We all know that Summer School is an entirely different beast than teaching during the regular school year! So, trust me when I say I respect teachers that take on the challenge of teaching during the Summer! To help you out, here is a list of 31 Activities for Holidays During Summer School! My personal favorite is #15.
Activities for Summer Holidays – Memorial Day
1. Memorial Day Monthly Mini-Book:
Help your students learn a little more about the true meaning of Memorial Day. After watching this video on Memorial Day, give your students a mini-book that they can practice reading with. Possibly have a discussion about some of the facts they learned from the video and book. At the end of the day, take the mini-books home. Your students will feel so accomplished when they are able to read them to their families.
2. Memorial Day Fluency Passage:
For older students, pair them up with a partner and hand out the Memorial Day fluency passage and comprehension questions. Your students can take turns reading the passage to each other (being timed or not – your choice). Once they’ve read it a couple of times together, they can answer the attached comprehension questions. Come back together and have a quick discussion on an important fact they learned. My favorite is to conduct a quick Whip Around.
3. Popsicle Stick Flags:
This idea from A Pumpkin and a Princess is fun and easy. All you need is some paint, glue, and popsicle sticks!
Activities for Summer Holidays – National Best Friend Day (June 8th)
National Best Friend Day is June 8th, which means friendship bracelets and kindness cards are a MUST!
4. STEAM – Friendship Bracelets:
Rubber band bracelets are ALL the craze this year! Why not use that to your advantage and have a friendship bracelet-making party?! Put on some “friendship” themed songs (Toy Story’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” comes to mind). Pop a little popcorn and let your students just be kids.
5. Phonics Poem – Friends:
Follow up your friendship bracelet party with reading and phonics building. Pass out highlighters and your students can find all of the “sn” words in this poem about friends. Then give them the comprehension page where they can visualize friendship and illustrate their vision.
6. Camping With Friends – June Fluency Passages:
Flashlight Friday is the perfect time to partner up your students, pass out flashlights, and read “under the stars”. This camping-themed passage pairs well with creating a camping environment and enjoying all that the summer has to offer.
7. Playing With My Friends – Mini Book:
This mini-book talks about all of the fun things we can do with friends. Read this, and then brainstorm with your students games they like to play with their friends. Then spend the rest of the day playing some of those games.
8. My Friends – Sight Word Passage:
This simple friendship passage is great for beginning readers and has a little bit of comprehension added to it. Read in a small group, with a partner, or in a word work or fluency center for quick practice on important sight words.
9. Kindness Cards:
Kindness Cards are a fun and easy way to celebrate this day during summer school. Similar to Valentine’s Day, have your students make a card for a partner and say something kind. Just make sure that every student gets a card!
Activities for Summer Holidays – Juneteenth (June 19th)
10. Juneteenth (Beautiful Me) aff:
Daylen is excited and ready to share everything he knows about Juneteenth. Juneteenth is an entertaining storybook that explains the origin, customs, and importance of the Juneteenth Holiday.
11. Juneteenth Directed Drawing:
After reading the above book, pass out a directed drawing of the Juneteenth flag. Your students will have the opportunity to draw the flag, write their own sentences about what they have learned, as well as practice some phonics skills.
12. Juneteenth Passage and Questions – Second Grade Summer Review Packet:
For older students, have them listen to the book and then read this upper-level passage and work on the comprehension questions. Can they share some similarities and differences between the passage and the read-aloud? Can they identify the meaning and importance of Juneteenth?
Activities for Summer Holidays – Pride Month (June)
13. Pride Month QR Codes and Questions – Second Grade Summer Review Packet:
If your class is anything like mine, they love doing things digitally. With this worksheet, your students can scan the QR codes, read the book, and then answer the questions. Make this even more exciting by partnering them up and having them read aloud to each other, then work on the questions together.
14. Rainbow Directed Drawing:
After you and your students have gotten some background information on Pride Month, you can get creative and work on a simple 6-step directed drawing of a rainbow with sentence writing, vocabulary, and phonics activities included.
If Directed Drawings are not really your thing, the Color by Code can easily be a fun and creative way for students to continue thinking and learning about Pride Month. Students will read the clue and then match the corresponding category, using the provided color code to complete the picture. With this particular color-by-code activity, your students can practice grammar skills by reading words and identifying which type of adjective that word belongs in.
16. Rainbow Crafts:
Get creative with anything rainbow. Rainbow chalk outside or use construction paper to make Rainbow Pride Flags.
Activities for Summer Holidays – Independence Day (July 4th)
17. All about Independence Day – Fluency Passage:
After reading, have a class discussion and see how your students celebrate Independence Day and what they might know about the origin of the holiday. Try asking if they know that Independence Day and the 4th of July are the same things. If not, reference the passage and the included comprehension worksheet to help them further understand.
18. Independence Day Fluency Passage with Vocabulary and Question:
This passage version has illustrated vocabulary and comprehension questions – multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short answers. Similar to the Practically First Fluency Passage you can use this as a way to introduce Independence Day to your students or even use it as a follow-up activity in the days leading up to the 4th of July.
19. History of Independence Day:
This passage for older students goes a little bit deeper into the history and the origin of the holiday and can be used for students that already know what the holiday is but need more details regarding the Declaration of Independence and why it was signed. Use this as a small group reading activity.
Create your own American flag that’s healthy. Use strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream to make your own flag treat for the 4th of July. Just make sure to be aware of classroom allergies.
21. Flag Directed Drawing:
While your students are snacking on the edible flag they made in #20, they can be drawing their flag as well. After the flag has been drawn, can they add to the scene any activities they do on the 4th of July with their family. Then write about that activity on the lines provided below the picture. End your writing block time with a quick Author’s Chair and let students share their drawings and sentences.
Activities for Summer Holidays – National Ice Cream Day (July 19th)
Who doesn’t want to make instant ice cream?! This cool science experiment helps your students to see chemical reactions while providing a sweet treat at the end. Click the link to watch a how-to video.
23. Summer Color By Number – Ice Cream:
Incorporate math into your Ice Cream Day celebrations with Summer Color by Numbers – Addition! This is a great way to keep your students engaged in an important curriculum while also having fun with ice cream!
24. Phoneme Replacement:
Similar to the addition worksheet from above, this worksheet is a great way to work the curriculum into holiday celebrations. In this worksheet, your students will substitute the given sound to create new words, and do it in fun ice cream cone shapes! Add this page to your word work center with magnetic letters and have your students actually build and replace the phonemes before writing down the new word.
25. Short Vowel Find and Color:
Because popsicles are kind of like ice cream too, this worksheet makes working on middle sounds fun. Have your students work on it with a partner or while they are eating the ice cream you made in class to really keep the festivities going strong.
More ways to incorporate math and fine motor skills into Ice Cream Day. Subtract and solve the problems on the popsicles. Then, find the other subtraction problems that have the same difference. Have your students use components of ice cream as manipulatives to really engage them in this activity. Things like sprinkles, cones, candy, or gummies are just a few things students can use while working on this activity.
27. Directed Drawing Ice Cream Cone:
Get creative with Directed Drawings! This is a great project to keep your students engaged. They won’t even know that they are working on fine motor skills, phonics, sentence writing, and vocabulary. This will be especially exciting if they get to work on it with their homemade ice cream or after the treats they used to complete the subtraction 0 to 20 activity.
Activities for Summer Holidays – Harry Potter’s Birthday (July 31st)
Bring the magic into your classroom to celebrate the day Harry Potter found out he was a wizard!
28. Lighting Bolt Transformation Station:
Transformation Station allows students to be creative thinkers, artists, and visionaries. Students will need to use their creativity to finish the picture and pair it with a writing sample. What kind of adventure will they take Harry on in their story?
Hop aboard the Hogwarts Express and use Directed Drawings as a way to get students to be creative and write a short story about what their trip to Hogwarts would be like!
Nothing is more magical than a unicorn, it is also a great alternative to the Train Directed Drawing if you want to give your students choices!
31. DIY Hogwarts Acceptance Letter:
Click the link to find out how to tea stain paper to look exactly like the parchment from the books/movies, then move on to making the envelope and writing the actual letter!
If you want more great summer school ideas or just looking for a supportive community of teachers, join our Facebook Groups: Kindergarten Fearless Group, First Grade Fearless Group, or Second Grade Fearless Group.
Or, you can also sign up for our free Teaching Tiny Humans Teacher Course, where you will get weekly emails and guidance on how to navigate challenging situations, along with tips, tricks, activity ideas, and freebies to make this school year a success and constantly be honing your skills even if you are not in the classroom.
In addition, you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook @educationtothecore for continued information and resources as the school year progresses, or listen to our podcast Where the Primary Things Are.
Written by – Korryna Sanchez
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