In this issue: activities to help your family keep minds sharp and prevent the “summer slide” for students.
We at Front Range Christian School are so very proud of the way our students, families and teachers stepped up to the challenges of educating with excellence during the final quarter of our school year. Now that June has arrived, let’s make plans to keep our learners’ brains engaged and active over these less-structured weeks of summer break.
In this week’s issue of the Family Guide, Kevin Taylor and Lia Wiersma team up to provide some suggestions for preventing the “summer slide” by keeping academic skills sharp. We asked our teachers and some community friends for ideas, and we would love to hear your ideas as well! If your family has a fun summer learning tradition, email it to one of us and we may feature it in a coming issue of the Family Guide.
This issue brought to you by Lia Wiersma and Kevin Taylor, with a contribution from Leah Pirozzi
Family Activities
Assume that learning will be part of the summer plan for everyone in the family
Experts estimate that a student who does nothing academic over the summer will lose 2.5 months of progress in language arts and up to 3 months of progress in math. Yes, kids need a break from school — but they really cannot afford to take three months completely off from learning!
Try to hit the “Big 3” skill areas in some fashion each week: read something, write something, practice some math (we’ve provided some ideas, below). Then follow your curiosity to learn something about the world that you might not get to study in school. Plant a garden, gaze at the stars, plan a hike, build a backyard fort!
Start with a family brainstorming session
What does each person in your family want their summer to look like? Ann Dolin of Educational Connections, Inc., recommends holding a family meeting to discuss this. Give everyone a set of sticky notes and a pen; set a timer for 4 minutes and have everyone write, as quickly as possible, their answers to these two questions:
- What do you want to DO this summer? and
- What do you want to LEARN this summer?
(All topics are fair game, but agree up front that the activities can’t be screen-based.)
Give each person a chance to add their stickies to a poster-board, white board, or even the front of the refrigerator. Prioritize together: What are your top 3 goals? Discuss what steps are needed to help each person pursue their personal goals over the summer. Use these ideas to guide your summer activities and investigations.
ACTIVITIES TO SUPPORT READING SKILLS
- Make sure everyone has access to good books. With libraries still closed in many areas, can you get creative and swap books with a neighbor or relative?
- And don’t stop with books! Magazines, recipes, and graphic novels all count as reading.
- Let your children see you reading often. Talk about books you have loved and books that have changed your thinking.
- Listening to an audio book is a great way to grow comprehension and fluency skills, especially if you are also following along with the text in print.
- Institute family D.E.A.R. time — a ten-minute session where you Drop Everything And Read — Mom and Dad included! Take a few minutes afterwards to share what you read about; this consolidates comprehension and makes reading a shared experience.
Robert Windle, Director of Colorado Reading Center in Denver, says:
“There are several ways families can practice reading skills over the summer that can be varied and fun. Daily practice is essential for developing the necessary skills for reading success. Because reading is a learned skill, the more you work at it, the easier it becomes.”
- We suggest starting a family book club, in which everyone enjoys the same book together. Many books become movies. Watching the movie based on the book could be a fun culmination to the book club. Switching off reading is a fun way to keep everyone engaged.
- We recommend 30 or more minutes of reading every day. This can be broken up into shorter sessions so it doesn’t seem like such a marathon.
- Keep a “sight word box” with index cards of unknown words to practice. Ten to fifteen minutes of flashcard word practice a few days a week can really add up. Look online for a “high frequency word list” (such as the Fry Word List), or just try adding missed words from your daily reading.
- Finally, research has shown that you can improve visual processing speed, a skill necessary to quick fluent reading, by playing off-the-shelf board games and card games. Some examples of these games are: Blink, SET, Perfection, and Qwirkle.
GET YOUR SUMMER MATH ON
Practice — or the lack of it — has a huge impact on skills in mathematics. Even practicing just 15 minutes a day can prepare your student to enter next school year more confident and ready to learn. This is especially true if that practice is fun, intense, and targeted at your student’s current level (not too hard, and not too easy).
What to work on? Students of all ages who have not fully mastered their basic math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division “fact families”) should keep practicing these. Older elementary and junior high school students should prioritize work on fractions, decimals, and percents, as these form the foundation for algebra. And algebra skills are the door-keeper to all higher math.
As a parent, you can structure this time yourself, utilize online resources, or hire a tutor to help your child, depending on your time and their needs. When Lia’s kids were younger, they all had “MomSchool” assignments to complete before they could go to the park or play with friends. You can also divide up your practice time into short bursts throughout the week — 4 sessions of 10 minutes each is possibly even better for building memory than 40 minutes all at once.
Above all, make this learning time fun by offering your child choices as to how they would like to work on math. Some kids love flash-cards and worksheets, while others would rather learn fractions while cooking or practice percentages in a pretend store or restaurant.
Elementary Learning Specialist Cathy Van Donselaar says family game times can reinforce math skills. She recommends:
Playing games with your children is a great way to spend time with your kids and strengthen the family. But games also strengthen math skills, problem solving, and working memory. You do not need to head out to an educational store to find games that work on these skills, because you probably have some of these games already.
- Games that require rolling dice are especially helpful in developing automatic recognition of quantities, addition, and subtraction. Yahtzee, Farkle, and Tenzi are good choices, but really any game that requires the rolling of a dice and the moving of a piece reinforces quantities and one-to-one correspondence. Dominoes is an excellent game for practicing and developing quantity recognition and comparison. For younger children, Hi Ho Cherry-O and Chutes and Ladders are excellent.
- Games that require the use of money are excellent for math skills. Life and Monopoly are classics, but also Machi Koro is great for practicing business strategy.
- Active games such as Ping Pong, Cornhole, and Spikeball are great for practicing working memory. Play these games, but have your child be in charge of keeping the score in his or her head.
- Any game that requires strategy to play helps develop problem solving skills. Chess, checkers, Othello, Connect Four, Ticket To Ride, Munchkin, Clue, Settlers of Catan, Sequence, Rumikub, and many card games are all excellent strategy games. Have your child be the score keeper for additional math practice.
Games also teach cooperation, dealing with disappointment, and good sportsmanship, which are all necessary life skills. Have fun with your family, and play some games!
DON’T BE A RUSTY WRITER!
Writing skills are easy to neglect over the summer, but there are easy and painless ways to keep writers active.
Youngest children should keep practicing handwriting, just a bit each day — on paper, but also in multiple media. Chalk on a sidewalk, frosting on a cake, and puff paint on a t-shirt all count as fine-motor practice. Entice your older child to participate in creating a COVID-season journal or a scrapbook of a favorite vacation; keep a diary; assemble a cookbook of family favorites; or write thank-you notes to first responders or health-care workers.
Need some fun ideas for creative writing? Check out John Spencer’s Writing Prompts for Students on YouTube:
LEARN WHAT YOU LOVE
Any topic that interests your child is fair game for further investigation over the summer. Choose a goal of any kind, figure out the steps to achieve it, and celebrate all progress. Summer learning might sound like drudgery, but the promise of an ice cream outing or other reward can make it memorable and fun.
