Summer slide

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”