When summer vacation begins to get old, what kids are missing is an intellectual life — no kidding.

Learning is what kids do best, so learning should always be part of a child’s day. Make it a big part — a parent-provider initiated time that really sweeps them off their feet.

Leave boring and mind deadening “reader to workbook” copy approaches in the dust. Do a summer hands on, go and do, think and write project instead. This is the way parents and providers can help children form ideas and keep them. That’s the whole point to learning.

Let’s invent a method: Let’s use three admirable figures parents can teach kids to relate to: Tom (To) Sawyer, Stephen (Step) Hawking, and John Updike (Up). These people are models for thinking and doing, and we could call this the “To Step Up” mode of learning.

To Step Up and away from a passive leaden lead copying to an active and productive learning leadership.

To Step Up means lots of doing, and no one better signifies doing to kids than Tom Sawyer. He’s a tough, durable figure both girls and boys can relate to.

Doing means risk taking and lots of trials and efforts, with any project. Stephen Hawking is a tireless and heroic researcher and experimenter. He is an idea man children should “step up” to know about and emulate. He makes dreams come true and so can they. Small dreams for young people grow into whole worlds of thought.

And John Updike’s expressive and creative writing about ordinary life causes the everyday world in his wonderful hands to become quite extraordinary. Children should learn to express themselves well about their own work.

To Step Up activities might involve making an in-depth study and collection of stamps, rocks, shells or wild flowers. Growing crystals or a vegetable garden requires research and doing too. So does hatching birds, butterflies or pollywogs. Putting a salt water aquarium together also requires research and thought. Even putting together a 1000 piece puzzle takes a kind of stick to it skill that requires sophistication of mind and will. There is also the play to learn and perform.

Our To Step Up method translates well into the arts. Helping to direct a play takes a lot of enthusiasm, and drama is fun or kids, but it takes research, and trial and effort. Watching and studying plays, reading and working out a play takes experimenting and practice — just like Stephen Hawking’s science. When the play is worked out. It’s time to perform it using the Tom Sawyer part. A gutsy, get in there and have fun approach which never fails.

Finally, no matter what you do, the UP part means writing about experiences so the memory is kept forever. Writing about something means you really understand what you did. It should be clear and concise. Children should keep a summer journal no matter what they do across the summer.

The main focus on summer vacation for children should be learning to really read for information, doing something real and worthwhile, and learning to write well about their experiences. Even doing one major project every summer from age three through fifteen means twelve great learning treks. By sixteen kids have car keys and they are more interested in other projects like finding the cutest girl or boy.