Summertime is officially here! Which means its time for summer reading.
The carefree days of fun in the sun and hours by the pool are officially upon us, and so is the abundance of free time for the kids! Summertime is exciting for children, with family vacations venturing to museums, walking endlessly on the beach looking for seashells or the weeklong summer camps where they can learn anything from how to shoot a bow and arrow to horseback riding.
However, when the school door finally closes and the last bell rings, sometimes summer isn’t as idyllic as you had dreamed during those long winter days. Maybe you are like me, and by July, your children are staring at you with a look of confusion. Maybe you hear the same words I hear — “Mommy, I’m bored!” While teachers also look forward to those few short months to reenergize and redo lesson plans, they hope children will continue to be provided with enriching experiences so that they won’t fall victim to the “summer slump,” aka the “summer setback.” These terms refer to the common decline of academic achievement, which increases throughout the school year, during the summer months.
When children are away from academic experiences, they tend to lose some skills to a degree. According to the National Summer Learning Association, “A conservative estimate of lost instructional time is approximately two months or roughly 22 percent of the school year.” This loss then leads to classroom teachers having to reteach all lost material during the first several weeks of the school year. However, while the “summer slump” affects millions of children every year in this country, it doesn’t have to affect your kids! You can do some things at home to combat this epidemic.
Enhance your summer experience
Start by taking a trip to the library. Summer is a great time for your child to get his or her own library card and take ownership over reading! Take advantage of your local library’s summer programs; oftentimes, they have reading clubs, Lego clubs, baby story time, toddler story time, preschool story time, drum classes, battle of the books and baby sign classes, just to name a few!
Pair books. Pair books with experiences. Are you going to the beach for a week? Encourage your child to check out a book on seashells or surfing. Match your vacation with a book and your experience will go much farther! Ask your child to keep a vacation journal and take pictures to caption in the journal.
Be a good example. If your child doesn’t see you reading, chances are he or she will think you don’t value it. So, pick up that magazine you’ve been meaning to read or dust off that book you meant to read last summer, and show your child how valuable and fun you think reading can be!
Make time. Make time to read every day. Just as reading for 30 minutes was important during the school year, it is equally as important during the summer months. Relax the rules a little, and let children choose what they want to read. Try picking up some fun nonfiction books to captivate the child in your life who is less interested in the fairytale side of castles and more interested in how castles were built.
Be Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye or Ms. Frizzle for a day. Go ahead, make a mess and teach your child about gravity or the atmosphere, or make “Gak” because sometimes it’s just plain fun to be messy. Your child will love the opportunity to complete a science experiment in the kitchen, and they probably won’t realize you are actually teaching the scientific process or the laws of thermodynamics. Right now, our favorite science curriculum to do at home is R.E.A.L. (Read, Explore, Absorb and Learn science) Science Odyssey — it’s local, right out of Tavares, Fla. Or, if you just don’t see yourself in a white lab coat, let the Cade Museum of Creativity and Invention (www.cademuseum.org) captivate your child through a wide selection of classes to turn him or her into the next great inventor or engineer!
Triangles, Squares and Rectangles, Oh My!
Math is also just as important during the summer months.
Cooking. Allow your child the opportunity to make that recipe with you. Teach him or her about gallons, quarts, pints and cups by measuring it out with you. Pour that cup into that pint, and see how many cups you will need. This will also support counting and multiplying skills. We enjoy reading the book “The Life of Fred” aloud — it tells the story of a young child who is a professor at a university. Each chapter provides new math skills for the child to discover — without them realizing that they are actually doing math!
- Have your child calculate that score from last night’s baseball game to find out how many points the Gators won by. Have your child dribble a basketball or bounce a tennis ball with a racket, and ask him or her to count by twos, fives and 10s.
- Keep a fluency graph. Every day, give your child a list of 50 math problems and allow him or her to see how many problems he or she can get right in three minutes; then help graph that number on graph paper. This way, you are working on math facts and graphing.
There are many creative ways to keep your child’s brain activated this summer to prepare them for the beginning of school in the fall. Summertime is finally here, so make the most of it with your kids!