“The Summer Slide” is the term used to describe the learning loss children face each summer when they’re out of the classroom. Over the course of the summer, children can lose 25% of what they learned during the school year. During the school year children are constantly challenged with new topics so any child who goes an entire summer without exposure to educational activities will feel the effects of summer learning loss. This stalls children’s education when school starts again in the fall. It takes teachers between 4 and 6 weeks to re-teach forgotten material at the start of each school year, this wastes time that kids could spend advancing to new topics. The loss adds up over the years, learning loss in elementary school accounts for 2/3 of the achievement gap between 9th graders.
- Find out if your school has a book list for summer reading and if they do make sure you get it! Make sure to get in at least 15 minutes of out-loud reading each day. Check out our article “Top Ten Ways to Get Your Family Reading This Summer” for some great tips to encourage your kids to read and explore new books.
- Incorporate educational games into summer plans. Remember science experiments are a lot more fun for kids when they aren’t required to give a report! You might find that your child loves Math or English when they get to learn away from the pressures of school.
- Keep kids on a schedule. They are used to getting up early and learning. Keep it up! Structure your kids day and let them know what to expect.
- Reinforce what they have learned by letting them teach you. Ask your kids to teach you something they learned at school. Let them have the freedom to decide to pick a scientific concept, poem, game, or math problem that they loved learning in class and have them teach it to you
- Teachers can’t cover everything so offer your kids the opportunity to explore new topics. Let your kid know that they can ask you questions about anything from dinosaurs to politics. Kids soak in everything you expose them to so they might surprise you!
- Take them on educational trips to museums, observatories, zoos, or aquariums. Many of them have free admission for children or summer discounts and most have educational activities specifically for the summer months.
- Talk about your local ecosystem. Plant a garden and watch it grow, or go to a wildlife park and observe nature. Discuss how plants grow, and why animals need to eat. Talk about how their actions affect the world around them.
- Show them how math applies to your everyday life and have them help in the kitchen or while making purchases at the store.
- Sign them up for a summer camp that incorporates educational activities. A quality summer program should be as stimulating for your kids as school is while still allowing them to have fun.
- Use technology to keep educational activities fun and engaging during travel or even just on rainy days. Caribu offers the perfect solution to summer reading woes. The app is stocked with over 200 books in 6 languages for your child to explore. Combining reading with children’s love of technology and the convenience of being able to connect anywhere, anytime, is the perfect complement to summer learning and academic engagement.
Summer may be a great break from school but it is also an opportunity to learn new things and take their newly gained knowledge and apply it to real life situations. Remind your kids that school may be over for the year but learning is a lifelong activity.
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Written by Rachel Gambach Intern @Caribu, editor & contributor for Caribu’s blog and student at UCF.
