Help your child continue to build her academic skills and prevent the all too common “summer slide” with these fun ideas.

Summer is a time for outdoor games, poolside laughter, and fun in the sun. Yet, it is also a time when many kids lose valuable academic skills. In fact, research tells us that kids can lose up to three months of academic gains in reading and math over the summer. Help your child continue to build her academic skills and prevent the all too common “summer slide” with the ideas detailed below.

Read…a lot!

It’s easy to let regular reading time slip over the summer when days are long and activities often run late. Yet, it is important that kids continue reading on a consistent ‎basis throughout the course of the summer. This isn’t just limited to novels–your child can read newspapers, comic books, trivia books, short stories, or the like. You may even try setting up “family reading hour” (or portion of an hour) where all members of your family gather together for a pre-set time period and read. Try to lead by example and show your child how much joy reading can bring. In doing so, he will likely follow your lead and eventually come to enjoy the task.

Play (fun) learning games

Most kids enjoy playing games, so take advantage of down time this summer to play some education-based games that are still loads of fun. You can play Boggle, for instance, where you shake a tray filled with dice to form a grid of 16 letters. Players then have three minutes to create as many words as they can using the letters. You can also try playing Apples to Apples, where players build their language skills by matching red “object” cards to green “descriptive” cards and try to come up with the best pairs. To build your child’s vocabulary and reading skills, play Zingo!, where players match pictures and words, or you can play HiHo! Cherry-O with younger children to build foundational math skills, like number recognition, counting, and basic arithmetic.

Have fun in the kitchen!

To build your child’s math skills, ‎try cooking a meal or baking a dessert with him. If you decide to make brownies, for instance, ask your child to measure the correct amount of oil and water in a measuring cup. You may try “doubling” the recipe and ask him how much more of each ingredient you would now need, and how many more brownies you can now expect with the doubled ingredients. Have him read the recipe and directions to practice his reading skills, or perhaps have him write a menu for a meal you cook your family, or a review on each dish you created. The more fun and interactive you can make the process, the better!

Practice writing at the beach

For younger children, you can work on basic skills development, like letter and number writing, using sand at the beach, dirt at the park, or even flour in your kitchen. For instance, if you are practicing the letter p, have your child say the words “down, up, and around” out loud as she traces the letter in the sand, or “around, up, and down” as she writes the letter a. You might try spraying some shaving cream on a cookie tray and have her trace different letters and numbers using her finger for added tactile reinforcement. For basic math skills, have her count out a quantity of jelly beans or buttons, then ask her questions like, “If my friend gives me 2 j‎elly beans and another friend gives me 2 more jelly beans, how many jelly beans would I have all together?” or “If I had 5 jelly beans but I ate 2 of them, how many would I have left?” These types of exercises will help your child learn to solve basic addition and subtraction problems.

Electronic learning

Most kids love playing games on an iPad, so why not try integrating some learning-based apps? Try some of the following ones:

Starfall Learn to Read

Ages 4 and up

This is a great app for reinforcing basic reading skills. It includes 15 short books for kids to read that each emphasize a different sound pattern and contain animated videos, songs, and engaging characters. Each book also includes activities related to the story, including matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises.

Hungry Fish
Ages 4-8

This app is a helpful tool for building addition, subtraction, and mental math skills. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles, then “feed” them to a floating fish. When the fish is fed correct answers, it expands, and it shrinks when it does not receive correct answers. As players complete each level, they move on to more challenging ones, always receiving immediate feedback along the way.

Sentence Builder

Ages 6 and up

Your child can develop important grammar, sentence structure, and overall writing skills with this fun and engaging app. To play, students use slot machine-style wheels to select words, then create sentences describing various pictures. The app begins with basic sentences and later moves onto more complex ones. The images are bright and colorful, and students build critical sentence formation and writing skills.

Summer is a time when many kids lose key academic skills. Try these activities to help your child prevent “summer slide” and jump-start the new school year on a positive note.

The post 5 Tips For Preventing Summer Slide appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Back in the day, kindergarten brought visions of dramatic play, circle time, sumptuous snacks, and class pets. “Academic” instruction was minimal, and emphasis was placed on social, emotional, and creative growth. Yet with our current age of rising academic standards and testing demands, kindergarten has now become, in essence, the “new” first grade. If your child is on the young end of his grade, you may be considering holding him back from starting kindergarten, the “redshirting” option that has become increasingly in vogue. Yet before you jump on the bandwagon and opt for this choice, carefully consider all of the implications.

Maturity
To thrive in today’s kindergarten classrooms, children must be able to stay in their seats for extended periods of time, remain focused during lessons, and follow multi-step directions. Socially, they need to share appropriately,  take turns, and know how to interact with their peers. Some kids are just not emotionally ready for these increased demands. Due to the redshirting effect, in certain cases, as much as a 16 month age gap can exist between the youngest and oldest kids in a class. Being the youngest, least “mature” child in the classroom can feel overwhelming to a youngster, as she may not know how to interact appropriately with kids who are significantly older. Ultimately, she can feel confused and sad, and can develop a poor self-esteem. On the flip side, kids who are on the oldest end may find it hard to socialize with and relate to kids who are significantly younger. Being on the very end of either side of the age spectrum can have its challenges.

Academics
Standardized testing has become a reality in most districts around the country. Schools are held accountable for their students’ performance on these exams and, as a result, structured learning has been “pushed down” so that more academic work is covered at a younger age. Play-based kindergartens have been replaced with rigorous, acadamic-based curriculua, with schools hoping to boost test scores and increase performance. Kindergarteners “back in the day” may have been expected to learn very basic skills such such as letter and number recognition, but in many classrooms they are now expected to fully read, write stories, and solve math problems by the end of the year. Certains kids thrive with these rising academic demands. Yet for others, it’s a recipe for disaster. These children, who are not quite ready to jump into the current kindergarten demands, may benefit from the “gift” of an extra year.

Special Needs
Some kids are held back from starting kindergarten due to what are perceived as “developmental delays,” even if their age falls into the appropriate cut off date. Yet some of these kids may in fact have real special needs, rather than generic delays, and, moving into kindergarten could open up a plethora of special education services that could truly help them. Holding these children back actually creates a disservice to them. Instead of being evaluated and subsequently receiving appropriate services, they are instead held back, losing a year of valuable instruction and services.

What to do?
The decision of whether or not to hold your child back can be a stressful one. A 2006 University of California study indicated that elementary school students who are amongst the oldest in their classes scored 4 to 12 percent higher on standardized math and science tests over the youngest kids in their grades. Yet other studies show that the benefits of holding kids back are significantly reduced after the beginning of elementary school and that by the time kids reach third grade, skills usually even out. ‎Ultimately, there is no clear cut answer. Only you truly know your child. Observe your child interacting with other kids. Talk to her preschool teacher about how she socializes with per peers, follows directions, and pays attention. If you feel she is mature enough and ready for the demands of kindergarden, then go for it. But if you feel she is not quite there – socially, emotionally, or academically – then give her that extra year.

Ultimately, you will make the right decision for your child.

The post Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten or Should You Wait? appeared first on EBL Coaching.