Summer holidays are just around the corner , so it’s time to celebrate and welcome the new season in our lives. As we’re all trying to wrap up the year in the most memorable way possible, here are some ideas on how you can introduce the summer mood in your lessons!
- A letter to my summer self. Give your students a piece of paper and ask them to imagine being somewhere on holiday. Ask them to draw the place and add details to their drawing that should answer the 4WHS (Where are they?, When are they there?, Why have they chosen this place?, What are they doing there?). Now, ask them to write a letter/postcard to themselves giving them advice on how to have the best summer possible. For older students/adults, ask them to bring pictures of past summer holidays and compare their summer holidays now to how they used to spend summer in the past.
- 5 things to share. The brown paper bag lots of us use in the first lessons of the year could be handy for the final lessons,too. Bring a paper bag with 5 of your favourite summer objects and talk about who you would like to share them with and why. Now, ask your students to do the same!
- The tastes and smells of summer. Ask your students to close their eyes and tell you the first 5 words that come to their mind when they hear the word “summer”. Write down the words on the board. Instead of explaining their meaning in Greek/English, talk about how their summer words “taste” or “smell”. Then, you can create a class poster with the tastes & smells of summer.
- Keeping the summer in our heart! Ask your students to draw hearts on a piece of paper and write inside what makes summer special to them. Encourage them to share the summer feeling they most miss throughout the year (e.g. being carefree) and discuss what they can do to feel this way the rest of the year (e.g. stop stressing out and trying to relax more). Ask them to write their bits of advice on post-it notes. When everyone is done, stick the post-it notes on a piece of A3 paper and create a class “Summer all year long” poster.
- A summer bucket list: Print out a beach pail and shovel template (there are tons of pails templates to find online). Ask your students to write down their summer goals and talk about how many of them they would like to have achieved by the end of summer. You can combine this activity with a “crazy numbers” one where students have to write personal records given crazy numbers like 1.0000.0000.000. For example, I’ll have eaten 1.000.0000.0000 ice creams by the end of summer!
- The Perfect Summer recipe: Tell your class they’re all cooks and they need to come up with the ingredients for the best recipe for summer.
- Summer in the city: Unfortunately, not all students/teachers get to spend their summers away from the city. In this case, here is an activity to “summerize” a city landscape. On a large piece of construction paper draw the map of a busy city. Remember to leave space around the buildings/streets of your city. Ask your students to draw what would make the city a better place for someone to spend their summer holidays in.
- A summer chain poem/story: As in all chain story activities, each student/pair of students is asked to write one or two sentences to a story before passing it on to the next student/pair in line. This would be even more fun if combined with Chinese whispers!
- Up in the air!: Bring balloons and ask students to write a summer wish for their classmates. Put the wishes in the balloons, inflate them and then ask students to randomly choose a balloon, pop it and find out what their summer wish is.
- And 10.: A soundtrack for summer: Summer wouldn’t be the same without music, so ask your students to create their own tracklists with their 5/8/10 etc. favorite summer tracks and explain why they make their summer great. You can turn this activity into a stranded island records one, too.
