Summer Work at NCA: 2026

Summer is almost here! At Naples Christian Academy, our families treasure the weeks of summer: family travels, beach trips, summer camp, and opportunities for connection flood our days. We love Southwest Florida, but for our family, it's a chance to journey to other parts of the country to visit family and experience life outside our corner of the world. I know many other families adopt a similar rhythm.

Summer Work at NCA
At NCA, summer also means that we continue learning and growing. In our pursuit of excellence, we desire to give our students opportunities to maintain their academic growth in reading, writing, and math. Research shows that the summer months often involve a "slide" during which many students lose some of the skills they've gained during the academic year. As a small school, our teachers know and love our students, and often have built relationships with incoming students long before the school year starts. We want to leverage these relationships in order to engage students in their learning from the very first day of school. Additionally, we desire that students' skill and knowledge remain intact for the entirety of the summer months so that they can pick up right where they left off at the beginning of the school year.

What Does Summer Work Entail?
Reading: We greatly desire that all students prioritize reading daily over the summer. (Read-alouds and audiobooks count!) Students write down either the number of minutes they read or record the books they've finished. We direct students to pick one book from a list. (Middle schools pick a book from the list that corresponds to their grade level for the fall; elementary students pick a book that corresponds to their independent reading level.) Lists are as follows: 
Middle School Summer Reading Lists
Elementary School Summer Reading Lists

Writing: We ask all students to write 15 journal entries. These entries can be narrative writing with stories about their summers. They can contain fiction pieces, poetry, or prayers. It's completely up to the student to decide what they'd like to write. There's space in the journals provided to younger students to draw pictures. The writing journal involves a lot of choice and freedom for students, and teachers collect these journals as a way to learn more about their incoming students.

Math: The math packets involve review of the concepts and skills students learned during the academic year. These review problems encourage students to keep up with their math facts as well over the summer months. If there are any problems that students don't know how to do in their review packets, we ask students to circle those problems and show them to the teacher at the beginning of the school year. This process reveals any gaps in instruction or skills that the teacher should review in the fall. It also allows us to better differentiate instruction in math for our students.

How Can I Encourage My Child to Complete Summer Work?
Teachers are not grading summer work this fall, but it is important for students to complete it. Many teachers start the year with projects or reports centered on a book that students read over the summer months. In our home, we are constantly repeating identity statements about our family, including "Snyders love reading." or "You're a Snyder -- of course, you always have a book!" Speaking phrases like this are far more effective for me as a mom than "20 minutes of reading before screens" or other guidelines like that. Other families may find those types of guidelines helpful.

For us, writing and math represent more of a challenge. We celebrate each journal entry (they're hard-fought and hard-won), and math can often be something our daughter leaves until the last minute. I don't have much advice, other than to make summer work fun by associating it with some type of treat or quality-time-type outing. (i.e. "Want to go to a coffee shop and do 10 math problems together?") If you have any ideas for making summer work more fun or doable, please please please email me! (snyder@ncanaples.com) I'd love to share ideas over the summer months!

In the meantime, happy summer from Naples Christian Academy! We pray God's great blessings upon your family!