop and fill buckets and containers 
• Make wildflower crowns 
• Wherever you are, allow children to explore their interests and curiosity.  Children love to pick up, collect and explore “found” objects like rocks, sticks or leaves. Allow and encourage the child-led exploration of nature. 

*Note: The safety of young children is our responsibility as caregivers. While you should be watchful not to knowingly expose children to danger, that does not mean clearing the path so they never have the chance to explore environments, test their own abilities or judge their own level of risk within a safe and supervised setting.

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Summer is the perfect time to give children the chance to read or be read to for fun and information. Visit your library to find books about a topic your children enjoy or that features their favorite characters. Check out a book that is beyond your children’s ability to read on their own and read it to them. Set aside time during your summer schedule for “read to me time”. Attend library programs, or read a book at naptime or bedtime. Reading to your child instills a love of language and the understanding that what we say can be written, what we write can then be read. It also builds connections between reader and child!
Public libraries across the country have summer reading programs and incentives for all ages, even grown-ups! Visit your local public library to find out more about what they offer, or you can provide your own reward at home when a reading goal has been met.​

Share the power of reading with children:

• Talk about the story, having your children guess what will happen next, remember parts of the story, or tell about their favorite part.
• Read books with predictable text or read favorite stories again and again, pausing to let your children read or say the words they know.
• ”Read” wordless picture books, turning pages in order and talking about what is happening in the story pictures. Build vocabulary by using descriptive words.
• Write the words your children tell you to caption a picture they have drawn, making them the author!
• Read your children a story you loved when you were their age!

​​Open-ended, creative art experiences emphasize process over product. Through these experiences, children explore materials instead of being told “how to do it” or what color something “should” be. 
​Some process-focused art materials and activities to explore with young children include:

• Sidewalk chalk
• Painting with a variety of objects or tools (paint rollers, dish scrubbers, whisk, or outdoor objects like a feather or small pine branch.)
• Mixing colors (use droppers of watercolor/diluted food coloring onto paper towels or coffee filters.)
• Clay and dough of different colors and textures, including natural clay, mud and sand sculptures.
• Weaving cloth, yarn or paper.

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• Printing and stamping using toy car tracks, plastic animal footprints, sponge shapes or fruit/vegetable prints.
• Vertical drawing, writing, or painting using easels, or by attaching paper, an old sheet or bargain tablecloth to a backyard or playground fence. (Vertical drawing/writing helps develop a good grasp and appropriate wrist position. According to Christy Isbell, Ph.D., pediatric occupational therapist, three-year-olds should write or draw on a vertical surface every day.)
• At home or at school, have a wide variety of markers, crayons and pencils and various sizes of paper, tissue paper, glue, glue sticks, age-appropriate scissors, and recycled materials. You can use junk mail or leftover wrapping paper for fun with cutting, tearing, collage or paper sculpture. 

For more information, we recommend “How Process-Focused Art Experiences Support Preschoolers” https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2014/process-art-experiences

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There are so many science activities you can enjoy both indoors and outdoors!  Besides the activities you provide in the science center in your classroom, you may want to provide these outdoor explorations as well:

Sun:

• Is it hotter in the sun than in the shade? Experiment on the playground, in the park or your backyard.
• Create and observe evaporation paintings: “Paint” with water on surfaces like a sidewalk or outside wall and watch as they dry, then “paint” again.
• Shadow art: Trace around someone's shadow with sidewalk chalk, move, then have children find and match their shadows again.
• Sun prints: Place a toy, flower or other found item on construction paper and leave it in the sun (outside or near a window) Observe after a few hours, how the sun will fade the paper to leave a print of the item.

Sand and dirt: 

• Create sculptures, experimenting with wet and dry variations. Which ones stay together and are easier to mold?
• Provide buckets and a variety of containers for children to fill and carry. This provides child-directed exploration of capacity, weight, and sensory-motor activity. 
• Find or provide tools for digging: Discover bugs and roots and develop large and small muscle skills.
• At the beach, observe changes in wet/dry sand and the movement of waves and ocean life

Water, clouds and rainbows:

• Smell the “rain”: Help children identify smells, like the way the air smells before and after rain.
• Let the sun shine through a spray of water from a sprinkler or hose on a sunny day to make your own rainbow!
• In a pool, water table or tub, use cloud-shaped sponges to explore saturation. When the “cloud” is filled with water, it rains!
• Let raindrops splatter on watercolor paint, or make your own raindrop effect with droppers or basters.

Share with us your favorite summer science activities to explore with children in the comment section!

While we as early childhood educators and parents may strive to make our classrooms and play areas places where boys and girls are equally encouraged to explore their own interests, we know that many social traditions as well as marketing and packaging are aimed at boys or girls. At ECS our team has always supported play that is child-led, not directed by an adult to be gender specific.  ​

Here are some ideas for fostering gender neutral play environments:

• Watch your language! Please don’t exclusively tell girls they are pretty and boys they are tough or smart.
• Use gender neutral terms such as firefighter, mail carrier, parents, and police officers. Be aware and make children aware of jobs held by men or women: soldiers, trash truck drivers, farmers, nurses, hair stylists, the list is endless! 

​Notes from Marjorie:  The “housekeeping/dramatic play” area of my classroom was always just as popular with boys! They took care of baby dolls, cooked, counted play money from wallets, and enjoyed seasonal activities like raking colorful (fake) leaves.
Teachable moments when children are at play give us opportunities to encourage children’s play choices, like, “Rufus is doing a great job feeding the baby!” or “Look at the bridge Ava built with blocks!” Encouraging everyone equally provides the example for all to encourage one another and themselves!
If a boy says he wants to be a mommy, he can pretend that role in dramatic play, dress-up, or play with people figures or dolls. If a child insists, “Boys can’t be mommies!”, talk about boys and men who also take care of babies and kids when they are daddies, brothers, teachers, doctors or nurses.

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• Let children choose their own color favorites, rather than imposing “pink is for girls” “blue is for boys”
• Make sure all children have opportunities to perform all classroom jobs.
• Read and discuss books that reflect modern roles in work and families. Talk about workers they know in the community and talk about jobs related to skills they enjoy and are learning.
• Blocks and transportation toys are not just for boys and they don’t need to be pink to appeal to girls.
• Include and allow dress-up props of a wide variety and multiple uses (crowns, capes, worker vests, tools, play food, aprons) after all, it is pretend! Rotate props to go with the season or a story you have read (size sequence bowls and chairs when reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears) 
• Allow your children to explore their own interests, and encourage trying new things!
• Look at your children’s choices in play areas and provide appropriate and interesting materials. 
• Is the language you use encouraging and challenging all children equally?
• Let children choose their own color favorites, rather than imposing “pink is for girls” “blue is for boys”
• Make sure all children have opportunities to perform all classroom jobs.
• Read and discuss books that reflect modern roles in work and families. Talk about workers they know in the community and talk about jobs related to skills they enjoy and are learning.
• Blocks and transportation toys are not just for boys and they don’t need to be pink to appeal to girls.
• Include and allow dress-up props of a wide variety and multiple uses (crowns, capes, worker vests, tools, play food, aprons) after all, it is pretend! Rotate props to go with the season or a story you have read (size sequence bowls and chairs when reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears) 

• Allow your children to explore their own interests, and encourage trying new things!
• Look at your children’s choices in play areas and provide appropriate and interesting materials. 
• Is the language you use encouraging and challenging all children equally?

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Play is the means through which children learn, and toys are the tools we give them to accomplish that job. What toys can best help?  To help answer that question related to gender roles, NAEYC asked a researcher about her work on gender-typed toys:
“In general the toys most associated with boys were related to fighting or aggression (wrestlers, soldiers, guns, etc.), and the toys most associated with girls were related to appearance (Barbie dolls and accessories, ballerina costumes, makeup, jewelry, etc.)."
"The toys rated as most likely to be educational and to develop children’s physical, cognitive, artistic, and other skills were typically categorized as neutral or moderately masculine. We concluded that strongly gender-typed toys appear to be less supportive of optimal development than neutral or moderately gender-typed toys.”

Her advice for parents and teachers:
“Strongly gender-typed toys might encourage attributes that aren’t ones you actually want to foster. For girls, this would include a focus on attractiveness and appearance, perhaps leading to a message that this is the most important thing—to look pretty. For boys, the emphasis on violence and aggression (weapons, fighting, and aggression) might be less than desirable in the long run."
"Also, moderately masculine toys have many positive qualities (spatial skills, science, building things, etc.) that parents might want to encourage in both boys and girls. It is the same for some moderately feminine toys (nurturance, care for infants, developing skills in cooking and housework).”
For the full interview, see "What the Research Says: Gender-Typed Toys"
https://www.naeyc.org/resources/topics/play/gender-typed-toys

This doesn’t mean you should toss out your children’s favorite toys! Just be aware of the play opportunities those toys provide. Strive for a balance of toys led by the children’s interests, their developmental levels, appropriate safety, and whether those toys will provide opportunities for learning! 

• Ask yourself, “What opportunities for learning will this toy provide for my children?”
• Watch how your children play and encourage creativity and imaginative play (like pretending a row of blocks is a tightrope!)
• Build connection by playing with your children! You will both benefit!

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We hope you got some new ideas for activities to help children learn through play.  Let us know your favorites so we and others can learn from you!