Summer Passport: for kids!

I don't post many "kid" posts... but I had this killer brainstorm on the last week of school! I wanted to share it for any others looking for ideas for the summer!

We are doing a "World Tour" in our house this summer! Crazy right! It sounds like a lot of work... and it might yet be. However, I think I figured out a way to keep it manageable and keep my child on track with her reading, math, world studies and even tie in some "try new foods!" which we struggle with!

Here is the plan. Her last day of school was last week. So we took an evening and created a "passport" for her. Complete with cover page, and inside "About Me" pages. Since my printer is broken at the moment I opted to simply write it all rather then spend time designing something in Photoshop - In Truth.. it might not be as pretty... but its a lot quicker. Once I had it "designed" I stapled it together and added it to our daily "to do". Now we are only in between K and 1 - but you can adapt this format to suit your child's lvl / needs. I thought it would make a fun summer keepsake for her as well!

DAY 1: When you open up the first page - I made a large square so she could draw an image of herself to the side I wrote out questions for her to answer:
Name:
Hair Color:
Eye Color:
Phone Number:
Age:

DAY 2:  About ME:
I like playing with:
My Favorite food is:
My Favorite game is:
My fav outdoor activity is:
I have _ pets
I want to be a "_" when I grow up.

Day 3 (week 1) I took the weekend to do this one as we made a treat and did some extra activities with it. But this page was all about where we live.
I live:
The state bird it:
My favorite thing to do in my city is:
My state is known for:
My fav state food is: (we live in Texas so we tried Pecans in different ways.. in pancakes, raw, roasted..) 
Food Rating:  (I made stars, she can color in 1-5 depending on how much she likes the food)
(this was important to me so I can be sure to give her more of the things she likes!)

For the activities we found some recipes and went shopping for them and made them, did some coloring pages and practiced writing the letter T, did math problems with pecans. Simple things really each thing is really designed just for the 5-10 min attention span of a 6 yr old!

We also spent some time looking at maps of different counties and picking out places she wanted to learn more about. Each place will get a week for the summer - with us covering 11 different places. I made a page for each place to put in her passport. I will give her a stamp at the end of week for completing each section.

I plan on tying this into her summer journal, that her teacher made for her asking her to draw and write something about her day. What she did, how she felt for that day. We also are participating in the Library's reading challenge - so we will tie in our library visits with things about the place we are visiting that week! So each week we will have...
1. Reading book (library day)
2. Craft about our destination
3. Math / Number work (using something about that country like we did with Pecans)
4. Recipe / Cooking / Food Challenge. (this could be trying something new or making a popular dinner/dish  from that country... fun for the whole family!)
5. Writing Project (journal, or printing work pages about a letter or the destination for her to practice her handwriting.. Pinterest is totally my friend... I have found a TON of pages there!)

That makes, one activity or project for each day... while we might do more one day or skip a day here and there - the goal is to do a little something each day. At the end of the week (or over the weekend) we can complete our Passport day, and share what we learned.

Here are the places were visiting... 

China, Indonesia, Hawii, Greenland, Alaska, Brazil, Sudan, Peru, Russia, Ireland, and Australia.
So each page - I wrote the name of the place to visit, and each week I will write out some questions about the places we visited... Like what food we tried, something about the culture, what the place is known for.. just like we did for where we live.

I hope this inspires you to spend extra time with your kids, and keep focused on some core skills over the summer! I thought it was a brilliant idea myself... especially because I can spend 30 mins or so a week prepping for the next weeks print outs, finding a craft or other projects and I don't have to put it all together now!

This week is China! Wish us luck on our adventure!