A Letter From Luci

Dear Parents,

We are almost a third of the way through the summer. We have been busy preparing for the new school year and cannot wait to see you and your child(ren) on campus in August. 

In order to promote fine motor development, creativity, and overall readiness for school, please encourage your child to participate in some of these activities. These should help your child’s mind stay active and not to turn to “screen time mush”.  

– Read to your child every day/night and encourage your child to read to you. Students in upper elementary should read aloud to adults even though they think they don’t need to.  

– Read Bible stories and pray together as a family.

– Encourage your child to keep a prayer journal and/or a daily journal of their summer adventures. 

– Let your child go crazy with stickers! There are all kinds of fun sticker books out there. 

– Allow young children to use small, safety scissors to cut out pictures of toys or items of interest and make a collage. 

– Write a letter and draw a picture for a friend, neighbor, someone at church, or actually mail it to someone. You can teach your child how to address and stamp an envelope…almost a lost art. 🙂 

– Make squiggly lines and have your child cut along the silly lines. (Start with simple lines, then a curve, then zig-zag, and then crazy ones.)

– Create things out of yarn, sticks, etc.

– Let them tear up paper into tiny pieces, ball up tissue paper into tiny pieces and let them glue it on to paper to make a design. 

– Young children can build the alphabet out of play-dough and then build an object out of play-dough that begins with each letter. 

– Dot to Dots! (Shapes, letters, surprise objects, and then try challenging dot-to-dots!) 

– Play BINGO, Memory, dominoes, Candy Land, Snail’s Pace, Connect Four, Go Fish, Uno, Chess, etc.

– Create stories and silly rhymes.

– Use play-dough to create scenes. Encourage your child to explain what they built and ask them questions about it. 

– Color a TON!!! Paint, scribble, etc. (For children that do not enjoy coloring with crayons or colored pencils, encourage using gel pens, paint pens, whatever it takes.)

– Cook with your child. You can use bread-stick dough or cookie dough to build letters or sight words. Sight Word pizza sticks are the best…or sight word cookies… YUM!

– If your child is ready for a challenge, have them double or triple a recipe or cut a recipe in half.

– Go on “Walks and Talks” with your children.  See who can use adjectives to describe God’s creation on the walk or just let them ask you questions. Something may spark their interest and they may want to read about it. 

– Puzzles, mazes, and paint by numbers is always fun! 

– Sidewalk chalk, basketball, ride bikes, go fishing, dig in the dirt, search for sea shells at the beach, build tons of sand castles. 

– Please assign your child age-appropriate chores to do at home. This helps build confidence and sense of responsibility.

– Practice addition and subtraction math facts if your child is entering 1st or 2nd grade.  Multiplication and Division facts should be practiced for students entering 3rd – 5th grades. Your child can use REFLEX MATH this summer via Clever if they are entering second grade and up.  

– Turn up the radio in your car and sing the silly songs that your children want you to sing.

Don’t blink, your child(ren) will be in 12th grade and college before you know it. 

Have fun and enjoy time with your family!  

Serving Him, 

Luci O’Byrne, M.Ed.  – Elementary Principal