Math

Summer is almost halfway over and kids who haven’t had much enrichment are starting to get bored. Some students have been keeping busy with camps, travel, and activities like watching television and playing video games, but many are looking to be more engaged. Many parents and teachers are looking for easily implemented activities to keep kids’ minds fresh for the remainder of the summer. It has been neat to see students trying out activities from our Summer Slide Buster Series here on the Gateway. If you haven’t tried any, we would love to have you try some this week! For even more ideas, look back through our archives.

The summer slide gets a pretty bad rap this time of year. We do our best to teach kids all school year long, but it seems the lazy days of summer counteract that learning. During the past four weeks, we have been posting activities each day to help combat this brain drain in your kids. Some of you have tried the activities with your own kids and some have forwarded the information on to parents and students, helping to enrich their summers and keep their math and reading skills sharp.

As we move through the heat of summer, I want look back to see how well we have been busting that summer slide! Camps, lessons, and summer activities can make it hard for parents to make time for enrichment at home. Holidays and a compressed schedule make planning a challenge for summer classroom teachers, too. Since we have been posting activities for each day, I wanted to compile them in this post so you can come back to those activities when you have time. Be on the lookout for more new resource suggestions on Friday.

The following activities focus on music and math, two subjects that can often be intertwined. These were featured on the Gateway the past few weeks on Music and Math Mondays.

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.

Autumn doesn’t officially start until next week, but thesigns that the season is imminent are all around us. The nights have becomenoticeably cooler, and the days shorter. Trees are beginning to change color,and will soon begin shedding their leaves. For many plants, the lifespan of their hardworking leaves has come to anend; they will soon color, shrivel, and finally die. In some parts of thecountry, many plants will remain dormant for the winter, and only graduallyre-animate in the spring, when they unfurl new leaves.

I remember the commotion started by Teen Talk Barbie when she announced, “Math class is tough!” in the early nineties.  After only a few months, the phrase was taken out of the dolls’ vocabularies and Mattel swapped out the dolls that still said the phrase.

It’s always fun to do something unexpected in the classroom, and to watch the kids’ reactions. It’s especially gratifying when the event furthers a curricular goal, or makes subject matter more palatable to the students.

The American Civil War remains one of the saddest chapters in U.S. history. It lasted for four years, divided a nation and some families, and forever shaped the American psyche. For many people, it was a war of horrible necessity – a last resort when political and cultural ideologies clashed, and all hopes for a peaceful resolution faded. While the vast majority of battles were fought in southern and mid-Atlantic states, it was also a war that saw conflicts around the country in places like Vermont, New Mexico, and Florida.

In the 1980s, a new branch of science emerged that seemed to be straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel. While the new science didn’t initially garner much attention from the general press or population, scientists and ethicists were all abuzz about nanotechnology. Despite some news items that occasionally crop up in the mainstream media, nanotechnology has quietly continued to evolve and impact our everyday lives.

What do Bill Gates, Jay Z, and Martha Stewart all have in common? They’re all highly successful people who started with an idea, raised capital, and grew their own businesses and brands. In short, they’re entrepreneurs.