Splash into Summer!! Activity-a-Day Calendars & Weekly Plans 2016
05.18.2016
Summer 2016 is fast approaching and most children will be on an extended break from school. While every child deserves a break from the rigor of school, summer vacation offers exceptional opportunities for children to learn and develop outside the structure of formal school.
Tools to Grow is pleased to offer our annual FREE Activity-a-Day Summer 2016 Calendars with over 300 activities designed to maintain academic knowledge, battle summer boredom, and make summer memories!
By providing their child the opportunity to engage in these activities, parents will be offering their children the chance to:
Minimize or Eliminate Learning Loss: Skill regression may occur during prolonged breaks from school. These activities offer opportunities for writing, drawing, generating ideas, and using executive functioning skills (problem solving, planning & organizing).
Maintain Fine Motor Skills: Children with special needs may regress when not participating in therapy. These summer themed crafts & activities provide opportunities to use a variety of tools and materials that build hand strength, pencil control, and eye-hand coordination.
Stay Fit and Coordinated: Build muscles, balance, strength, endurance, and fight childhood obesity.
Create New Life Experiences: Children with more background knowledge have better reading comprehension.
Benefit from Multi-Sensory Learning Experiences: These capture your child’s interest while using touch, movement, sound, and sight to promote learning.
Expand their Role in the Family: Complete simple household tasks that help to boost a child’s confidence while learning daily living skills.
Activity-a-Day Summer Calendar
Summer Activity-a-Day Calendar is a FREE Printable for the summer months of July and August 2016.
So as to offer each child the most relevant and age appropriate activities, this year we have expanded to provide you with three different age ranges/grade levels.
1) Preschool - Grade 1
2) Grade 2 - Grade 4
3) Grade 5 and Above
What Skills are Addressed in the Calendars?
For the grade/age levels (1) Prekindergarten - Grade 1 and (2) Grade 2 - Grade 4, each day of the week on the calendar is organized as follows:
- Monday = Fine Motor
- Tuesday = Sensory Fun
- Wednesday = Visual Perceptual/Visual Motor Integration
- Thursday = Handwriting
- Friday = Gross Motor
- Saturday = Around the House
For the grade/age levels (3) Grade 5 and Above, each day of the week on the calendar is organized as follows:
- Monday = Fine Motor
- Tuesday = Executive Functioning
- Wednesday = Visual Perceptual/Visual Motor Integration
- Thursday = Handwriting
- Friday = Gross Motor
- Saturday = Around the House
Fine Motor Skills involve the use of precise and coordinated movements of the fingers to perform hand use tasks. Fine motor skills are necessary for completing daily tasks such as dressing (using buttons/zippers), feeding (using mealtime utensils), being a student (using a pencil, keyboard, or scissors), and engaging in leisure/play activities (drawing, playing many musical instruments).
Sensory Play involves opportunities to promote the development of sensory processing skills by increasing adaptive or functional responses to sights, sounds, touch, and movement.
Executive Functioning Skills involve the many tasks a child’s brain performs that are necessary to think, act, and solve problems. Executive functioning includes tasks that help a child learn new information, remember and retrieve information learned in the past, and the use of this information to solve problems in everyday life.
Visual Perceptual Skills involve the ability to understand, evaluate, and interpret what is seen. There are a variety of visual perceptual skills; deficits in one or more of these may have academic and functional consequences for success at school and home.
Visual Motor Integration (VMI) Skills involve the coordination of hand movements based upon the perception of visual information. It is the execution of hand movements guided by what the child is seeing.
Handwriting Skills involve a complex process of recording language by hand, often by using paper and a pen or pencil. The production of legible and efficient handwriting requires intact skills in the areas of postural control, eye hand coordination, visual perception, fine motor control, ocular control, and pencil grasp. Handwriting skills may be strengthened through practice that includes coloring, drawing, printing letters, printing numerals, or forming other symbols.
Gross Motor Skills involve the use of large muscles groups for the performance of functions such as walking, running, jumping, riding a bike and playing sports.
Around the House Skills involve completion of simple household tasks that help to boost a child’s confidence and independence. As a child develops he/she will need to increase their competence in the completion of daily living skills for success at home, school, community, and work environments.
Instructions to a FUN-Filled Summer!
1) Print out FREE Summer Activity-a-Day 2016 Calendar.
2) Complete activities throughout the months of July and August as indicated on the calendars.
3) Print accompanying Detailed Weekly Plans with organized instructions for each day and Printable Activities for each week!
Summer Weekly Plans & Activities
Are you looking for detailed weekly plans, instructions, and printable resources that accompany the monthly Activity-a-Day Calendar? We have exactly what you are looking for! We have done the planning and organizing for you!
Summer Weekly Plans & Activities are conveniently organized into the same three grade/age categories as the FREE Activity-a-Day Calendars.
1) Preschool - Grade 1:
This 55 page Printable PDF includes detailed weekly plans/ instructions and accompanying activities for children preschool age through first grade.
Activities include:
- Play Dough Mat & Letters
- Alphabet Practice (Upper & Lower Case Letters)
- Number Practice
- Proper Letter Formation Chart
- Gross Motor Summer Animal Walk Game
- Tactile Recipes (Goop & Puffy Paint)
- Maze Paths
- Coloring Pages
- Sandpaper & Star Fish Craft
- Tongs/Tweezer Pom-Pom Shapes
- Find the Differences
- Tic Tac Toe
- Goldfish Eye Dropper Bubbles
- Sensory Coloring
- Hole Punch Art
- Butterfly Net Yarn Craft
- Pattern & Cut Fish/Ocean Theme
2) Grade 2 - Grade 4:
This 53 page Printable PDF includes detailed weekly lesson plans/instructions and accompanying activities for children in the second through fourth grades.
Activities include:
- Coloring Pages (Summer Fun, Rangoli Color Pattern,
- Handwriting Practice (Riddles, Secret Code, Cryptogram, Summer Story, Make a List)
- Proper Letter Formation Chart
- Tactile Recipes (Goop & Puffy Paint)
- Hole Punch Art
- Word Search
- Number Practice
- Find the Differences
- Hang Man
- Paper Clip Pattern
- Sandpaper Craft
- Dress up Paper Doll
- Sensory Coloring
- Mixed up Word Search/Scan
3) Grade 5 and Above:
This 37 page Printable PDF includes detailed weekly lesson plans/instructions and accompanying activities for children in the fifth grade and above.
- Activities include:
- Calendar Skills
- Printing Practice (Summer Story, Cryptogram, Word Scramble, Space between Words, Space between Letters)
- Map Skills
- Hole Punch Art
- Word Search
- Prioritizing Skills
- Grocery/Menu Planning
- Chore List
- Dot Game
- Drawing/Symmetry Activities
- Rangoli Coloring Patterns
- Design Comic Strips
- Managing Time
- Back to School Supply List
Gifts for Growing - Summer Activity Kits
We are excited to share these amazing Summer Activities and Resources as Kits in our Gifts for Growing Shop.
These Summer Theme based kits fulfills our mission to provide valuable tools for the most important job there is … helping children grow!
A gift for the child in your life . . . Parents, grandparents, and family members can give a gift of creativity and learning.
A gift for yourself . . . A tremendous time saver for therapists and teachers to use with multiple students. We know how time consuming it can be to organize materials, resources, and supplies that provide excellent educational and therapeutic benefits, especially during the summer! We have done all the work organizing Summer for you!
Visit our Etsy Shop to find out more about these exciting Summer themed activity kits!!
We hope these Summer Activities are a SPLASH!!! Have fun and make some great summer memories together from these FREE Summer Activity-a-Day Printable Calendars!!
Have a Safe and Fun-Filled Summer!!
Related Topics: Activities/Crafts , Free Resources , Gifts for Growing, School Based OT, Summer
