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Summer Brain Drain
Tips to Help Your Child Avoid Summer Brain Drain
By Thomas Haller and Chick Moorman
Summer is here! That long-awaited school break has arrived. Your children are now enjoying their much deserved time away from the daily grind of spelling tests, math worksheets, book reports, geography lessons, science projects and homework. It is time for them to play in the sun, swim in the pool, go camp, walk the beach, shoot hoops, ride bikes, sleep in, relax and lose three months of reading and math gains that they worked so hard to attain this past school year.
Yes, many children fall almost three months behind in math and reading skills over the summer. This phenomenon is so well known that educators even have a special name for it. They call it the "the summer slide." Because of the summer slide teachers often invest the first two months of every school year focusing on lesson plans that help students regain skills they lost over the summer.
But this doesn't have to be the case. The summer slide does not need to occur in your family. Creating a summer that is totally void of learning is not what children need. You can provide high-quality learning opportunities for your children during the summer months that are different from those activities children are exposed to during the school year. This gives them a break from traditional school work and yet prevents important skills from slowing draining away.
Here are a few tips you can use to create a different look and feel to the learning opportunities you offer your children this summer:
- Math skills deteriorate rapidly in the summer. Use your environment to help them use math skills. When you put chemicals in the pool take the time to figure out the area, diameter or volume of your pool. At approximately 9 pounds per gallon of water, how much does all that water weigh?