This is something that I really worry about — the Summer Slide A.K.A. Summer Learning Loss. I worry that my three kids will lose some of the academic skills and the knowledge that they've worked so hard for. It is estimated that children lose approximately two months of learning during this time.
First Lady Michelle Obama impresses upon young people to not waste their summer. “If you’ve got big dreams and I know you all do,” Obama told students, “if you want to go to college, want to get a good job, want to make the most of your potential—then summer can’t just be a vacation. This is really a time to try and get ahead.”
Summer learning loss is real, but preventable. To support parents’ and educators’ quest to eliminate the summer slide, Carson-Dellosa Publishing—the leading provider of supplemental educational products including the award-winning, teacher-recommended Summer Bridge Activities® and Summer Bridge™ Explorations—has 10 fun ways to easily and effectively bridge the summer learning gap and help parents prepare their kids for the school year ahead.
Check out this video:
10 Ways to Keep Kids Learning This Summer
1. Take advantage of the free resources available at your local public library. Encourage a love for reading and learning by allowing kids to browse for titles that interest them. If you don't have a library you can get to, a local bookstore can be a place to chose and browse books. You can always trade those books with another family to get new titles on the cheap. We also pick up books at garage sales and thrift shops.
2. Creatively introduce education into your daily errands by making tasks such as going to the bank and the grocery store simple math lessons. This can also help teach your kids about responsibility, obligation, and commitment. I will often give my kids money to buy a healthy treat and have them figure out how much change they should get back from the supermarket checker.
3. Turn summer learning into a fun-filled outdoor experience! Carson-Dellosa’s Summer Bridge Explorations series builds essential cross-curricular skills with project-based outdoor learning. Each title is divided into three specific themes, and each theme provides engaging projects that connect real-world learning to summer fun.
4. Visit local museums. You won’t have to travel far to learn about science, art, music, and more. Many towns also have free summer programs through their community centers. We have been members at our local science museum. We always find things we haven't seen before and keep on learning.
5. Reinforce communication and math skills by simply preparing family meals together. In addition to learning how to cook, kids will also learn how to measure ingredients and convert weights, volumes, and numbers for recipes. It's also a great method for teaching how to follow directions. Plus, if you make a dessert (even if it's healthy), kids will be super interested.
6. Travel the world from the comfort of your living room (using the internet or an atlas). It’s a great way to learn about geography, as well as develop a natural curiosity about different destinations to visit, cultures to experience, and foods to eat.
7. Let your child’s imagination run wild with a trip to the zoo! Kids of all ages love learning about animals—use this opportunity to incorporate fun lessons about habitats and geography. We are proud to be members of the Bronx Zoo and love to visit all the zoos that are under the Bronx Zoo umbrella. Remember to visit early in the morning and spend time inside zoo buildings for the hotter parts of the summer days.
8. Utilize Carson-Dellosa’s Summer Learning Activities online resource, which provides fun and free educational games, sample books, printable worksheets, and activities to use all summer long.
9. Promote family fitness by exercising together and connecting with your child. This is also a great opportunity to discuss nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices.
10. Make summer learning fun and fast with the best-selling Summer Bridge Activities workbook. Each grade-specific book is designed to help kids review the essential skills of their current grade level and prepare them for the next grade level, in just 15 minutes a day.
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Each grade-specific book is designed to help students review the essential skills of their current grade level and to prepare them for the next grade level. Each 160-page book includes:
- 12 weeks worth of activities based on current state standards
- Essential skill review and next-grade preparation
- Outdoor and fitness activities
- Science experiments (excellent indoor activities for those rainy days)
- Social studies exercises
- Flash cards
- Reward stickers
- Summer reading lists
- Completion certificate
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In addition, activities such as goal setting, character development exercises, and fitness challenges help get kids moving and thinking so that they can stay active and healthy.
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Related Titles from Carson-Dellosa
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SUMMER BRIDGE™ EXPLORATIONS
This grade 1 to grade 4 series turns summer learning into a fun-filled outdoor experience! Each book prepares students for the grade ahead by helping to build essential cross-curricular skills with project-based outdoor learning.
Each title is divided into three specific themes or sections, and each theme provides engaging projects that connect real-world learning to summer fun!
SUMMER LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Summer Learning Activities is an online resource that provides parents with free and fun educational games, sample books, printable worksheets, and activities to use all summer long. These activities are perfect for supplementing the Summer Bridge Activities and Summer Bridge Exploration workbooks.
Exclusive Discount: Use promo code is SBA25 – expires 6/10/2016 at 11:59PM Ways to Keep Kids Learning This Summer
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As a homeschooler we just continue to have school at least some all year.
We like going on hikes, walks in the park and doing crafts to keep our minds going.
We keep active by visiting many area parks and museums, have daily reading time, write a journal about our summer activities, and do science experiments outside.
We make a daily calendar and rotate what and who gets to choose what we are going to do that week. Write it down it becomes what we are going to do. If we get rained in there is a jar of fun indoor things that they can choose to do too!
Terrific ideas, Jennifer!
We really enjoy going on nature walks and to activities at the library over the summer.
We visit the library often and check out a wide range of different book genres.
we take lots of trips to different museums
We do crafts, flash cards, learning games, worksheets sometimes, but over all, we unschool. No reason to keep teaching them when summer is about chilling and refreshing and just being a kid.
We love the local library and our library has so many group events, etc. to keep kids learning and entertained. Most is free as well.
We go to zoos & museums.
We love playing educational board games!
A simple, summer home business, like a lemonade or baked-goods stand, can cover a lot of academic areas for kids. They can use math to calculate expenses, predict profits, and track revenue. Making ad flyers can exercise their art and writing muscles. Parents can model positive social media use by working with their children to advertise to the parent's social network.
Also, if parents can afford it, summer camps (art, engineering, coding) run by local schools, museums, or city recreation departments can be a great source of structured, but fun activities, for a week or two.
We go to our children’s museum a lot!