By Carrie Weber and Leigh Bartenstein, Curriculum and Academics
What will summer look like this year? Looking for ways to occupy yourself in the absence of camps and travel plans? Having trouble figuring out how to spend your time now that online school is over? Good news: we’ve brainstormed some exciting summer projects that can be done from the comfort of your home.
Launch a newsletter
We’re all seeing a lot more of our neighbors these days, so why not take advantage of this opportunity to reach out and get to know the people in your community? A great way to connect with your neighborhood is to launch your own virtual newsletter. You can solicit submissions from your neighbors and compile them in a digital form to distribute via email or social media.
First, you’ll need to consider what kind of content you would like to feature in your newsletter. What topics would be most meaningful in your community? Things like recipes, announcements to celebrate, or movie or book reviews could all be excellent items to include. Once you have decided on some topics, it’s time to send out a request for submissions. Be sure to provide clear instructions for how and when entries should be submitted.
Finally, your job as an editor is to put everything together! We recommend Adobe Spark for its easy-to-use templates, but any word processor will have similar options for embedding images and text. When you’re satisfied with your work, you can send out your newsletter and start gathering submissions for the next issue!
Start a vegetable garden
Have you ever thought of starting a vegetable garden, but you worried that you might not have the time to properly plan for and attend to your plants? With most summer vacations on hold, you can safely start a garden and not have to bother asking the neighbors to water it when you are away. Planting and maintaining a vegetable garden is a nice way to connect with nature and spend time outside. It’s not only good for you – it’s good for the earth! Harvesting your own produce reduces the environmental impact of commercial shipping and farming.
So, where to start? You’ll need to check the growing seasons in your area to find out what can be planted throughout the summer. If this is your first garden, start small and only do what is manageable. Think about the space that you have to work with and decide whether your garden will be in-ground or in containers. Regardless, you’ll want to ensure that the plants are in an area that receives a minimum of five hours of direct sunlight each day.
For a container garden, start by choosing the pots and receptacles that will hold your plants—have fun with it and mix up colors, shapes, and sizes! Fill the bottom of the container with rocks for adequate drainage and create or buy the appropriate potting mix. If you’re working directly in the soil, look at the dirt you are working with and improve the soil if necessary with compost, dried leaves, grass clippings, etc.
Not sure how much to water? Check out this great resource for vegetables. The best advice is to be creative, don’t be afraid to fail, and have fun!
Conduct an oral history interview
Most of us are spending a lot more time with our immediate families than we used to, which makes now a great time to learn more about your extended family and their histories. Researching your family tree can be a daunting task, especially if you aren’t sure where to start. Rather than diving headfirst into documents and genealogy websites, this project provides an alternative approach: use oral history interviews to create your own historical record.
Interviewing is a skill, and like any skill, it can be strengthened with practice. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has an online interviewing guide to help you learn how to conduct an oral history interview. Additionally, the UCLA Library provides this sample outline for interviewing family members. Using these resources, you can conduct oral history interviews with your relatives and begin to build a catalog of firsthand historical accounts.
As you compile these stories, be sure that you are following best practices for preserving and saving your recordings. With proper storage and care, these files can remain a valuable resource for future family historians!
Create a virtual tour
Feeling tired of stay-at-home recommendations? Want to go on an adventure but know that now really isn’t the right time to be traveling? Consider creating your own virtual tour. Google Tour Creator is a web-based tool that allows you to do exactly that—create tours! The templates provided include tours of the seven wonders of the world, the solar system, the human respiratory system, and the New York skyline, just to name a few.
The Google Tour Creator platform uses 360-degree images that can be sourced directly from Google, or you can use your own photos taken using Google’s Cardboard Camera app. The images you insert into your tour can be annotated with text and voice narration, and you can highlight points of interest. Maybe you use existing photos and make a tour based on places you have been, or maybe you want to tour a place that you want to visit. Your tour can be about a place, or even about a concept or big idea—the possibilities are endless.
Volunteer in your community
With all that is going on in the world right now, it’s a great time to volunteer. Think about what issues are important to you and how you can help. There are plenty of opportunities to volunteer that can be done safely and don’t require you to gather in groups. What is going on in your neighborhood? It can be as simple as picking up trash (you can do that anywhere!) or helping a neighbor with yard work or painting projects. Are there younger students you know who might need additional preparation before school starts again in the fall? Consider offering online tutoring in a subject area that you love.
What about your broader community? Now is a great time to clean out your closet or that storage area—there are still plenty of organizations accepting donations at this time. If your family is able to safely shop, you can donate to your local food and animal shelters. Are you crafty? Or do you love to learn new things? There are a lot of organizations that accept donations of various knit, crocheted, or sewn items. Knots of Love, Knit A Square, and Afghans for Afghans are great organizations to start with. You can also check in your community to see if medical professionals and essential workers need masks. Find a pattern online and get sewing!
Writing letters is another easy way to help those in need or those you are looking to support. You can write your political representatives or even start a petition to send. Let politicians know how you feel and help organizations trying to instigate change. There are also opportunities to write thank you letters to active-duty troops, veterans, and first responders through Operation Gratitude. Consider writing similar letters to local first responders and doctors on the front line in your community. Whatever you choose to do, don’t forget to reflect upon and document your efforts so you can make the most of what you’ve learned.
We hope these ideas inspire you to do something great! There are opportunities here to work closely with your immediate family, with your neighborhood or local community, or even across the globe. We’d love to see what you’ve created—feel free to share with us!