Summer Brings Fun Learning Opportunities for Families

Summer is here, bringing with it a variety of ways for families to connect through learning and play while children are out of school. Amid the hustle and bustle of the school year, it’s often easy to overlook the many learning opportunities that can be found at home and in everyday life. Summer is a great time for children and parents to learn—and have fun—together in these informal settings. Research shows that family engagement is powerful, and that when families are involved at home and at school, children learn more.[i]

Former first lady Barbara Bush recognized this link more than three decades ago. In 1989, she established the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, a nonprofit dedicated to improving literacy skills in children and adults, based on her belief that “the home is the first school,” and “the parent is the child’s first and best teacher.” Over the years, research has validated her confidence in the power of parental literacy and its critical role in intergenerational learning. Research has shown that a parent’s reading skill is the greatest determinant of a child’s future academic success, outweighing other factors, including neighborhood and family income.[ii]

While there are many variables to summer learning and engagement,[iii] we’d like to explore at-home learning and the power of a parent/caregiver and child learning together.[iv] Shared literacy activities support families learning together, and these interactions foster enhanced language, literacy, and emotional and cognitive development for parents and children.[v] As a family literacy foundation, we want to support families learning together in many ways – through shared and individual reading, by learning on a variety of topics in formal and informal settings, ordinary and extraordinary places, and even through the context of play. In addition to creating fun memories, play provides an opportunity to practice and reinforce learning in multiple areas[vi], and build skills around problem solving, perseverance, and creativity, to name a few.

We recognize that all families are unique. For some families, the summer months provide endless amounts of time to engage in a variety of activities. More commonly, families may be challenged with balancing work schedules, childcare, resources, and family commitments. So, what are some easy ways for caregivers and children of all ages to learn and play together during the busy summer months? 

Read Together - Barbara Bush had a few key tips for family reading:

• Read stories using fun or silly voices for the characters in the books. Look at the pictures and talk about them. You can act out the stories, draw pictures, sing, or make up your own stories together. 
• Visit the library to read all types of books and explore digital texts too! ReadLife Bookshelf is a free collection of books for adults, children, and families with activities for each book! 

Write Together - Explore writing in different ways: 

• Write lists, add events to calendars, and create stories together! 
• Find a picture in a book, magazine, or online to talk about. Ask your child, “What do you see? How does the picture make you feel? How would you describe the picture to someone?” Write a few sentences to describe the picture. This is called a caption. Turn this into a game by taking turns writing a caption for a picture first. Then, guess what the picture or image is. 
• All ages will like this game! Have one person pick a picture from a book or magazine without telling the other person what it is. Write a caption for the picture, being as descriptive as possible. Then, have the other person guess what the picture or image is. Have fun and take turns with this game!

Play Together - Families who play together create memories together:

• Talk about favorite characters or animals from stories you have read together by playing charades. Have your child think of a favorite character or animal in a book. What do they say? What do they sound like? How do they act? How do they move? Have them pretend to be that character or animal while you guess who it is. Then it is your turn!
• Older children will love games like Thumb War! Face each other and hold hands so that all fingers (not the thumb!) curl around each other. Try to pin each other’s thumb down, but first remember to say, “One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war!” Need more information? Search online using these words – thumb war. 

Our team at the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy has put together a PDF resource with even more ideas that families can use to learn together this summer. Click here to explore it, and feel free to share it with others. Thanks to Pam Cote for putting together this wonderful collection.

[i] Henderson, A., & Mapp, K. (2002). A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement.

[ii] National Institutes of Health. (2010). Improving mothers’ literacy skills may be best way to boost children’s achievement.

[iii] Kuhfeld, M., and A. McEachin. (2024). Summer Learning Loss: What we know and what we’re learning. NWEA.

[iv] Sticht, Thomas G. (2011). “Getting it Right from the Start: The Case for Early Parenthood Education.” American Educator.

[v] Jacobs, K. (2004). “Parent and Child Together Time.” Handbook of Family Literacy (pp. 213-232).

[vi] Bongiorno, Laurel. 10 Things Every Parent Should Know About Play. National Association for the Education of Young Children.