Planning a successful summer school program is no easy task. You want to make sure you’re meeting the needs of your students with both remediation and enrichment activities, and you also have staffing, scheduling, transportation, and more to think about. To make it easier, we’ve put together a list of open-and-go learning materials that will help you plan an engaging summer school program that fits the needs of your students.
As you plan your summer school program, consider ways you can continue to use the learning materials you invest in throughout the year — as take-home kits, for intervention, during after-school programs, and in the classroom — and let the learning begin!
Focus on core math skills
- Nasco Mobile Math Carts
Get everything you need to create an engaging hands-on math class for summer school with these mobile math carts. The carts are stocked with six complete kits that focus on essential math concepts and give you the tools to help students visualize and apply them.
Plus, with complete mobility, you can deliver effective lessons in multiple areas throughout the school. Transport materials easily for pull-outs or after-school learning (or even head outdoors!).
- Open-and-go classroom kits
From place value to fractions to geometry, you can easily focus on building essential math skills with whole-class learning kits that have everything you need to get students engaged in hands-on learning.
Many kits feature teacher’s guides and activities to make planning instruction for each day of summer school easy.
- Nasco Smart Starts Kits
Looking for ways to increase parental involvement? Smart Starts Kits have everything parents need to keep their child learning over the summer, including a review of what they learned the previous year and a preview of what they will learn in the next grade level.
With everything you need, including books, games, manipulatives, and recommended activities, all packed into a handy backpack, you can easily create take-home kits that families can check out for at-home learning or provide ready-to-go lessons for summer school.
- Individual Math Kits
With pre-assembled individual math kits, you can ensure equitable access to supplies. Students will have access to over 60 activities and all the manipulatives they need to learn about concepts such as number sense, place value, money, and more.
Students can use their kits in the classroom or the kits can travel home, to intervention classes, or after-school clubs.
Inspire the STEM leaders of tomorrow
Summer school is the perfect time to engage students in critical thinking, problem-solving, and design thinking by introducing STEM concepts. These ready-made learning material kits make it easy to plan activities students will ask to do again and again.
- Solar Boat Class Kit
Harness the power of the sun this summer by having students build solar-powered boats that they can design, build, and test. The kits provide everything you need for six students or six groups to create their own boats.
- STEM Starters Kits
Students can try their hands at building a balloon-powered car, or see if they can protect an egg from a 15-foot drop. With challenges like these, it will be easy to get them excited about STEM concepts.
With enough supplies for six projects, students will build their perseverance and problem-solving skills as they take a trial-and-error approach to work through the design challenges.
- TeacherGeek STEM Activity Cart
When you invest in this cart for your school, you gain 15,000-plus supplies — enough to meet the needs of every student in summer school and throughout the school year.
With access to over 40 projects and activities, every student will have a chance to tinker, build, create, and learn.
Boost social-emotional learning
- Managing Our Emotions at Home SEL Student/Family Kit
Understanding our emotions starts with learning to identify them. This elementary kit was designed to create at-home connections to reinforce social-emotional learning skills, and it can be used at home or in the classroom to boost understanding of emotions.
The included 50 emotions activities prompt students, teachers, and parents to talk about the emotions they read on the faces of others, deal with their fears, and manage actions and reactions, while the sketch diary helps them express what they are learning and feeling.
- SEL Reflections Journal Kit
Journaling has many positive benefits beyond the obvious writing practice. Students can develop important social-emotional skills, such as self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-management.
Featuring 30 prompts aligned to CASEL’s core SEL competencies, a sketch diary, and gel pens, students can get a jumpstart on creative journaling.
- 5-Minute Racism, Diversity, and Identity Activities
Five minutes a day is all you need to focus on important topics like gender, marginalized groups, societal norms, and more. With 50 activities to choose from, you can easily weave lessons into class time.
- The Coping Skills Game
With this fun game, students will get the tools they need to fill their social-emotional toolbox. Through real-life situations, students learn to deal with feelings, adjust their attitudes, discover choices, and accept imperfections.
Activate learning by keeping students active
- Nasco Recess Playground Pack
Physical health and activity promote learning in the classroom. Give students an outlet for their energy with a variety of playground gear. Along with activities for playtime and exercise, you can weave in learning activities that get kids’ hearts pumping. Count by fives as you jump rope, set up obstacles courses in different shapes, or say a rhyming pair every time you catch a ball.
- I Spy, I Move: Self-Management Adventures in Body and Mind Kit for PE & SEL
Get everything you need to help each student combine physical activity with science concepts in this bug-tastic kit.
Your budding entomologists will love watching how bugs move, comparing their speeds, and monitoring distances traveled. The composition book lets them record important data and observations and answer the included SEL reflection questions.
- Individual PE Student Kit for Elementary Students and Individual PE Student Kit for Middle Schoolers
Encourage activity at school and at home and limit the spread of germs with individual student kits. With fun gear and included activities, every student will have what they need to participate in healthy exercise.
Inspire creativity
- Individual Student Makerspace Kit
Makerspaces have proven to be a valuable tool for boosting creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. With access to a variety of learning materials, students can build prototypes, invent new things, and create works of art. This kit gives students a host of arts and crafts supplies to let their imaginations run wild and build those important skills.
Summer school is the perfect time to provide unstructured creation time or give students challenges they can tackle with their makerspace learning materials.
- Sculpting and Modeling Kit
It doesn’t get more hands-on than working with clay. A wonderful medium for creating three-dimensional art, it’s also a great way to have students create artifacts to show their learning of concepts in core subjects.
Use non-hardening clay and this free lesson plan for claymation projects that integrate art with technology.
Find your way into their hearts — and minds — with food
Food-based summer school classes are always some of the most popular with young and old. And they offer lots of opportunities to learn about healthy eating, science and math concepts, and life skills.
- Mrs. Anderson’s 14-Pc. Kids’ Baking Set
Get kids interested in baking with these kid-sized essentials that come at an economical price. Baking introduces concepts of measuring, counting, chemical and physical reactions, following directions, and cause and effect. And who doesn’t love a sweet reward at the end?
- Mr. RootBeer® Kit
Kids love the creamy, foamy taste of rootbeer, and now they can make their own! This kit contains all the essential ingredients to brew two batches of delicious, old-fashioned root beer in as little as three days.
Plus, the kit includes fun activities that will teach students about the chemistry behind soda, as well as some fun facts and root beer history.
- MyPlate Pursuit Board Game
Teach students about food groups, nutrition, and ways to include more activity in their daily routine. Each player answers questions to complete their personal plate based on age and activity level.
Play a full game with the game board, or use the 100 question cards to quiz kids while standing in line, create an outdoor game, or focus on healthy habits anytime students have a free minute.
Get started with free lesson plans
Summer school offers endless opportunities to enrich students’ learning experiences with engaging indoor and outdoor activities. Start with these free teacher-created lesson plans that feature effective learning materials that are proven to motivate students.