Keep summer learning loss at bay with these 3 tips.
The end of the school year has come and gone and now it’s summer break! This time of year brings a lot of exciting things for kids: A welcome hiatus from the classroom, more time outdoors, less time hovering over class assignments, and of course a lot more time for fun. There’s nothing wrong with that—kids need brain breaks, too. The challenge is preventing the learning gaps that often come with it: a phenomenon known as the summer slide. Read on for some tips on how to stop the gap without the fun ahead of the coming school year.
What is Summer Slide?
“Summer slide” refers to the loss of learning progress that commonly happens during summer vacation. It makes sense, right? Kids spend the better half of a year practicing, reading, building skills, and all of that takes habit and ongoing focus. Then, poof! Here comes summer. It’s pretty normal—it affects kids from elementary school to middle school and high school. A recent study from the American Education Research Journal (2020) found that students lost on average 39 percent of gains made across the entire school year [during the summer], and research consistently finds that kids lose up to two months in reading time compared to school months.
As you can imagine, this causes regression that’ll likely lead to more catch up later. Because of the increased vulnerability of low-income families to summer learning loss, it’s also a source of achievement gaps (a disparity of achievement between groups, such as kids from different economic, ethnic and gender sets).
How to solve it?
There’s a simple-not-so-simple solution for this: Keep ‘em learning! And no, we’re not talking about summer school. We’re talking about activities that keep your kid’s noggin working in ways that don’t feel like school. See below for learning activities to achieve this for kids of all grade levels and reading levels.
1. Read, read, read!
As for a good starting point, experts agree: access to books is critical. It’ll not only thwart losses in vocab, reading comprehension, spelling, grammar and other reading skills, it’ll keep your out-of-school kid’s imaginations active. Research shows it just takes 4-6 books over the summer to potentially prevent a decline in abilities. So that’s a good goal to strive for.
- Let ‘em choose: Giving your kid the power to pick their books will instantly up their interest level. After all, they’re poring over assigned reading all year long. What better time to let them just do them? Whether it’s a comic book, audiobook or a casual beach read, all reading is good reading.
- Make it fun: Giving them content they love puts them at a huge advantage in the battle against summer slide. Epic Unlimited, which gives them easy access to over 45,000 books, searchable by topic, title, and more right on their tablets and smartphones, is an ideal option. Check out these popular read-alouds on Epic.
- Get with a program: Local public libraries often have summer reading programs designed to provide fun spaces designed to help kids retain reading skills and boost reading scores after returning to school. Learn more about the value of reading programs here.
- Give ‘em a challenge: Dare them to read with a fun reading challenge, like this thrilling 6-week adventure featuring our Go Anywhere collections on Epic Unlimited. Kids can travel through space, visit underwater worlds and more—plus earn exclusive, limited-time badges when they read from the collections.
- Model the behavior: Research also shows that kids read more when adults in their lives actively motivate them. So one of the best ways to inspire kids to read is to lead by example. Telling them that reading is awesome is one thing. But if they see it, they’ll believe it.
2. Embrace Technology
Let’s face it: Kids love screen time. While it’s a good idea to avoid leaning into that fixation too much, it does have its upsides. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) distinguishes between educational and non-educational screen time, claiming that kids who are learning while on their devices can actually benefit from it. Here are a few of our favorite apps for learning:
- Duolingo: This fun, free app helps kids build skills and vocab in 35+ languages—including Spanish, French, Chinese, German and Italian. To date, it’s helped millions of learners worldwide pick up new languages through games and flash cards.
- PBS Kids Games: Whether your kid can’t get enough of Dinosaur Train, Sesame Street, or Daniel Tiger, PBS Kids Games provides curriculum-based entertainment for kids 8 and under. It gives them access to over 120 fun games based on the shows kids know and love, plus videos and other activities they can do offline.
- Thinkrolls Play & Code: This app offers a collection of puzzles and brain games that introduce little kids to the basics of coding logic. It enhances logic, strategic planning, innovation and memory abilities and encourages traits like patience and flexibility.
- Inventioneers: Full of imagination, STEM concepts, and social components, this engineering puzzler lets children build up to 120 new inventions using creativity and kid-friendly physics. It gives them an exciting intro to engineering while building valuable strategic-thinking, problem-solving and math skills.
- Epic: With thousands of popular, high quality titles, including audiobooks, Read-To-Me books and animated books, our digital library is filled with enrichment opportunities to help your kid become a stronger, more confident reader over the summer.
For more on safe, enriching screen time, check out our post: “Summer Screen-time Tips.” Check out more of our educational app recommendations here.
3. Get Out of the House
Whether or not you’re worried about the amount of time your kid is spending on a screen or indoors, spending time outside of the house presents tons of fun, hand-on learning opportunities for kids. Experts have found that novelty stimulates the brain, helping your kid get more out of the time they do spend actively taking in educational information. Here are a few ideas for how to promote learning outside of the house.
- Create experiences inspired by their interests: Are they into outer space? Go to a planetarium or stargaze together in the backyard. Ocean life? Go to an aquarium. Or you can go to a museum. Whatever their interests, hubs like these are chock full of fascinating info to keep their brains stimulated and reinforce what they’ve learned in a real-world setting.
- Find a summer learning program: Camps—even day camps—are exciting ways for kids to get hands on and social while they learn about nature. Or if you’d prefer, go on an outdoor field adventure. You could take a simple stroll around the block or hit a local trail, using your phone camera to identify the wildlife around you. Apps like Leafsnap let you capture the images of flowers, trees, fruit and plants you encounter on your trek and it’ll identify the species.
- Plant a garden: Getting your kid excited about gardening is a great way to teach them about where our food comes from and how Earth sustains life. From letting kids plant a tree and growing their own veggies to visiting community gardens and farms, there are so many ways to delight their curiosity and their senses outdoors.
There you have it!
These are just a few ideas on how to beat the summer slide. With the right activities, you can keep those minds active during the summer months without sacrificing the fun and relaxation your kid craves. For more books and activities to keep your kid engaged this summer, check out our post: “Come Together Through Reading.”
