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A few years ago, a second grade teacher told me how she stumbled onto teaching about the stock market to her students. It was pure serendipity, and prompted by a conversation that she overheard by group of students talking about a new guinea pig. The owner of the guinea pig had named it “NASDAQ,” and the other students wanted to know where the name had come from – what the heck kind of name was NASDAQ?

Welcome to week 3 of our Summer Slide Buster series here on the Gateway! We have been having fun choosing and testing activities, and we hope you found some of our suggestions interesting and useful. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or both, you can find activities on the Gateway to inspire all the kids in your life to keep their minds active during the break.

My fourth grader came home recently, disappointed at not having performed as well on a Math Olympiad contest as she’d anticipated. As we talked about it, she suddenly perked up and said, “Well, girls aren’t supposed to be good at math anyway.” This statement momentarily threw me for a loop, since she certainly hasn’t been raised with these stereotypes, and she is good at math – this was an enrichment class for kids who needed additional math challenge.

After the first week of testing the summer slide buster activities with students, I was reminded that the success of any learning activity is directly related to the way it is presented to students. There is a reason that little kids love how Mrs. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus gets so into the things she is teaching. Presenting activities as fun, exciting adventures can help create a cooperative, curious environment: perfect for summer discovery learning.

Recently, I read a harrowing account of a doomed 1912 Arctic expedition, where a ship seeking new hunting grounds became frozen in the pack ice of the Kara Sea. After a year and a half, the author and 13 crewmen decided to leave the ship and the remaining crew, embarking on a perilous 235-mile journey for help via kayaks and homemade sledges, and complete with polar bear attacks, starvation, snowblindness, and mutiny. The book is called In the Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov, and it’s a great read for high school classes and above.

As a parent and teacher, I have seen the effects of the “summer slide” or “brain drain” both at home and in school. Kids who aren’t given the chance to exercise their brains during the summer break will most likely lose a lot of knowledge they gained during the school year. Parents have the tough job of helping their children stay educated, entertained and out of trouble during the summer months.

It’s the rare child (or adult) who isn’t fascinated by dinosaurs. The ancient creatures capture the popular imagination in a way quite unlike anything else. Through the study of dinosaurs, students learn about what life on Earth was like long ago, and the many changes that have occurred in geography, geology, and climate since then.

You have given everything you can to your students this year, and now you are about to send them off into their summer vacation. This break from school can often lead to the “summer slide” or “brain drain,” where they forget some of the skills they mastered during the year. It’s scary to think of how much of the year’s hard work can be lost during the summer; a time could ideally be very enriching for students. If you can reach out to students and teachers before and/or during the summer break with activity suggestions and ideas, perhaps you can help plug the “brain drain” this summer.

Summer vacation is coming. The students are probably beginning to lose some of their focus, and perhaps their teachers are as well. Wandering minds are inevitable at this time of year, with the promise of lazy days by the pool, endless sports, and the freedom from homework. But as educators, we know that the glory days of summer have a dark underbelly – the dreaded “summer slide.”

The very first Gateway Treasure Hunt sponsored by Seven Minds, LLC. is over. Congratulations to the three winners: Cara Wegrzyn from Michigan, Denise Bell from Washington, and Megan Franklin from Arizona. Each will receive a free Social Navigator application provided by Seven Minds, LLC.

The Gateway to 21st Century Skills has been made possible through the generous support from the National Education Association.