Our partners at KinderCare know learning doesn’t stop when school lets out for the summer. They want to help you make sure your child starts the new school year ready to learn. Read on for tips on how you can mix learning and fun this summer!
What is the summer slide?
The summer slide refers to the slip in academics that many children experience over the summer months. After working so hard in the classroom all year, students tend to lose some of their academic achievements during those lazy summer months!
What can parents do to avoid the summer slide?
As parents, we want to do all we can to help our children succeed! How can we ensure our kids don’t start to fall behind this summer? The experts at KinderCare have come up with some tips to help parents combine learning and fun this summer and help their children avoid the summer slide!
Read and learn as a family!
According to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, reading and writing as a family have a bigger impact on preventing the summer slide than any other activity. So, make every day a reading day! Find a chapter book to take turns reading, find books written by local authors and explore the settings in person, or read a nature poem and go on a nature scavenger hunt! Your local library is an amazing resource!
Don’t forget math!
Math tends to fall by the wayside over the summer months, but there are many creative ways to keep those numbers moving! From counting up the number of trees on your daily walk to adding up the total of the groceries, there are opportunities for math everywhere!
Plan your vacation around educational activities!
The Collaborative Summer Library Program’s summer slide research shows that children who have access to extracurricular activities are not as likely to forget what they learned over the summer. So, find some time in your family vacation for enriching educational activities like exploring museums, visiting cultural and historical sites, and exposing your children to the arts.
Get up and get moving!
Kids who spend more time playing outside are better creative problem solvers and have improved focus and cognitive skills. It can be tough to resist the urge to let screens do the work, but summer is the perfect time to get out and get those bodies moving!
Encourage social and emotional development.
Kids spend less time around their peers during the summer months. In turn, they can lose up to 7% of their progress in social interpersonal skills for each month they are out of school. Yikes! Parents can offset this by scheduling playdates with friends or enrolling their kids in summer programming!
For 50 years, KinderCare teachers have been creating safe, encouraging environments where kids can learn, grow, and build confidence for life. At KinderCare, hardworking families are family — regardless of needs, backgrounds, and experiences.
KinderCare Learning Centers is opening a new center in the Seaport District of Boston. Stop by Seaport KinderCare on Saturday, June 8, to celebrate with kids’ activities, tours, music, and more!
Learn more about how you can prevent the summer slide through fun, educational summer activities and programs in your area at KinderCare.com.
