Summer Fit Learning Series Will Keep Your Kids Healthy, Fit AND Smart This Summer! (book review)

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book, free of charge, from the author, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it

As a long time proponent of the Summer Bridge Activities, which George Starks helped develop, I was very interested in checking out his new Summer book series, Summer Fit Learning!

Summer Fit Activity Books are uniquely designed to guide parents through summer learning in ways that promote healthy, active lifestyles, reinforce core values, and the importance of good behavior.

Each Summer Fit Activity Book provides ten weeks of activities, one for each week of the summer. Your child will complete 2 pages,  in about 20 to 30 minutes each day, while learning math, reading, writing, language, nutrition and values, in fun and engaging ways, that keep their bodies and brains active during the summer. The activities start off easy and get progressively harder,t so that by the end of the summer, the children are mentally, physically, and socially prepared for the grade ahead. The series goes from Pre-K up to 8th grade!

Before I share my review of the Grade 1-2 book, let's see what George says about the series: 

Instilling the Right Values in Your Children This Summer- What will your children learn this summer? Who will be their mentors and role models?

“Summer is a great time to help children grow and prepare for the grade ahead,” says George Starks, “and parents are a child’s greatest teacher.”  

Starks says "our book series features colorful, fun-filled and action-packed, grade-specific workbooks, written by teachers specifically for independent use by educators, parents, and trainers throughout the summer.Teaching children values is one of the most vexing challenges parents face, but it is not as hard as it may seem. We built Summer Fit around the research and understanding that children are influenced most by the behavior and example of their parents. They learn the value of education and living healthy lifestyles, as well as the importance of good character, behavior, and social skills, when parents talk about and exemplify the importance they put into these areas in their own lives. Bullying is solved at home, not in schools.”

Some samples of the values from the Grade 2-3 book:

- Courage means doing the right thing even when you are feeling scared. - aka Rosa Parks

- Perseverance means not giving up or giving in when things are difficult.  It is trying again when you fail.- aka Bethany Hamilton

- Friendship is what comes from being friends.  It is caring and sharing and being there for each other in good times and bad.- aka Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

Review:  We were sent the Grade 1-2 book for review. I was a little surprised that Miss Grace was able to complete about half the lessons up to about Week 4! Which of course made me happy- as obviously her school is advanced enough that completing Kindergarten allowed her to be able to complete as many of the lessons as she did! Miss Grace loves activity books like these as her school utilizes them during the school year (and in fact we've been using the Summer Bridge series this Summer).

The book starts off with a guide section for parents, about the book and how parents can be the role model/teacher for their children over the Summer. Then a Summer reading list is included, with space for your child to check off the books they have read. The book then has a skills assessment section, which is helpful for you, the parent, to see the areas where your child is hesitant, or needs more work on. The book then starts on the weekly sections.

Each weekly section incorporates Skills of the Week, a Value and a Get Fit Time activity. Then there is a chart to check off the daily activities and an acknowledgement of the value of the week (kids sign off on). Then the lessons begin. Each day lists an Get Fit activity within the lesson pages. There are also mini science experiments (like the one on the right pix) as well during the week.At the end of the week there are additional activities listed than can be completed, a pledge again for the value for the week, and a core value book  list to go along with that week's value. The lessons do start off easy- which is great as it makes kids want to breeze through them and come back for more the next day! The progression is so gradual that most kids won't really see how much harder the end of the series is! 

Extras included at the end of the book include an Index on Fitness and Exercise Activities, a Health and Wellness Index which includes recipes, a sample book report format page, memory game flashcard set, a 3 page Summer Journal and the answer section for all the activities in the book. And then a end-of-the book certificate- kids love certificates! You can find additional activities on the website as well- I downloaded some from the K-1 book to add to the printouts we already have- some were easy and other challenged Miss Grace on her reading, which is exactly what she needs at this point over the Summer!

I love this new series and we will definitely be using this book next Summer to help Miss Grace bridge between the 2 grades and to reinforce what she has learned. I think it is supremely wonderful that the values are included in the series, as I know many many kids who are NOT receiving them at home or school, and only get them once a week in bible school. Parents are our kids FIRST and PRIMARY role models, and it is up to us to make our kids into the adults (and parents!) they will be!

You can download a sample from one of the 9 books Summer Fit books on the SummerFit website, as well as the additional pages, to try out with your kids for the rest of the Summer too! 

We can't recommend this series enough!

About the Author: George Starks believes that riding a bike and reading a book with a child this summer can make or break their school year. The espresso-making, bike-riding, educational publisher is the creator of the new Summer Fit Activity Book series. 

He has two Bachelor’s Degrees, one in Sociology and one in Communications with an emphasis on Journalism from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He traveled the United States extensively with Rainbow Publishing Company, developing school-based summer learning programs while building the bestselling summer workbook series– Summer Bridge Activities. He formed alliances with the Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning (now known as the National Summer Learning Center), Major League Soccer and USA Cycling to promote the importance of academic and physical activity during the summer. In 2005 he joined Carson-Dellosa to create a summer learning initiative and in 2009 consulted for Scholastic in the development of their summer education outreach program.

He is now President of Summer Fit Learning, and owner of Blue Star Juice and Coffee which is an active lifestyles cafe in Canyon Rim, Utah.  He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.