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
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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.

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Don’t let your child’s academic skills fall to the wayside this summer

Summer is a time for outdoor games, splashing in the pool, and spending long days in the sun. Yet‎ summer is also a long stretch of time without consistent academic instruction. During this time, many students lose up to several months’ worth of reading, writing, and math skills. Help your child prevent summer “brain drain” while still enjoying the summer with the ideas detailed below.

Plan an activity day

There are so many fun “excursions” to take over the summer–trips to amusement parks, zoos, museums, boardwalks, and the like. Have your child research and plan each activity, while developing important academic skills. She can start by searching the web for nearby options. She might decide on a local history museum, for instance, with interesting exhibits and shows. Before starting your adventure, have her plan a budget, including admission fees, costs for snacks and lunch, fees for any additional shows, and perhaps even the cost of the gas required to get there. To build time management skills, have her map out a time schedule, including the time you should leave as well as pre-determined times for shows, exhibits, and lunch. When you get home, you may even have her write a summary of her favorite parts of the museum and whether or not she would recommend it to a friend.

Write daily

During the summer, to prevent regression in writing skills, students should write every day. This writing can come in various forms. You may give your child a daily writing prompt, for instance, and have him keep a summer journal. Such prompts may include: “Describe your favorite vacation,” “If you could be a land animal, which one would you be and why?” ‎or “Would you ever want to travel to outer space? If so, why?” You can also try matching your child with a pen pal–a friend, family member, or someone with a shared interest, and have him write weekly letters to his pen pal sharing his summer adventures. The key is to write regularly and consistently.

Create your own science project

You can bring science to life over the summer with engaging and stimulating science projects. Try planting a garden with your child, for example, to teach many valuable skills. Start by having her decide which plants or flowers will be in the garden. Once she plants the seeds, have her predict (and write down) what she thinks will happen next and what she needs to do to ensure that the plants will grow. As the plants grow, have her track their growth and later create a visual chart, including dates and specific changes. She can even create a write-up detailing her observations and whether or not her predictions came true.

Take your child grocery shopping

Combine the fun of shopping with the excitement of learning by taking your child to the supermarket. Based on your family size, ‎have him predict how many items you will need for a given week. For instance, you may need two boxes of pasta, one pound of salmon, one box of cereal, and so on. Based on these amounts and the cost per item, have him try to figure out how much the grocery bill will come to (without any last-minute add-ons), then compare it to the actual cost to see if his prediction was correct. For younger kids, have them find certain quantities (4 apples or 6 oranges), or items of a certain shape (round fruits) or color (red vegetables).

Help your child strengthen her critical thinking and fine motor skills (amongst other key skills) by building a bird feeder. To build a basic one, you’ll need just three items: a cardboard toilet paper roll, peanut butter, and bird seed. Have your child predict what she thinks she may need to do with these items to make the bird feeder. Discuss her predictions, then get started. Using a spoon, have her spread a generous layer of peanut butter all around the cardboard roll. The more peanut butter you use, the more the seeds will stick. Then roll it around in the seeds and slide the roll onto a branch‎. Watch the birds flock to your feeder!

Summer is certainly a time for relaxation and fun. However, it is also a time when key academic skills can fall to the wayside. Try these activities to engage your child and prevent the all-too-common summer brain drain.

The post 5 Activities To Prevent Summer Brain Drain appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Summer is a time for relaxing in the pool, playing at the beach, and catching up on rest. Yet summer is also a large stretch of time without continuous academic instruction. While some children are able to maintain their end-of-school-year academic levels, many lose valuable skills over the summer. Help your child prevent summer brain drain with the ideas detailed below:

1. Reading. One of the most important ways to prevent academic regression is to make sure your child continues reading. At the start of the summer, take a trip to your local library or book store and have your child choose a set of books to read. Try coming up with a theme, like animals, insects, summertime, etc., and have him select books on that theme. For a summertime theme, for instance, he can select a series of books at his level (along with some more complex ones that you can read to him) on fishing, sea shells, camp, vacations, etc.

2. Educational trips. While beaches and amusement parks offer well-earned play time and relaxation, build in some educational trips to stimulate your child academically. Plan day trips to science museums, childrens’ museums, historical sites, and the like. Before you embark on your adventure, have your child perform a mini research project. Explore the website with her to see which exhibits will be showing the day you attend and study topics you might see (birds and reptiles, for instance, at a history museum). You can even take a virtual tour online to build up excitement. Have your child write down a list of items she may see and create a “treasure hunt.” If she finds all of the items while exploring the museum, perhaps she can pick out a memorable item at the gift shop at the end of the visit.

3. Technology. Kids often use iPads and computers for mindless gaming and relaxation. Yet there are many apps and websites that are great for reinforcing learning over the summer. iWrite Words is a useful early childhood app for developing handwriting and fine motor skills. With the Book Creator app, elementary and middle school students can create shareable e-books with words and images. Learn Your Table is a great website for practicing multiplication facts. Short Vowel Word study is also a useful app for reinforcing basic word decoding, and Grammaropolis is an interactive website for practicing grammar.

4. Outdoor learning. Turn outdoor time into learning time! To reinforce math, writing, and critical thinking skills, try growing a vegetable garden with your child. Choose the vegetables you plan to grow, then have your child draw a diagram of the garden layout and make a list of the seeds you need to purchase. Once the vegetables are planted, have her monitor and chart heir growth. She can count  the number of ‎veggies produced and predict which ones might produce the greatest outcome. You can even have her write a report detailing the process and results.

5. Journaling. Journaling is a great way to reinforce writing skills over the summer. Have your child keep a daily journal during the summer months, detailing any trips, events, or activities that took place – or even just thoughts or feelings from that day. You can even give him some writing prompts to help him get started, such as “Summer is my favorite time of year because…,” “My favorite summer sport is…,” or “This summer I am most excited about…” Let the ideas flow!

Your child certainly deserves some rest and mindless play over the summer. Yet several months without academic work can lead to academic regression and a real case of brain drain. Try these activities with your child to keep up learning and take advantage of summer in a fun, productive way.

The post 5 Ways to Prevent Summer Brain Drain appeared first on EBL Coaching.