That Bald Chick®

Homeschool, Crafts, Kids Activities, Recipes and Lifestyle Blog

  • Site Disclosure- This site uses ad networks and affiliate links to generate revenue.
  • Products featured may have been provided in consideration of inclusion. Links may be partnered.

Summer Learning Loss – 10 Ways to Stop the Summer Learning Slide

Share the love!

Did you know that kids can literally lose months of learning during the summer months?  The average summer learning loss is over 2 months of grade level! Most teachers spend a significant amount of time RE-teaching material due to summer learning loss.  Give your teachers a break, and your kid a leg up in the fall, by making sure the only slide your children experience is the one on the playground!  Following are 10 ways to stop the summer learning slide that even the busiest of parents can manage!

 

Ways to Prevent Summer Learning loss at thatbaldchick.comLove your local library!

Many local libraries offer summer reading programs, book readings, scheduled arts and crafts events.   We signed up for our local summer reading club and the kids are really enjoying checking out new books.  I signed up for the adult summer reading club, too, because I think it’s important to model what I expect of them!  Even just fifteen minutes a day of reading can make a huge impact.

Be sure to carry a bag big enough for your haul!

Library Card Tote BagLibrary Card Tote BagLibrary Girl Tote BagLibrary Girl Tote BagLibrary Book Case Tote BagLibrary Book Case Tote Bag

Field trips!

Make it a point to visit places that you don’t usually get to go during the school year, such as museums, the zoo, the aquarium, the local arboretum or botanical gardens, concerts and parks.  Involve the kids in the planning of your outings by giving them maps, exhibit brochures, or letting them plan a scavenger hunt of things they might see.

Play games!

Have some family fun and boost brain power by playing games together.  A lot of board games encourage use of language and math skills, as well as critical thinking skills.  Play charades, Monopoly, Clue, Battleship, Yahtzee, Boggle, or chess to keep their mind engaged.

Encourage spatial play and thinking!

Spend some time building a city with blocks, Lego Bricks, or Lincoln Logs.  Have them help draw the plans for the city before you start.  Help them create shapes with tangrams, put together a complex puzzle, or solve a Rubik’s cube.  Ask them spatial questions, like how to best fill the grocery bag.

Encourage them to write!

Whether keeping a journal about what they are doing, or answering silly questions, or creative story writing- a few sentences a day will go a long way toward giving their handwriting and language skills a workout.  Ask them to write a paragraph about a topic a day.

Summer learning camps and VBS!

Check out the summer learning camps and vacation Bible school offerings in your area.  We have a local “safety town” that our kids will be attending for two weeks.  We also attend a local vacation Bible school.

Use car time as learning time!

Make the most of car time by encouraging listening to audio books, playing games such as the Alphabet game or I Spy, practicing spelling words, or asking critical thinking questions. Have multiple kids with multiple different tastes that results in car fights over the audio book or music?  Give them LilGadgets headphones, they are perfect for long car rides or using with their tablets and learning apps so they don’t annoy each other.  LilGadgets are volume limiting (max volume 93db) and are passive noise reducing, so they don’t need to crank the volume! AND they come in multiple different colors, so everyone can have their own color.

Ways to prevent summer learning loss at thatbaldchick.com

Make math a part of every day!

I’m not suggesting that you make your kid sit down and do math worksheet every day.  Even simple tasks in the kitchen, like measuring ingredients for a recipe or having them help double the recipe, can keep their skills sharp.  Have them tally the total as you grocery shop, or figure out how much change you should receive when you pay.

Learning workbooks, videos, apps, and websites

There will be days when your kids just doesn’t want to go out to play.  Stock up on learning workbooks and DVDs or scout out some learning videos on YouTube.  Get a subscription to a learning website, like ABCMouse.com,  where they can play learning games to practice their skills.  Download some learning apps for them to play while you’re out and about.

Plan ahead!

Find out what they need to know for the next school year, and focus on those new skills.  Learning new skills often requires use of old ones.  Invest in a good summer bridge workbook or find a ton of summer bridge activities on Pinterest.

For more ways to keeping learning fun, check out my Ways to Use Dominoes for Learning, Ways to use Toy Cars for Learning, Ways to Use Toy Trains for Learning and The Best STEM Toys and Games posts.

Summer Learning Loss - 10 ways to stop the summer learning slide at thatbaldchick.com

Share the love!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Great tips that I’m saving. My son has been going for tutoring all year and just finished. I want to make sure that he doesn’t slide back and that he’s all set in September for 2nd grade!

  3. Great tips thank you.Our kids normally do extra work from workbooks with their daddy over the summer with me they get to do the baking,the crafty stuff and working with the animals.Their daddy is the real brains for all that lol.

  4. These are great tips! I remember as a kid always feeling like my brain just farted out everything while I was in school over the Summer. My Mom would also try to do things to help us but they weren’t as fun as these!

  6. Summer field trips are my favorite! I started doing field trip Fridays last summer and plan to continue then this year.

  8. This is such a challenge for us every year. It’s like my kids are determined to forget half of what they learned during the school year! Great tips!

  11. Great tips. My kids are not in school yet, but I started my son (who is almost 3 now) with workbooks about a year ago, to get him in the habit of learning!

  12. All of these tips are helpful. My nephew just got out of school and my sister is worried that he will be bored, but parents have to remember to not rely on school to educate their kids. The summer should be made for adventures and exploring! Great info!

  15. I used to want to go to the library over the summer. I envision my son requesting the same when he’s older. 🙂

  17. Such great tips. During the summer we like to play a lot of games, and I also plan on doing a month of tutoring before my oldest goes back to school. Maybe just once or twice a week for a month. My daughter is in the 1st grade, soon to be a 2nd grader and when we are out driving she likes to read signs, so that helps. It’s great to make learning fun during the summer. I’ve got to tweet out your post, it’s so good.

  18. Excellent tips. Thank you for sharing. The children could all use something to do other than just sit around the house.

  19. When my kids were younger, they always participated in the summer reading programs at their libraries to keep their minds active!

  20. All great tips! I wish camps weren’t so expensive, but my oldest is doing VBS again. I like the idea of “field trips” as opposed to just places to go. Already starting to plan out stuff to do this summer!

  22. Great ideas! I keep my kids busy and stimulated during the Summer. From gardening to cooking and canning with me, there is always a way to sneak in a lesson.

  25. These are terrific ideas to help kids keep up with what they learned the previous year in school. I will have to remember these tips once my kids are in school. 🙂

  26. These are some great ideas, Virginia! We love hitting the library and finding books and movies. I’m hoping to keep my boys busy with crafts, projects, etc., find a fun reading program, and take the occasional field trip this summer. I actually just filled a dresser in our living room with craft supplies. This reminds me to check into other activities too.

  27. Great list of ideas. We are going to super prep for Kindergarten! He needs to work on writing, and if we can get that down, he will pretty much be ready to go.

  29. These are awesome steps. Here in Canada we still have just over a month left in classes so I haven’t really even thought about how we’re going to get your summer yet. We do participate in a reading program at the library and I have purchased workbooks to help supplement the summer days.

  30. You’re my kind of chickie. I did lots of educational activities and games with my kids to keep their minds sharp over the summer. It was fun!

  31. As a former teacher, I can definitely relate to this. It is super frustrating to have to backtrack at the beginning of each school year. We just started summer break here, but we will definitely be implementing some of these tips next week!

  32. These are FAN-TAS-TIC tips and I really want to work hard this summer to prevent this because of our move, I’m sooo nervous!

  33. Wonderful tips it’s so hard to keep all the summer, I have to give my kids some homework, or they will completely forget all the things they learned that year

  34. I would definitely agree with you on this one! I can personally observe how kids can easily deteriorate in their learning during the summer months. I believe the commonly held assumption that summer gives them a break from school just offer them an excuse that they can stop learning. I love all your tips and I’ll surely keep them in mind. 🙂

  35. We love the use math in everyday activities tip. We use that one all of the time! Baking is a fun one to use it! 🙂

  36. Your tips make perfect sense. I like #2 a lot. Field trips are so educational. I let my oldest free write without correcting her. I like seeing and reading what she comes up with and how she spells out certain words.

  41. Great tips!! I have been looking forward to summer vacation all year! But I will be sure to use some of these tips! 🙂

  42. Those are some great tips! I tend not to do much with the kids in the summer and leave them alone but I do need to get them involved so that when school starts they won’t be behind.

  44. These are all wonderful tips. I will put a few into action this summer. I also think that kids should get the chance to relax during the summer and not worry about school work and learning too much. The school year can be hard enough for them. I see my poor daughter who is in 11th grade stress about school to maintain her straight A’s. I allow her to relax and not feel the need to “learn” during the summer. Fun learning is great though and I totally encourage that

  45. This is really an important post for parents to read. My children are grown but their district had a policy of giving homework over the summer and I supported it. I know many parents did not. My kids did have plenty of time for fun things. The amount of homework was very reasonable. Just enough to keep them interested and thinking.

  49. Keeping the kids from losing skills is a challenge during summertime. My kids are going to a day camp at their school for some of the summer. It is run by teachers and they focus on fun games and activities that will keep the learning going while school is out of session.

  50. Great tips coming from a parent that had a child take the learning slide. Now we do “Summer Exploration” in the school didstrict for 5 weeks out of the Summer and it really helps and is a lot of fun!

  52. We send home summer packets to help combat learning loss. I think that is why our summer is only 8 weeks long.

  54. I always hated summer as a kid because it meant that when we went back to school we were going to have to spend 4 months refreshing on everything we had learned the years before. I feel if parents keep their kids minds active then that won’t happen as much.

  56. Thank you for sharing this! My son is about to end his first year of school {preschool} so we haven’t had a real summer like this before and I was really worried about retaining information. He just started reading &I’m afraid he’ll start to forget the skills he’s learned!

  60. Great info Virginia! I make my son’s write short recaps of what we did, not just to keep their skills up, but to also maintain a journal of happy memories that they can read/fall back on when they have a disappointing day. It’s a wonderful keepsake. My oldest, who will turn 20 this year, recently reread his journal and we couldn’t stop laughing! Can’t wait to show my grandkids one day 🙂

  62. These are some wonderful tips Virginia, thanks for sharing! My 7 year old is really into writing and illustrating books right now so I am putting together a little kit for her to take along to France. She will be spending the summer there with my parents. She gets to be immersed in the French language and culture as she’ll be taking horse back riding lessons and water skiing lessons and spending quality time with my parents. Happy summer!

  64. The plan is for us to continue homeschooling throughout the summer to finish up a bit of what’s left from this year and get a jump-start on next year’s curriculum (we mostly use WinterPromise, with Singapore for math and a few other random items!), but it has been so challenging to want to sit down and “do school” lately when the weather has been so beautiful and warm! 🙂