Stop Summer Brain Drain
Don’t Let Summertime Stop Your Child's Learning
Don't let summer sun and fun drain your child's brain. Use these tips to help them keep learning even during the lazy days of summer vacation.
Learning is a lifelong process. Help your kids get that message early by creating out of school learning opportunities. Summer time is the perfect time to set up learning opportunities that are creative and fun. Use the following tips or create your own.
Let your child read to you.
It is great to let your child take the lead during story time, but there are countless other opportunities for children to practice their reading skills.
Children can:
- Take turns reading to younger siblings
- Read grocery labels or help you pick out items from your grocery list during food shopping.
- Use the newspaper or a cookbook to help you create a shopping list.
- Read about places they would like to visit and share what they have learned during family meetings.
- Read the notes from previous family meetings.
- Read from a posted daily schedule that includes their activities.
Children can build reading and writing skills by:
- Getting together with family or friends to write plays based on their interests and experiences. Children can build their social skills and confidence by acting in their plays. No one around to write a play with? Encourage your child to write his or her life story.
- Reading local kid's news features and writing letters to the editor about things that concern them.
- Starting a scrapbook.
- Writing letters to family about their school year.
- Writing to pen pals in other states or countries. The bonus - children can practice writing, reading and grammar and even pick up a few lessons on geography and culture.
Let children practice color, matching and sorting skills by:
- Helping with laundry or dishes
- Pointing out items in the grocery store
Older Children Can Lessen Summer Learning Regression by:
- Signing up for summer internships, learning camps or classes.
- Providing tutoring for other students.
- Conquering a focused reading list that helps them develop specific skills and knowledge. Older children may even want to start their own reading clubs.
- Participating in summer travel with a purpose. Trips should be planned with the goal of building skills or acquiring/developing new knowledge. You don't have to buy a plane ticket, you can visit your local museum or history center.
- Starting culture clubs. Each month teens take turns sponsoring meetings where members learn about a different culture. Teens can include related films, food and articles to enhance their learning.
Other ideas to promote summer time learning…
Take on family projects. No matter your child’s age there is likely something fun you can do to encourage summer learning experiences. Some examples:
- Build - treehouses, go-karts, etc. help children hone math skills. Cooking can help with math skills, too.
- Visit student science sites to learn about outdoor experiments you can try.
What ways can you think of to make summertime learning fun?
