Tutor Doctor Blog

Your student’s teachers will be the first to tell you that the summer vacation has serious effects on your child’s learning. While it’s good to take a break from the books, teachers often struggle for weeks to get those brains back in gear. Creating fun summer activities for your students that help them to exercise their brains is a great way to keep them on their game.

The lemonade stand is a fun way for your students to learn through the summer. It teaches a range of life skills and gets them to practice math all while having fun and learning the fundamentals of commerce. While you can teach a number of lessons through a lemonade stand, remember that its mostly about fun.

Spreading the lemon love

Start by working with your student to select a charity that they really love. Whether they need to raise funds for their Girl Guide or Boy Scout troupe, or they want to give the proceeds to a local pet shelter, together you can find a worthy recipient of your lemonade income that will teach your students about the importance of community and charity.

Marketing savvy

Once you’ve decided on a charity, the next thing you can teach is the fundamentals of marketing. Here you can discuss locations and why some would be better than others. Next, take on the lemonade stand itself. Discuss ways in which you can decorate your lemonade stand to attract attention. Get your students to make signs that advertise their lemonade stand, the charity they are supporting and the items that will be on sale. They can also make posters to advertise the lemonade stand in advance. Glitter, balloons, pictures and other decorative elements can help to add a creative facet onto your educational endeavor. Also discuss ways in which your students should greet customers and how they should help them.

Green your lemonade stand

This is also a great opportunity to focus on the environment. Make your stand and posters from recycled materials. You can use boxes from your local grocery store to create a store front and posters. Opt for biodegradable cups or plastic cups that you can reuse. Make sure that all the materials end up in the recycling once your lemonade stand is taken down.

Math Whizz

Keep lots of change on hand and let your students work out how much change each customer needs to get. They can also count the money to see how much they have made. This is a great way to get them to practice their math skills while having fun.

AX

With summer vacation just around the corner, it’s a great time for some family fun. Learning to cook is a great summer activity for your students. Not only do they get to learn a valuable life skill, they also get to practice their reading, measuring and cooking techniques. Following recipes is good practice for science lab too! Here are some no bake recipes they can try on their own.

Chocolate ice cream sandwiches

1 pint chocolate ice cream, softened

8 Chocolate chip cookies

Chocolate sprinkles

Method

Place 4 cookies on a baking sheet. Spoon about ½ cup of ice cream onto each cookie. Make sandwiches by placing the four remaining cookies on top. Smooth out the sides by sprinkling chocolate sprinkles onto a plate and rolling the ice cream sandwiches in the chocolate sprinkles so that they stick to the sides. Place in the freezer for 1 hour. You can wrap the sandwiches individually in plastic wrap and keep in the freezer.

Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge

2 cups and 2 Tbsp white cake mix

2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup salted butter

1/4 cup milk

2/3 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup rainbow sprinkles

Method:

Spray an 8-by-8 baking pan with non-stick spray.

Mix together cake mix and powdered sugar in a large bowl. Cut butter into 4 pieces and add to cake mixture with milk (don’t mix them in, just add them on top). Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Take out of microwave and mix everything together. The mixture will be very thick, so younger students may need a little help here. Fold in white chocolate and sprinkles. Don’t mix it too much now or the sprinkles will start to melt.

Spoon mixture into the baking sheet and rub a spoon across the top to make sure that its level.

Place in the fridge for 2 hours. Cut into squares.

No Bake Lemon Cheesecake Squares

Ingredients

200g packet Rich Shortbread biscuits

½ tin condensed milk

1 cup coconut

60g butter (melted)

Rind of 1 lemon, finely grated

1 cups icing sugar

15g butter

Method:

Grease a cookie tin with butter or spray with a non-stick baking spray. Crush biscuits in a food processor. Add lemon rind coconut, melted butter and condensed milk. Mix well. Press into tray.

Sift icing sugar into a bowl and stir in butter. Add lemon juice from lemon one teaspoon at a time until the icing is smooth.

Spread icing over the biscuit mixture. Place in the fridge for 1 hours and then cut into squares.

This summer vacation, you can keep your students busy and help them to maintain their academic skills with fun cooking family time.

Of course you will have the ‘talk’ with you teens about drinking, but they will all be faced with the temptation sooner or later. Statistics tell us that most teens will succumb to the peer pressure and have a drink or two or three. In addition to discussing drinking with your students and the consequences of alcohol, it’s important to prepare them for what they should do if they or their friends are drunk.

Drinking and Driving

One of the greatest dangers for teens is that they will either drive when drunk or get into a car with a drunk driver. Maggie van Zyl has an innovative way of dealing with these situations: “I’ve told all three my teens that they can call me any time of the day or night to fetch them and their friends if they are drunk and can’t get a lift home. This comes with a ‘no questions/no punishment’ clause. They have all taken advantage of it at some time or another, but not as much as you would think. As a parent, it’s so tough to let this slide without a comment, but I really would rather have them home safe and sound than feel like they should take the risk of driving drunk to stay out of trouble.”

Coping Strategies

Role-play situations in which teens may find themselves so that you can discuss what they should do in these situations. When teen Chantelle found herself at a party where everyone was drinking, she followed her dad’s advice; “My dad always told me to have a drink in my hand. He was right that my friends would never suspect that it had been the same drink the whole night. I opened a beer when I got to the party and, since I’m not crazy about beer, I managed to make it last the whole night. None of my friends realized, but I didn’t have to explain myself either.”

As a parent, you should also be aware of the potential for drinking. Scope out situations in which you think drinking might take place and then ask your teen to call you regularly though the night to gauge their sobriety. You can also have a ‘safe’ word which your teen can drop in a conversation so you know its time to pick them up. Its ok to be the ‘bad guy’ with their friends if they can save face. Saying that their mom is coming to pick them up is a lot easier than explaining that they don’t want to be a part of the party.

The teen years are tough for you and your students. The best way to avoid a potential problem with drinking is to talk about the subject. Help your teen to pre-empt situations so that they will know how to deal with them. Make sure that your teen feel safe talking to you and that they know that when they make a mistake, you will be there to help. Put safety above everything else.

There is no better motivation for continued success than great rewards. If your graduate has been working hard and has done a really great job this academic year, then a reward is in order. This will help to motivate them to work just as hard next semester. Here are some practical ideas for gifts your graduate will love.

Green Gifts

From solar powered cell phone chargers to solar panel backpacks, you can help your energy-conscious graduate to reduce their carbon footprints with solar powered tech accessories. If your graduate isn’t into gadgets, consider organic clothing, and recycled material shoes.

Tech Crazy

A new smart phone, ebook reader, tablet computer, laptop or desktop is the perfect gift for your graduate. You will definitely score some brownie points with the latest tech gadget and your graduate will be able to use this technology to improve their academic performance next year too! A new camera is also a good idea if your graduate is going somewhere special over the summer break. Opt for a camera that’s robust and can withstand the summer vacation bumps.

Gear Idea

Whether your student is graduating from elementary school, high school or college, they will be entering into a new phase in their lives. You can support this transition by giving gifts that reflect their new roles. Buy a leather work bag for college grads who are about to transition into a job, or buy an electric scooter for students who will have to commute to high school next semester.

Excellent Experiences

Sometimes the best things in life aren’t things. Giving your student a new experience and a happy memory is the best gift in the world. Send them on a summer camp, or take them on a trip to a new destination. You don’t even have to travel to provide amazing experiences; you can give them a camping trip, hiking adventure, diving experience, zipline tour, white water rafting holiday or a hot air balloon ride.

Gift certificates

These cards will allow students to select their own gifts. Give gift cards to book stores, their favorite coffee shop, the iTunes store, Amazon, or a clothing store that they frequent.

When your students graduate, rewarding all their hard work will help to motivate them to do even better in the next phase of their academic careers. When considering a gift, make sure that its representative of their interests and hobbies or that its something they really want. Giving great gifts takes thought, but it will be well worth the effort!

Granola bars are a healthy, calorie-wise snack, but many store-bought varieties are high in sugar or artificial additives. Here are a list of great homemade granola bar recipes that are easy for students to follow. Students can make their own granola bars which are perfect as a restorative snack after exercise or when they are hiking or camping. These granola bars also make great lunchbox snacks for when they are back at school.
The recipes featured here are high in fiber and Omega-3 fats which are great for growing bodies and brains. Helping your kids to create healthy snacks is a great way to teach proper nutrition. Learning to cook is a skill that your students will enjoy learning and following recipes is a great way to teach measuring and following instructions.

Grab ‘n Go Granola Bars from Meal Makeover Moms

Ingredients:
• 1 cup quick cooking oats
• 1 cup shredded wheat cereal
• 1 cup walnuts
• 1 ½ cups dried fruit (choose one or more of the following: raisins, cherries, apricots, cranberries prunes)
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• ¼ cup honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Lightly oil an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.
3. Place the oats, shredded wheat, walnuts, dried fruit, cinnamon, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture is finely chopped (the fruit should be the size of a dried pea or lentil).
4. Whisk together the eggs, honey, and vanilla in a large bowl until well blended. Add the oat mixture and chocolate chips and stir.
5. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan, and flatten gently with the back of a spoon.
6. Bake about 18 minutes, or until the edges turn golden brown. Let cool completely in pan before slicing into 12, 2 x 2 ½ -inch bars.
These bars can be eaten as is, stored in an airtight plastic container for a couple of days or frozen. Wrap in foil, sealable plastic bags or plastic wrap and freeze.

No-bake Pumpkin Seed Caraway Bars from Keeper of the Home

This recipe is wheat-free and rice-free for students with allergies.
Ingredients
• ¼ cup coconut oil
• ¼ cup honey
• ¼ cup sucanat (unrefined sugar)
• 2 cups oats
• 1 cup puffed millet (find this in the cereal aisle)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ¼ cup roasted pumpkin seeds

Instructions
1. Stir oats and puffed millet in large bowl.
2. In small saucepan over medium heat, melt oil, honey, and sugar until bubbly, for no more than two minutes. Stir constantly.
3. Let oil/honey/sugar mixture cool for 2-3 minutes, then add vanilla and stir.
4. Pour liquid mixture over oats, millet, and pumpkin seeds, and stir thoroughly.
5. Grease an 8×8 glass pan or parchment paper-lined pan; then pour mixture into pan.
6. Press down firmly. This step is just as important as the mixing. Packing down the granola helps the bars stay together!
7. Place granola in freezer for a few minutes or let cool on counter until set.
8. Once set, turn pan upside down on cutting board. Then cut into the size bars you like.
9. Store in fridge or at room temperature.

Your summer vacation can be a wonderful time to reconnect with your family, have some fun and take time out from your busy schedule. Travel can carry with it a huge carbon footprint and take its toll on the environment. But with just a little planning and thought, you can turn your wasteful holiday into a green one that sets a positive example for your kids and provides you with a natural, authentic experience. Give Mother Nature a break this summer vacation with these green holiday tips.

Alternate transportation

When planning your summer vacation, consider an alternate to the family sedan. You can take a train or a boat or share a ride with another family. Taking a train or a boat will be a really fun and relaxing way to get to your destination. Sure, it may take a little longer, but you can enjoy the time with your family without the stress of driving, traffic and endless; “Are we there yet?” questions. Taking the train will cut 75% of your emissions and is much cheaper than traveling by car.

Bring your own

Take your own water bottles and coffee mugs. Using these will save tons of wasted disposable coffee cups and plastic water bottles. Pack your own snacks too so that you reduce the amount of garbage you create. These options also have the added benefit of reducing holiday costs.

Bring your own toiletries and share them with your family so that you don’t have to create waste by using the tiny bottles in hotels and motels.

Shop at local farmer’s markets to reduce the carbon footprint of your food. Have picnics to reduce the amount of restaurant meals you eat. This is a healthy and inexpensive option.

Give your house a holiday too

Turn off all the AC and appliances in your home. Even when they are on standby, appliances use electricity, so turn everything off or unplug it. Make sure your fridge and freezer are empty too so that you can turn those off as well. Just think how much you will save on your utility bills!

Green your accommodation

Get outdoors! Going camping and hiking is a great way to save money and reduce your summer vacation carbon footprint. Choose a green hotel if you aren’t camping to further reduce your carbon footprint. Green hotels have reduced carbon footprints and use only natural products so they are healthier for your family too. You can help by not turning up the room thermostat and not getting a change of towels and linen each day.

The summer vacations are here and you know that it won’t take long before your students are ready for action. There are some thigs that you can do that won’t cost a fortune and will provide your family with fun activities.

Star gazing

Take a drive out of the city and pack a blanket or some camping chairs, a picnic dinner and your smart phones. Download an app to help you identify constellations and then head out to a picturesque natural setting. You can enjoy the setting sun while snacking on your picnic dinner. Once the sun sets, hold your smart phones up to the heavens. Your GPS will track your position and help you identify the constellations and stars that you can see. You can download apps for stargazing here.

International food festival

Take out an atlas and ask your students to show you where different countries are. Pick a country to explore each week. You can play a game to find a country like pin the tail on the country or each sibling gets a turn to pick a country. Then find recipes from each country that your students can help you to cook. Cooking is a great life skill for students to master while reading recipes helps them to practice their reading skills. Following recipes is great practice for lab work and its fun too! This is a great way for students to learn about other cultures and cuisines.

Blanket forts

This is a great activity for a rainy day which you are never too old to enjoy. Think big by converting your living area to an indoor fort city. Furnish your indoor blanket fort with comfortable cushions and a picnic dinner. Plan activities that will keep older students engaged like board games, or bring your laptop in and watch a movie. You can also tell scary stories or listen to audio books.

Trivia night

This activity takes some preparation, but if your students are old enough, it’s a great way to keep them busy. Invite a couple of families for games night. Pick a couple of students to be the game masters. They must compile general trivia questions over a set number of categories like sports, history, literature, pop culture etc. They should also create answer sheets for each round (5-8 rounds work best). Families make up a team and get to answer questions in each round and the family with the most points wins the game.

You don’t have to go on vacation to have a good time in the summer; just a little planning will ensure an action packed summer that’s fun for the whole family.

The summer holidays are stretching out in front of you and you may be so happy to have a break from school that you don’t want to think about summer camp. But you should; summer camp is a great way to really take a break from your day-to-day life and have great new experiences.

Meet new people

Some of the best friends you will ever have will come from summer camps. Meeting new people will help you develop your social skills and expand your circle of friends. It’s great to meet people who come from different places and have different views and perspectives.

Try new things

Get out of your comfort zone and have some interesting experiences. You will be able to partake in new and exciting activities at summer camp. You may find a new sport, hobby or interest you never had before or learn a brand new skill. Finding out how capable you are and taking on new challenges will help you to be more confident.

Get into shape

At camp, you are so active that it’s easy to get into better shape than you will sitting at home on the sofa. The activities are fun and you’re enjoying yourself, so you won’t feel like you’re working out. Take this opportunity to eat well and get some fresh air. Being outside in a natural environment, doing fun activities with good friends will really help you to de-stress and rest after a tough academic year. You will come home refreshed and ready for the challenge of a new grade.

Its fun!

Choose a camp that suits your personality and offers experiences you know you’ll like. While it may seem like you just want to rest after writing exams, staying home will get boring fairly quickly. When you have a summer camp to get look forward to, you won’t find your summer vacation boring.

Summer camp can be a really great personality-building experience. You get to socialize outside of your circle of friends which means you can meet new people from different schools, states or even countries. Going to camp will give you the opportunity to spend some time outdoors and in a natural setting so you can relax and de-stress.

Challenging yourself and getting out of your comfort zone is a characteristic of successful people. You will learn new skills and surprise yourself at just how capable you are. You will return from camp with more confidence and mature which will help you cope with the demands of a new academic year. Mostly, summer camp is fun, so go and enjoy yourself!

The feeling of the summer vacation stretching ahead of you is great for students. And while reading and math may be the LAST thing they feel like doing, not doing anything during the summer holiday can lead to setbacks in ability. The National Summer Learning Association at Johns Hopkins University claims that students can lose as much as two months of reading and math ability over the summer break.

The summer brain drain means that teachers waste the first four to six weeks revising work that students have forgotten. Students can fall behind if they are slow to get back into the rhythm and then they will spend the rest of the year trying to catch up. Summer doesn’t have to be all about education, but there are ways in which you can help your students to stay sharp.

Reading is fun

Take them to a bookstore or a library and get them some books that they will enjoy reading. Books don’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t matter what they’re reading, which means that comic books, anime books and magazines are all great summer reads.

Get them to participate in cooking and baking by reading and following instructions or try some summer projects like woodworking, building robots, building remote controlled airplanes, sewing clothing, learning a musical instrument or making a movie.

Set goals for the summer

Work together with your student to set up summer projects you want to pursue. You can do some of them together and some of them separately. Ensure that they are part of the process so that you have some really big goals that utilize extra summer time and keep young brains working. The summer is a great swathe of time that can be used to make real improvements to you family’s skill set. Imagine learning a new musical instrument, building a canoe to take camping for older students and making a kite or building a playhouse for younger family members. Make sure you set goals for the summer that will help you to spend time together, give you something to look forward to and ensure that your students aren’t bored over the break.

Get a tutor

This may not be something your students want to do over the summer, but taking a little time out each week will make such a huge difference to the coming year. If your student has been struggling in a subject, or is preparing to write the SATs or ACTs, then a couple of hours of tutoring each week will make the coming year so much better. Get an in-home tutor to help your student to fill in the missing building blocks and gain confidence while improving grades.

Learning experiences

Summer is also a great time for learning experiences like a trip to the aquarium or the zoo, or the museum, watching documentaries or going to the art gallery.

If you are entering into your last year at school this year, there is so much you can do to help expedite your preparation for college. From taking extra courses over the summer to brushing up on your reading, there are ways in which you can improve your grade point average, work on improving the strength of your college application and get ready for the biggest academic change in your career.

Set your goals

This summer, take some time to decide what you want from your senior year. Knowing where you going will make it easier to plan the year ahead. If you intend to go to university or college, sit down with your parents and discuss practicalities; how much can you spend on tuition, which schools offer courses you want to take, where do you want to go to school etc. Now download course requirements and applications from the internet so that you know what grades you need and when you have to send in your application.

Give yourself a large list of possible schools so that you have a healthy set of choices. Don’t limit yourself to a few of the same kinds of schools. If you aren’t sure about what to study, speak with your school councilor. Do some online aptitude tests to see where your strengths lie and then investigate careers where you can use your skills.

Brush up on the extra credits

This summer holiday, do some activities that may give you an edge on your college applications. This will include charity work, internships and summer jobs. Anything that you can do that gives you some experience in the field or rounds you out as a person is a good idea.

If there are courses that you have been struggling with, get a tutor. Use your summer holiday to fill in any gaps in your skill set so you have the best possible chance of getting into the school of your choice next year.

Start learning life skills

One of the biggest hurdles for many college students is the challenge of living independently. If you’ve never used a laundromat, take a load in and try it out. Learn how to cook some of your own meals and take public transport if you haven’t before. All these experiences will help you to cope with living away from home and you will less stressed about everyday life at college.

Summer courses

There are some elective courses you can take over the summer that will beef up your college application. Ask your councilor to give you details about these courses. Some of these courses are conducted at community colleges which is a great way to get accustomed to campus life.

Take a deep breath. College is a fun and exciting time in your academic career, and while you are looking forward to it, make sure that you take time to enjoy your senior year and spend time with your friends, many of whom will be moving away soon.