Pinnacle Prep School

🌦️ Kids Forecast Friday: Become a Weather Watcher!

Weather is happening all around us every single day — in the sky, in the wind, in the clouds, and even in the way the air feels.

This week, invite your child to become a weather watcher!

Have them step outside each day and observe:

☀️ Is it sunny, cloudy, rainy, or windy?
🌡️ Does the air feel hot, warm, cool, or cold?
💨 Are the trees still, gently moving, or blowing hard?
☁️ What kinds of clouds do they see?
🌧️ Did the weather change during the day?

Then have them draw or write a simple daily weather report. They can even pretend to be a meteorologist and give a short forecast to the family!

Share below how it went!

Weather observation builds science skills like noticing patterns, collecting data, comparing changes, and making predictions — all from their own backyard.

This Friday, don’t just check the weather… discover it! 🌈

Read More Thursdays 📚

Want your child to read more without turning it into a battle?

Start small.

Reading does not have to mean sitting silently with a chapter book for an hour. Reading growth can begin with 10 focused minutes, a book they chose, and a cozy place where reading feels calm instead of forced.

This week, try a “Book Basket Reset.”

Place a small basket somewhere easy to reach — beside the couch, near the breakfast table, in the car, or by the bed. Fill it with a mix of:
📖 graphic novels
📖 joke books
📖 magazines
📖 nonfiction books about animals, sports, science, space, crafts, or anything they already love
📖 books slightly below grade level for confidence
📖 one “stretch” book for challenge

The goal is not to make reading perfect.
The goal is to make reading visible, available, and inviting.

When kids have easy access to books that match their interests, reading becomes less of an assignment and more of an option they are willing to choose.

Small reading moments add up.
Read more. Grow more. Imagine more.
Comment below and tell us what your children were reading this week!

Where in the World Wednesday 🌎

This week’s challenge: Research one famous landmark!

Choose a landmark your child is curious about. It could be local, national, or somewhere across the world.

Ideas include:
🔎 The Statue of Liberty
🔎 The Grand Canyon
🔎 The Eiffel Tower
🔎 The Great Wall of China
🔎 Mount Rushmore
🔎 A local monument, bridge, museum, or historic building

Have your child find:
📍 Where it is located
📅 When it was built or discovered
👀 Why people visit it
💡 One surprising fact

Then ask:
Why do you think this landmark matters?

Research builds reading, questioning, and critical-thinking skills. Social studies helps children understand how places, people, and events connect to the bigger story of our world.

Families, comment with the landmark your child researched and one cool fact! 🔎✨

Try-It Tuesday: Build a Paper Bridge! 🌉

Can one piece of paper become strong enough to hold weight?

This week’s challenge is simple, fun, and a great way to sneak in some engineering thinking at home.

What you need:
A piece of paper
Two cups, cans, or stacks of books
Coins, small toys, or blocks for testing weight

The challenge:
Place your paper across the two supports like a bridge. Test how much it can hold. Then redesign it!

Try folding it like an accordion, rolling it into a tube, or bending the edges to make it stronger.

Ask your child:
What changed when you folded the paper?
Which design held the most weight?
Why do you think that worked?

Engineers do this all the time. They test, adjust, and try again. Sometimes the first design fails — and that is where the real learning begins.

Try it as a family, then post a picture or comment to show us what you discovered!

Math Monday 🧮

Math is everywhere — even at snack time! This week, invite your child to build a “snack graph.”

Choose 3–5 small snack items, such as crackers, grapes, pretzels, cereal pieces, or berries. Have your child sort them by type, count each group, and then arrange them in rows to create a simple bar graph.

Then ask:
Which snack has the most?
Which has the least?
How many more grapes than crackers?
How many snacks are there altogether?

For younger children, this builds counting, sorting, comparing, and number sense.
For older children, you can extend it by asking them to write equations, find the difference, create fractions, or calculate percentages.

Math does not always have to start with a worksheet. Sometimes it starts with curiosity, conversation, and a handful of pretzels.

Math Monday Challenge:
Make a snack graph this week and let your child explain what they notice! Then, tell us below how it went.

Summer STEM can be more than quick experiments.

This is a great time to let kids slow down, ask deeper questions, and work through projects that take more than five minutes. Real STEM learning happens when students plan, test, revise, and explain what they notice.

For the next two weeks, we will be sharing daily STEM and Reading projects for you do with your students at home:

The most important part is not having the “right” answer.
It is asking, “What do you think will happen?”
“What changed?”
“What would you try differently next time?”
“How do you know?”

Those questions turn a summer activity into real thinking.

This summer, give kids the gift of curiosity, challenge, and time to figure things out.