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.

Summer is a time for playing outside, splashing in the pool, and ‎making sand castles at the beach. Yet during this fun-filled season, many students lose one to three months’ worth of learning without continued academic instruction. Help your child prevent summer brain drain while still having fun with the ideas detailed below.

Read Daily!

Encourage your child to spend some time each day reading; a book, newspaper, comic, magazine, or internet article will all do the trick. You might try taking him to a book store or library at the start of summer and encourage him to find a book series or set of topics he’s interested in reading. Perhaps have him select a summer theme, like animals, presidents, or natural disasters, and choose books that follow that theme. For instance, your 6-9 year old who loves animals might select titles including My Father’s Dragon, Frog and Toad are Friends, or Diary of a Fly – all of which should capture his interest with engaging prose relating to animals.

You might also try creating a “book-a-thon” within your family where you chart how many books each family member reads (yes, including you!). The winner can earn a pre-determined prize, like a toy, movie, or special meal. The idea is to keep your child reading all summer, while making it as fun and engaging as possible.

Keep Up the Writing

In addition to reading, writing regularly throughout the summer can help prevent summer skills loss. Your child can write letters or emails to her friends, jot down summaries of her daily activities, or even write grocery lists or ideas for summer activities. If she needs more guided support, try giving her a daily or weekly writing prompt, and have ‎ her keep a summer journal. For instance, you might give her prompts like “Describe your favorite outdoor game,” “If you could be any animal, which would it be and why?” or ” Describe your dream dessert.” Additionally, ‎as she reads and complete books over the summer, have her write a summary in her own words describing each book (model one first so she knows what to do), and remind her to always self-check her writing for capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure. Perhaps add in an incentive once she completes a certain number of books and writes a summary for each one. The more writing, the better!

Highlights Magazine

For young kids, Highlights magazine is an engaging and fun tool that helps continue building skills over the summer. This magazine, designed for kids ages 6-12, covers many important skills, including finding hidden pictures (great for developing visual spatial skills), riddles, jokes, What’s Wrong with this picture? activities, puzzles, short stories, poems, and so much more! It’s also a great way to help your child practice independent work – encourage him to only ask you questions when he is stuck. Your preschooler or Kindergartener might like the “younger” version of Highlights called High Five‎, which contains stories, puzzles, and engaging activities that are great for summer skills building.

Apps

Most kids love swiping and playing on a tablet, so why make “tech” time “learning” time? ‎ There are many great apps your child can use to keep her learning flowing throughout the summer and prevent academic skills loss. Some great ones are as follows:

Sentence Builder – Ages 6+

With this app, players have fun developing their grammar and sentence-writing abilities, a key skill for academic success. To play, they create sentences describing various pictures using slot machine-style wheels for choosing words. The game format is simple, beginning with basic sentences and later moving into more complex ones. The images and animations are colorful, and students build key written expression and sentence-structure skills.

Starfall Learn to Read – Ages 4+

This multi-sensory app helps students develop their reading and spelling skills as they listen, read, and touch letters and words, while having fun with the songs and colorful animations. The app includes 15 short books for kids to read, each covering a different sound pattern, along with animated videos, tunes, and funny characters. At the end of each book, students can complete activities related to the reading, including interactive matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises.

Hungry Fish – Ages 4-8
‎
This app is a great one for developing math skills over the summer. Its focus is reinforcing basic addition and subtraction as well as mental math in a fun and engaging manner. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles and then feed them to a floating fish. The fish expands when it is given “food” (otherwise known as correct answer combinations) and shrinks down when it does not receive food. As players complete and “win” each level, they move on to more advanced levels, while receiving immediate feedback along the way. It’s a useful and learning tool that can easily be disguised as simply a fun video game.

Summer is a time when many students regress academically. Prevent the infamous summer slide with these learning-focused activities, and your child will be well on his way to jump-starting the new school year on a positive note.

The post Help Prevent the Summer Brain Drain appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Integrating technology can help your child master these basic math facts

You’ve tried flash cards, lists, and straight-up memorization, but your child still can’t seem to remember the addition and subtraction facts. Integrating technology, particularly with addition and subtraction specific apps, can help her finally learn and retain these facts, while enjoying the process. Try the math apps below:

Hungry Fish
Ages 4 and up
Hungry Fish helps children develop basic addition and subtraction skills while boosting their mental ‎math abilities. In one of the games, a fish swims into the “ocean” with a number displayed on its belly. Bubbles pop up, each containing a different number. Players must combine the numbers to meet the sum displayed on the fish, thereby practicing basic addition. The same type of game is played with subtraction and negative numbers, and the difficulty level of each game can be adjusted.

Addition & Subtraction for Kids
Ages 4 and up
Kids age 4 and up love this animated app that integrates pictures to help them master their math facts. ‎At the most basic level, students are presented with simple math fact problems, such as 3+2, and are simultaneously presented with underwater objects to represent the numbers (i.e., three fish plus two starfish). They must choose the correct answer from one of three bubbles presented at the bottom of the screen. Practicing facts using this app helps children fundamentally understand addition and subtraction concepts while becoming more automatic with their facts.

Squeebles Maths Race
Ages 5-11
In this colorful app, players choose a fish type and race in a blue body of water either against the “computer” or another player. ‎Players select an operation–addition, subtraction, addition/subtraction combo, multiplication, or division–and must correctly answer various problems in order to move forward in the race. Winning players earn squabbles and flipfish thay help them with future races.

Math Doodles
Ages 4 and up
This app integrates beautiful illustrations ‎and engages students in activities that make math fun. Games such as Sums Stacker, Connect Sums, Unknown Square, and SplatGoRound teach students basic addition and subtraction concepts, such as merging objects to form sums and identifying missing values. The options for choosing numeric values are unique and interesting, including choices such as fingers, coins, Roman numerals, and even Hebrew and Chinese letters! The whimsical artwork is stellar.‎ This app is a great one for building fluency with math facts and for giving students repetition with basic math concepts.

Let’s Do Mental Maths
Ages 5-11
These apps, which are grouped by age (5-6, 6-7, 7-8, 9-10, and 10-11), help students practice simple math skills and improve their mental math abilities. Basic math concepts are covered in the form of quizzes, including addition and subtraction, but also addressing multiplication, division, fractions, time, and measurement at higher levels.  Students can select quizzes to take on a given topic and can take progress tests along the way. For students who need repetition and extra reinforcement of their math facts, this app is a great one!

Learning math facts doesn’t need to feel like a chore. With these colorful and engaging math apps, students will learn their math facts in no time!

The post The 5 Best Apps For Learning Addition & Subtraction Facts appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Kids will love these fun educational apps that will keep them learning even during the summer months. Dr. Levy’s 5 picks include apps for kids ages 4-16 that help build reading and math skills.

During the sunny months away from school, reading, writing, and math frequently take a back seat to summer fun. Students can lose important skills they gained during the school year without continuous instruction over the summer. In fact, research tells us that students score lower on standardized tests at the end of the summer than at the start of the season.

Help your child avoid losing critical academic skills over the summer with these five apps:

Starfall Learn to Read
Ages 4+
$2.99
Download for Apple or Android

With this multi-sensory app, students can listen, read, and touch letters and words to practice basic reading and spelling skills. The app includes 15 short books for kids to read, each emphasizing a different sound pattern, along with animated videos, songs, and funny characters. At the end of each book, students can play reading-related activities, including matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises. The app is fun, engaging, and interactive.

Sentence Builder
Ages 6+
$5.99
Download for iPad

Students have fun developing their grammar and sentence-writing abilities with this app. To play, they create sentences describing various pictures using slot machine-style wheels for selecting words. The game format is simple, starting with basic sentences and moving into more complex ones. The images and animations are colorful, and students build critical written expression and sentence-structure skills.

Hungry Fish
Ages 4-8
$1.99-$3.99
Download for Apple or Android

This app is an engaging tool for reinforcing basic addition and subtraction as well as mental math. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles and feed them to a floating fish. The fish expands when it receives “food” (correct answer combinations) and shrinks when it does not receive food. As players complete and “win” each level they move on to more advanced ones, while receiving immediate feedback along the way. It’s a valuable learning tool disguised as an arcade game!

Montessori Crosswords
Ages 3-10
$2.99
Download for Apple or Android

This app is a great one for helping students develop basic phonics skills. For each exercise, the player is given a picture and is asked to drag letters from the bottom of the screen to spell the item depicted. The app starts with basic three-letter (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and moves into more complex words with blends, digraphs, and multi-syllabic words. Children can create single words and, later, multiple words using a crossword-style format. The exercises are helpful for both reading and spelling.

Learning Fundamentals: Reading Comprehension at the Paragraph Level
Ages 9-16
$3.99
Download for Apple

This app builds a myriad of skills, including attention, memory, and reading comprehension. It’s also useful for developing processing and higher-order thinking skills. Students can choose from 37 stories about various topics, including adventures, nature, and history, among others. After reading each passage, they answer main idea, important details, and inference questions in multiple-choice format, along with an opened-ended question that can be used for discussion.

The post 5 Apps to Keep Kids Learning in Summer appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Math Doodles

This app integrates beautiful illustrations ‎and engages students in activities that make math fun. Games such as Sums Stacker, Connect Sums, Unknown Square, and SplatGoRound teach students basic math concepts such as merging objects to form sums, identifying missing values, and choosing the correct time. The options for choosing numeric values are unique and interesting, including choices such as fingers, coins, Roman numerals, and even Hebrew and Chinese letters! The whimsical artwork is stellar.‎ This app is a great one for building fluency with math facts and for giving students repetition with basic math concepts.

*designed for ages 7 and up

This app is $2.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Let’s Do Mental Maths

These apps, which are grouped by age (5-6, 6-7, 7-8, 9-10, and 10-11), help students practice basic math skills and improve their mental math abilities. Basic math concepts are covered in the form of quizzes, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, time, measurement, and shapes. Students can select quizzes to take on a given topic and can take progress tests along the way. For students who need repetition and extra reinforcement of their math facts, this app is a great one!

*designed for ages 5-11, depending on the level

This app is $2.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Hungry Fish

This is a useful app for helping children develop basic addition and subtraction skills and boost their mental ‎math abilities. In one of the games, a fish swims into the “ocean” with a number displayed on its belly. Bubbles pop out, each containing different numbers. Players must combine the numbers to meet the sum on the fish. The same type of game is played with subtraction and negative numbers, and the difficulty level of each game can be adjusted.

*designed for ages 4-8, depending on the level

This app is $1.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Keep the Change Kids

This is a great app for teaching students how to identify and count coins. Lessons on individual coin names and values are included, followed by games where students learn to count change to add up to a given value. It helps students develop fluency with money and a fundamental understanding of how coins work.  It’s simple but effective!

*‎great for students ages 5-10

This app is $1.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

Tick Tock

Learning to tell time is much more fun with a colorful app than with old fashion plastic yellow clocks. ‎This app contains four components: Learn, Explore, Practice, and Take a Test. In the “Learn” segment, students learn about the different hands on a clock and how they each function. In the “Explore” section, students practice moving the hour and minute hands to learn how the hands of a clock function. In the “Practice” section students can convert digital time to analog or words, or vice versa. Finally, students can “Take a Test” to practice their skills.

*great for students ages 6-10

This app is $0.99 and available on iTunes –> Click Here

The post The 5 Best Math Apps appeared first on EBL Coaching.