Have you ever received one of these email titles, “Summer Work for My Child”, “What Are You Sending Home With Your Students for the Summer?”, or “Summer Packets”? Yes, we all have received some kind of e-mail like this the last month of school from either parents or other teachers. I dreaded these emails because this meant I was going to have to spend extra time looking for engaging summer activities, printing activities and putting together packets. I hate packets! Let’s be real, our students HATE these summer packets just as much! I decided I needed to change my mindset and how I sent home summer work. This is when I created Summer Take-home Centers. Not only did my students LOVE these, but it was an engaging activity to do the last week of school. That is a WIN in my book! Keep reading to see how you can easily create engaging take-home centers that your students and parents will love.
Creating Your Take-home Centers
This is the biggest “work” part of this end of the year activity, but trust me, it is a lot more fun than putting together packets! First, you need to decide on what take-home centers you will create. I would normally have 4-6 centers depending on how much time I had to do these centers. I normally had my students stayed at each center for 10-15 minutes (keep that in mind). Check out some of my student’s and my favorite take-home centers below and then read a couple tips for choosing your centers.
- Multiplication Fact Center: Give students choices of different activities to practice their facts over the summer. Here are some examples:
- Create your own flashcards: Students use notecards and look at flashcards that I have in our class to create their own flashcards for facts that are hard for them. For example: 7 and 8 facts were hard for me growing up. So, I would create those
- Multiplication Fact Finders: I like to put out different themes of this activity and let my students choose 5-6 to take home for the summer. Click here to check out my Multiplication Fact Finder activities bundle that is easy to print a variety of this activity.
- Any other multiplication fact activities your students love can be part of this center and they can choose a certain amount to take home for the summer.
- Writing Center: This center was one of the easiest centers for me to create! I would print out a bunch of writing prompts (tip: there are a ton of free ones on TeachersPayTeachers) and then, my students would glue them on plain sheets of paper. I would have them glue two on a page (one on top and one on the middle). Then, they would staple these pages together, or put them on a binder ring for their summer writing journal. Also, make sure you let your students create a cover for this journal, too! Tip: Buy a variety of fun pencils and let students choose a pencil to take home to write with in their journal, during the summer.
- Reading Center: Every year, I gave my students a book as an end of the year gift. Instead of choosing the book for them, I purchased a variety of books and let them choose. At this center, they would read the book descriptions and choose their book. Then, there would be some blank or black and white bookmarks that they could create for their summer reading!
- Reading Prompt Center: Want to encourage your students to practice some of their reading skills over the summer? I printed a blank calendar for the month of July (TIP: Split it between two pages to give room for students to write), students wrote one of our reading comprehension questions on 4-5 days each week for their calendar. These can be questions that you use throughout the year or you can go find some free ones on TeachersPayTeachers
- Word Problem Center: One of my favorite activities throughout the year is to let students create their own word problems using my FREE Word Problem Templates. One year, I had students do an activity earlier in the week where they created word problems and posted on a padlet. Then, I displayed the padlet during the Take-home Centers for students to be able to add word problems to their calendar/ paper to solve over the summer that were created by their classmates. At this center, students created word problems for other students to take-home or they chose from a variety of word problems to glue on lined paper.
- Memories Center: This is one of my favorites! At this center, I had 5-8 jars lined up that students added a memory to about something that year. Here are a couple examples of what the jars may say, “Funniest Memory”, “Favorite Memory”, “Memory About Your Teacher”, “Field Trip Memory”, etc. Then, on the last day of school, I would pull out these jars and we would read some of these memories. Some years, I would have a slideshow of pictures at this center, too, for students to view after they put a memory in each jar.
- Adjectives or Compliment Bags Center: This is another one of my favorites! For this center, I had a brown bag with each student’s name on it. Students would think of an adjective or compliment for each student in the class and either write it on the bag, or write it on a piece of paper and add to the bag. This bag was great to give to students at the end to put in any take-home materials in, like their notecards, bookmarks, pencil, etc.
- Snack Center: I always liked to have parents donate, or I would bring in a fun snack for this day! Ice Cream Sundaes, or a Trail Mix that students could create, were always favorites. As students ate their snack, they could chat with the teacher and one another about the year. They loved that they were just allowed to chat and not have to do anything else at this center!
Tip #1: Use what you already have or ask for donations from other teachers in your school. Do not go out and buy new notecards, colored paper, paper bags, etc. First, I always think what supplies I have ton of already and use those (it was always notecards for me). Then, if I do not have it, I ask around or send an email out to other teachers at my school. For example, I may say “Help a fellow teacher! I’m looking for 25 paper bags. If you have any, please let me know” and normally, I was able to get the supplies I needed ,or at least some of it, this way.
Tip #2: Think about what would be most beneficial for your students to practice over the summer! Multiplication facts and continuing to write (not text or type), were always very important to me! So, I created centers around these.
Setting Up Take-home Centers
I HIGHLY recommend that you set up these centers the day before if you are doing it in the morning, or set it up during your planning time and do them right after. Some years, I had parents come help set it up and run a center. I still organized the centers, but having the parents there to help support them was very helpful. I have done it without parents and they can still be run successfully.
IDEA: Decorate your room with a theme for these centers! This will get your students even more excited. I have done a beach theme, pool theme and vacation theme. I went to the dollar store and bought a couple fun things that went along with the theme to put around the room.
Running Take-home Centers
If you have used centers all year, your students will be pretty familiar with how they work, but if you have not, this can still be a great activity! Either way, I recommend deciding on some expectations, going over them with students and writing them on the board before starting. Here are a couple of my top expectations:
- You MUST stay at your center until you hear me shake the maraca.
- If you do not follow the directions for the center you are at, you cannot move to the next center.
- You will be given a 3 minute warning and need to finish up.
- You may not run.
- Use your level 1-2 voices.
If you have parent volunteers, you can easily float around the room during the centers. If you do not have volunteers, I recommend thinking about which center may need the most support to get started and starting there. Also, keep in mind other staff around the school that may be able to help with running the centers. I found other staff loved being part of this!
Are you ready to try your own take-home centers? Trust me, they are not a lot of work and your students will definitely be talking about how much they loved them! It is such a fun way to end the year and have your students excited about doing some practice, or as they may call it “work”, over the summer.
Click the button below to grab a FREEBIE that will give you a couple things to help you get started with your Take-home Centers!
