School may stop for the summer, but learning never should! Research shows that many students forget important school skills over the long summer vacation. Parents should strive to engage kids’ creativity and learning potential, and keep them mentally and physically active, to prevent summer learning loss and pave the way for a successful new school year ahead.
7 Simple Tips to Encourage Summer Learning
- Use local resources!
Contact your local library or museum to see what summer programs or events they have scheduled. - Read!
There are tons of reading lists available online. Create your own incentive program at home and work through the list with your students, rewarding them for milestones along the way! - Employ “stealth learning”!
Find learning opportunities in everyday activities, from cooking together in the kitchen to car restoration in the garage to furniture repair in the workshop. - Going on a vacation?
Have your students help with online research, calculating driving time and gas mileage, or creating a vacation budget. This way math and critical thinking are applied to fun! - Summer savings are cool!
For students with a summer job or allowance, help them create a budget to save up for something they want. They’ll love to watch their savings grow and get math reinforcement all summer long. - Reinvent writing!
Make writing practice fun with a pen pal, writing movie or book reviews, creating comic books, letters to soldiers, a play, documenting a family story, photo captions, etc. - Graph everything!
Charts and graphs can be applied to all kinds of simple tasks. Have students practice math skills by taking surveys and charting their results or finding one thing to graph every day.
The infographic below presents findings from a study of over 900 teachers and parents, which concluded that learning needs to be done continuously throughout the year. In fact, 90% of teachers included in the survey expressed concern over summer learning loss, while in contrast 70% of the parents surveyed were not aware of the problem. Carson-Dellosa created this infographic to create awareness about summer learning.
Via: Carson-Dellosa
Summer Bridge Activities from Carson Dellosa is the #1 summer workbook series trusted by parents and teachers for over 25 years, designed to prevent summer learning loss with hands-on exercises that can be done anywhere, at home or on the go. This activity book is designed to prevent summer brain drain in just 15 minutes per day through engaging activities, exercises, fun games, and more—all in one workbook! The book includes versatile subjects covering grammar, reading passages, graphing, dictionary skills, geometry, social studies, science experiments, fitness activities, and more. Includes flash cards and a completion certificate. Available for grades PreK-9.
Here is the Summer Activity Workbook bridging Grade 8 & 9 for ages 13-14:
Here is the Summer Activity Workbook bridging Grade 7 & 8 for ages 12-13:
If you decide to buy any of these workbooks, clicking through the book images/links on this page will give us a small commission at no extra cost to you. 