Summer is a Great Time for Learning

As thermometers spike, fireworks spark and barbecues light up across Massachusetts, it is impossible to deny that it is well and truly summer! After the most recent winter, the hot temperatures and long days are a welcome change from the snow and cold. Summer in New England is a wonderful time to enjoy the outdoors, travel to the beach, explore festivals, and give our children lots of opportunities to continue to learn – to develop and expand their education.

Education? Aren’t children out of school by now?

For many children across the Commonwealth, their official school programs have ended for the academic year, but their opportunities to learn are blossoming. For these students, and for those students who have not yet started school, summer is the perfect season to learn, because of the diversity of fun things to do and the different sights, sounds, and smells to encounter.

Education is all too often a word used to describe only the formal, institutional setting where children learn. It is so much more than that! Children are learning all the time – by experiencing new things, by observing the world around them, and by interacting with the environment. All of this learning is education, and oftentimes, the stimuli-focused experiences that children have exploring the world outside the classroom are just as important, if not more so, than the experiences they have inside of them.

The reason that these experiences are such important educational opportunities for children has to do with how their brains develop: especially during the incredibly important birth to five year period, the brain is highly receptive to stimuli in the environment. Interacting with the world – whether by playing in the sand on a beach, kicking a ball at a park, swimming (while supervised!) in a pool, or listening to music at one of the many wonderful festivals that take place across the state during the summer – helps develop new neural connections in a child’s mind.

Exposure to different types of stimuli, especially at an early age, can help foster children’s creativity and curiosity. Satisfying that curiosity by actually interacting with the environment helps children build problem-solving skills, reasoning ability, and other higher cognitive functions. Providing young children with a diversity of stimuli, and chances to experience the world around them in a variety of ways can provide them with fundamental educational building blocks that a more limited set of stimuli can’t provide.

That’s why summer in Massachusetts is such a wonderful educational opportunity for young children. There are so many things to do during the summer (you can find quite a few fun activities right here on the Patch website): trips to the beach; cook-outs or barbeques; hikes and trips through parks; and many other activities. Not all of the excitement of summer is found through day trips and journeys, though. Summer is a great time for children to explore colors, especially on flowers and plants, while discovering a multitude of shapes - maybe even in your own backyard! It’s a great time to explore temperatures, with cool beverages or a dip in some water. Butterflies are out, as are birds, chipmunks, and all other manner of critters to find. For younger children still learning about the world around them, summer provides a huge number of stimuli and opportunities to interact with them.

Taking children exploring doesn’t have to use up the whole day – some dedicated time to experience, explore and discover something new each day can have a profound effect on a child’s development. So while the days are long and the sun is high in the sky, take a few hours out of your week to explore with your youngsters – it’ll be great schooling.