June 5, 2019

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Making the Most of Your Summer Break

Avoid wondering where all of those summer hours went when school starts back up again

By Amanda Baker

Ryhor Bruyeu Getty Images

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

School is winding down and eyes everywhere are turning to summer – whether days will be spent at camp, with family, on a new job, traveling, or sticking close to home. The months seem full of possibility. But flash forward to changing leaves and all of us will be asking, what did I even do this summer?

Setting summer goals can help fight back against future fall regrets, especially if you take the time to get specific. Rather than planning to “learn guitar,” pick a song. Identify potential resources, whether books from the library, informal lessons from your neighbor, or how-to videos on the internet. Finally, don’t just say “this summer;” name some dates to check in and an ultimate deadline to check it off.

There are more ideas than summer days, but here are a few to get you started on a list of your own: 

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Get Started on a New Skill

  • Learn how to make three types of bread from scratch

  • Learn how to crochet with 4 different stitch types

  • Grow a new type of vegetable or flower

  • Solve an old problem in a new programming language

  • Draw or paint a picture to give away using a new type of paint or paper

  • Plan out the route for a family trip or bike ride using a map in advance

Set a Conservation Goal

  • Cut down your carbon footprint with shorter showers, bike rides, or shifting thermostats

  • Try to reduce the amount of plastic you use in a week by half

  • Track your family’s food waste and compare new shopping plans

Find New Ways to Help

  • Pick five neighbors to help by the end of the summer and find out what they need

  • Take charge of three new things – mowing the lawn, cooking Wednesday dinner, vacuuming – to play a bigger role in your household

  • Look for ten opportunities to help friends or family with something they find hard

Finish Something

  • Write a story from start to finish and share it with someone

  • Plan to walk at least a hundred miles, and then track your progress

  • Finish that puzzle, model, or painting that you have been avoiding

  • Write and record a video about a local invasive species and share it with your neighborhood

  • Create and complete a reading list with new kinds of books – one fiction, one non-fiction, one by an author younger than 25, one translated from another language, one set in the past, one set in the future, and one picked by someone you just met

Set Some Learning Goals

  • I want to be able to name every plant in my yard

  • I want know how to use every tool in my mom’s toolbox

  • I want to understand all of the steps to design and build a birdhouse from scratch

  • I want to be able to write a code for a robot that can start, stop, turn, and sense a wall

  • I want to be able to give a five-minute presentation in front of people without any notes

Make your list, make a calendar, and set some goals. Check-ins along the way will help you to see your progress and to re-assess plans that might have been too ambitious to start. Come September, you will be surprised at just how many new things you managed to do.  

Rights & Permissions

Amanda Baker is a science communicator and outreach advocate. She has a geoscience PhD from Cornell University and has managed open-access, academic journals as well as the outreach journal Frontiers for Young Minds. She is currently writing and editing science content for kids, from curriculum materials to magazines like Smore. She has served as a Science Olympiad national event supervisor and taught a first-year writing seminar on sustainable earth systems while at Cornell.

More by Amanda Baker

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