Summer Learning

Summer Learning Can Be Fun & Easy!

Did you know that on average students lose as much as 2-3 months of academic skills learned during the previous year? Experts refer to this well-documented phenomenon as the “summer slide”. And summer learning loss increases with age through elementary and middle school.

As a homeschooler, I’d like to think that summer learning loss has less impact, since learning is naturally better integrated into daily life for most homeschool families, and children don’t experience the abrupt change from classroom to home, but I couldn’t find any concrete data.

Regardless, it’s evident that steps need to be taken to prevent summer learning loss.

Here are a few incredibly easy, completely free things you can do that will make a huge difference toward continuing that summer learning!

 

10 EASY Ways to Prevent Summer Learning Loss:

1. Establish a reading culture in your home.

All eight of my children are voracious readers, and I mean that literally. They can’t get enough literature!

I think it stems, in part, from the fact that both the hubs and I love to read. But it is also the result of having established a reading culture in our home. Nearly every room has a bookshelf, we read aloud often, we give books as gifts for practically every occasion, and we all believe that reading is fun!

You can build a reading culture in your homes, so that your own kiddos will love reading as much as I do. And with a bit of strategy as you choose books, your little people will progress academically by leaps and bounds over the summer.

Reading will stimulate your child’s imagination, enrich his vocabulary, expand his interests, and challenge his brain. I can’t think of a single other activity as effective, yet as easy to implement, as daily reading.

Make visits to your local library a cherished, weekly habit. Join the library’s summer reading program to motivate your children. If you have a reluctant reader, strategically incentivize reading by following library trips with an hour at the park or an ice cream cone.

Your kiddos don’t even need to read very much in order to reap the benefits. As few as ten minutes a day of reading (and being read to counts) is enough to provide maximum benefits.

Provide your children with opportunities to read, building reading time into your daily schedules. Reading aloud to children builds listening skills, and gives little ones good, fluent skills to model. Reading is the single easiest way to prevent summer learning loss.

>>> These are our all-time, VERY most favorite read aloud books! <<<

>>> Here is How You Can Establish a Reading Culture in Your Home <<<

 

2. Get your kiddos calculating in the kitchen.

Who doesn’t love to eat dessert?

It’s the whole reason we love to bake at my house!

Let your children choose their favorite dessert, then let him read the recipe and write out the shopping list.  It’s especially helpful if you make a large batch (multiplication skills, baby!) to share with a neighbor.

While you bake together, allow your child to figure out how much to add, and measure out the ingredients. Talk about how many cups make a quart and how many quarts make a gallon while you work. Get out the measuring cups and the juice pitchers and experiment! What a fun and easy way to continue learning through the summer!

Trust me, living lessons like this are ones your child is not likely to forget. In addition to learning about measurement, your kiddos will learn to read and follow instructions, they’ll learn about the chemistry of baking, and most of all — they will feel so loved to have your undivided attention for a couple of hours.

 

3. Capitalize on your child’s interests.

Learning is never mutually exclusive. By that I mean that pretty much any learning involves multiple subjects.

For example, my daughter decided she wanted to learn music production. She learned the hardware and software of music production, but because she ultimately wanted to record herself she also had to work on music theory, composition and her guitar and voice skills.

And now, because she needs a forum for her new skills, she’s planning to build a website. Along the way, she’s learning business skills, writing, coding, videography, advertising, problem-solving and so much more.

Any new skill will require cross-curricular learning. Whatever your child’s interests, by encouraging him to pursue them and providing support, you are guaranteeing that academic growth will occur. For exponential growth, let your child find his own solutions to any difficulties he encounters.

As your child learns in this hands-on manner (as opposed to reading and memorizing from a textbook) he is building resilience and critical thinking skills (and stimulating new neural pathways) that will strengthen him academically across all subjects. Summer is the perfect time for interest-led learning!

 

4. Capitalize on YOUR interests.

Just last week my younger kiddos were helping me in my capacity as a volunteer for their orchestras. The orchestras couldn’t run without parent volunteers to scan, copy and file music, create music folders for the students and act as personnel managers, taking roll and such.

I love the incredible music education the orchestras provide my children, because we homeschool and don’t have access to a school orchestra, and because their program is far higher quality than public schools offer. So I volunteer as an orchestra librarioan every year, and I make my children help me, since they benefit from my service.

I was making copies while my kids sorted music in the adjacent room, and I overheard my 6-year-old asking my 9-year-old the names of the instruments in German. You have to know that Fagott is German for bassoon in order to be able to file the bassoon music appropriately. My 9-year-old rattled off the German names for all the instruments.

My kids paint and sew because I do. They know how to hang, mud and tape drywall. They can fix lawn mowers, service vehicles, frame and wire a house and plumb an automatic irrigation system because we do those things together as a family.

Just try and stop your kids from involving themselves in the things you do and learning along the way. It’s impossible. Never underestimate what your kiddos can do!

 

5. Use screen time to your advantage.

I worry so much about gaming addictions (my oldest son is very prone to addictions in general and gaming in particular) that I have to remind myself that screen time is not the enemy. It’s just a tool that needs to be used wisely.

The trick is to get your child thinking about other things while he’s playing. Ask him questions. How was that character designed? How does he run or jump when I push different buttons? Help your child to understand that the game he’s playing is the result of someone else’s hard work.

Press CTRL + U on your child’s favorite webpage and show him the HTML that was used to create the page. Talk about the value of creation as opposed to consumption, and how each feels.

I always point out to my kids how proud they feel after creating something tangible, while gaming all day makes them feel blah. I also constantly point out the benefits of their productive online activities, like how well they type thanks to Typing Instructor and how well they bartered in China, thanks to Duo Lingo. In 15 minutes a day of Duo Lingo, you can learn a language, while 15 minutes a day of gaming gets you nothing.

There are so many fantastic learning resources online that it would be foolish to eschew them altogether. Instead, we need to teach our children how to manage the lure of screens and how to find and use the resources that provide value. Summer is the perfect time for tech learning.

 

6. Play math learning games to keep skills sharp over the summer.

It seems like adults who loathe math struggled with it as kids. I think positive math experiences go a long way to helping kids have a positive attitude toward math, which helps them to be more successful. Games are a great way to review math concepts in a more palatable way.

Board games can be expensive and cumbersome, so I tend to gravitate toward math games that can be played with a single deck of playing cards, like the following:

Ten – Remove the face cards from a deck of playing cards and place the deck, face down, in the center of the table. Each player chooses 5 cards and uses them to create as many equations as he can in which the sum equals ten. For example, If I have 3, 2, 4, 6, 5 I could make the following equations: 3 + 2 + 5 = 10 and 6 + 4 = 10 and 6 + 5 + 2 – 3 = 10.  After making as many equations as possible, player get a point for each equation made, then dispose of their cards. Play continues with players refilling their hands to 5 cards to start each new turn. When the cards run out, the player with the most points wins.

21! – Remove the face cards from the deck and shuffle it. Choose someone to be the dealer. The dealer gives everyone, including himself, two cards face up. The players can ask for another card (a hit) or stay. The object is to get to 21 without going bust (over 21). If the dealer busts, everyone else wins!

Close Call – Remove all of the face cards from the deck, shuffle it and place it face down in the center of the table. Each player should select 4 cards from the deck. Players arrange their cards into 2-two digit numbers and the objective is to choose numbers that, when added together, come as close as possible to 100. For example, the cards 3, 5, 2 and 4 can be arranged to make the numbers 53 and 42, which, when added together  equal 95. The player closest to 100 receives a point, and all ties each receive a point. After 10 rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Math War – You’ll need a deck of cards per player, with all of the face cards removed. Set one deck in front of each player. Each player flips the top 2 cards face up and adds the two numbers. The player with the highest sum wins the skirmish, capturing all of the other players cards and placing them, with his own, into his prisoner pile. If there is a tie for highest sum, all the players battle: each player lays three cards face down, then flips the 4th and 5th cards face up. The highest sum of these new cards captures all the cards played in that turn. The objective is to capture the most cards (prisoners). Alternately, you could add 3 or 4 cards to increase the difficulty. Or you could subtract two cards or multiply them or make a fraction of them — depending on the skill set your child is working on.

I’m sure there are numerous other math games you could play together if you get tired of the above. These are a great way to avoid summer learning loss.

 

7. Give family game night an educational twist.

Math games aren’t the only educational games. Look at Monopoly. Not only will your kiddos get practice counting money, but they can learn prudent financial and investment principles.

Here are some fun, basic, educational games your family will enjoy:

  • Checkers – logic and critical thinking
  • Blink – brain training
  • 10 Days in the USA – geography
  • Rummy Roots – Vocabulary and language
  • Settlers of Catan variations – history
  • Made for Trade – economics
  • Where in the World? – geography

 

8. Research places you will be visiting over the summer.

Traveling is a fantastic way to explore a new culture, see how different languages sound, and try new things. Visiting historical sites is a great way to gain an appreciation for history, especially when you take a little time to research it beforehand.

Even if you plan to stay local, you’ll probably visit a museum or a national park or visit someplace out of the ordinary. Ask your child which places he enjoyed most and encourage him to further research things he encountered.

Road trips are a great way to learn some geography when you provide your child with maps to keep track of progress along the way. When presented with the opportunity, he’ll happily learn map reading along with geography.

I hesitate to admit this, but I never learned American history in school. It was taught in a disjointed way, out of order, and it never appealed to me. So I earned A’s in my classes, but I never actually learned the material…

…Until we visited Boston, Philadelphia and New York as a homeschool American history field trip. Somehow, walking the Freedom Train in Boston, standing in the Old South Meetinghouse, where Samuel Adams gave the signal that started the Boston Tea Party, then walking down Milk Street to what used to be the harbor struck me.

Standing where Paul Revere stood in Lexington, the night he rode out to warn all of the minute men that the British were coming then walking the Battle Road out to the Old North Bridge made all the difference.

Suddenly, I had to know more. I bought Paul Revere’s Ride at a gift shop and didn’t put it down until all of my questions were answered.

I knew nothing about Irish and very little about British history until we took a black cab tour in Belfast, Northern Ireland and toured the post office and gaol in Dublin. Hearing small snippets about the troubles and the people behind the murals made me need to know the why, where and how.

People don’t know what questions they should be asking until provided with rich experiences that raise their awareness. Travel is exactly that rich experience that will fill you up with burning questions.

 

9. Explore nature together.

There is a false belief that play happens outside and learning happens inside. In reality, the outdoors is rife with learning opportunities.

You can talk about parts of speech by asking for five nouns (tree, rock…), five verbs (running, jumping…) or adjectives (grey sky, bright sun…). You could play blind adjectives and have a child with his eyes closed find adjectives by touch (rough bark on a tree, smooth river rocks…). You could talk about nature poems or connect your nature walks to nature literature.

You can study art by creating leaf rubbings or looking at the way objects in the distance are smaller and lighter (a much lower value on the value scale) or the way the sky meets the ground at the horizon. You could collect and dry wildflowers or photograph and identify insects or animal tracks.

You can count all of the trees you pass or the number of times you cross the stream during your hike or try to estimate the height of trees or cliffs or how far you can jump. You could practice tally marks by taking along notebooks, writing items you’ll see (rocks, trees, shrubs, etc…) and tallying up the number of items you see.

Observation itself is a study of science. I’ve always loved reading about Lewis and Clarks exploration of the Western territories and Thomas Jefferson’s nature studies. Another fun science activity is to throw rocks into a stream and see how bigger rocks displace more water and only flat rocks will skip across the waters surface.

Each of these activities lends itself well to further study that your child will probably happily initiate.

 

10. Look for opportunities in daily life.

As a homeschooler, this comes naturally, but I don’t know that it does for other families. Because I feel responsible for my children’s education, I notice all the little ways in which they are learning, and I remember to point out others.

For example, as we’re hiking I point out the layers in the mountain cliff and we talk about how it must be sedimentary rock rather than igneous. As we kayak at the lake, we talk about water displacement and buoyancy and how jet skis work and why you have to roll them over in a certain direction when you flip one.

Life is so chock full of learning opportunities that you don’t even have to look for. They are just sitting there, ripe for the picking. But I, as the parent, often need to recognize those opportunities and point them out in order for my children to take advantage of them.

Kids are natural learners. They don’t need external compulsion. You never had to sit your child down and explain the mechanics of walking or verb conjugation. You just had to provide opportunities such as furniture and walls to walk around and spoken language.

 

 

The Last Word About Summer Learning

I don’t know about you, but at our house summers can be difficult unless we have a routine. Summer learning is the perfect way to keep a routine (and thus peace) going in your home.

Schedule in a half hour rest each day for kids to read or choose a quiet activity, or plan a read aloud time for right after breakfast. Scheduling in some summer learning can actually keep the rest of your day on track.

These ideas require zero preparation, no materials and no teaching experience. Plus they’re fun! All they require is for you to be present and involved with your children. You can kill two birds with one stone — staying on track academically and building close family relationships you will cherish.

 

 

 

 

 

Pin these tips for summer learning!

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do you keep your kids learning throughout the summer? Please share your best summer learning tips in the comments below!

 

 

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