As the final days of school approach, it’s time to celebrate everything your students have accomplished—and help them carry that momentum into summer. While summer is a much-needed break, it’s also a chance to keep kids learning, exploring, and building skills in fun and meaningful ways. Whether you’re a teacher looking to send home ideas for summer enrichment or a parent hunting for screen-free adventures, here are five engaging summer activities your elementary or middle school students will love.

1. Create a DIY Summer Field Journal

Give your students a blank notebook and encourage them to become explorers of their own world! A summer field journal is the perfect place to collect observations, sketches, thoughts, and discoveries.

Here are a few prompts to get them started:

• • Draw a bug you find and describe what it’s doing
  • Keep track of the weather for a week
  • Write about the most interesting place you visited
  • Press a flower or leaf and write where you found it

This activity builds writing and observation skills while encouraging mindfulness and curiosity about the world around them.

📝 Teacher Tip: Provide a simple printable template or journal starter kit to send home on the last day!

2. Try a Weekly Family STEM Challenge

Turn your students into engineers for the summer with hands-on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) challenges they can do with common household materials.

Try challenges like:

• • Build a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows
  • Design a paper airplane that can fly as far as possible
  • Create a boat out of aluminum foil that can hold coins without sinking

Encourage students to record their process and results, and even invite siblings and family members to join in. It’s a great way to practice critical thinking and problem-solving.

🔍 Want more inspiration? The Mobile Ed STEAM Museum offers engaging, hands-on learning opportunities year-round. Bring the excitement of STEM to your school next fall!

3. Start a Summer Reading Passport

There’s nothing quite like getting lost in a book during a lazy summer afternoon. Help your students fall in love with reading by giving them a “reading passport” to fill with book adventures.

Challenge them to:

• • Read in five different places (like under a tree, in a tent, or on a blanket in the backyard)
    
  • Try different genres: mystery, fantasy, nonfiction, biography, etc
  • Visit the local library or attend a summer reading event

Offer small rewards for every few books completed—ice cream outings or a visit to the library’s treasure box work great!

📚 Teacher Tip: Create a printable passport with spaces for book titles, favorite characters, and reading locations.

4. Launch a Kindness Quest

Encourage students to spread kindness in their homes and communities by launching a summer-long Kindness Quest. Give them a list of creative ways to make someone’s day better.

Some ideas:

• • Write a thank-you note to a mail carrier, waste collector, or neighbor
  • Make a “You Matter” sign and hang it in a window
  • Pick up litter at the park
  • Donate unused toys or clothing to a charity

Acts of kindness help kids build empathy, emotional intelligence, and community pride—plus, doing kind things makes you feel good, too!

🌟 For more inspiration, check out Mobile Ed’s Quest for Kindness program.

5. Design a Backyard or Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt

Turn everyday walks or backyard time into a playful adventure with a scavenger hunt tailored to your neighborhood. These can be themed—like nature, colors, sounds, or shapes—or designed around learning goals like math or vocabulary.

Ideas to include:

• • Find something shaped like a triangle
  • Spot three different types of birds
  • Count how many red things you can find
  • Find a sign with more than five words

Kids can check off items as they go, draw what they see, or take pictures with a phone or tablet (with supervision).

🌱 Scavenger hunts are great for building observation, categorization, and descriptive language skills—all while having fun outdoors.

Keep the Learning Going All Summer

As you send your students off for summer vacation, remember that adventure and learning don’t have to stop in June. With a little creativity and encouragement, you can empower kids to explore, build, read, and grow all summer long.

Want to start next year off with a bang? Bring the STEAM Museum or Quest for Kindness to your school for a high-energy, educational assembly your students will never forget. Click below to book your fall assemblies today!