The Summer Vacation – sounds fun, right? But for parents, “the summer vacation” doesn’t refer to as a Fun ride, but a fear of Children’s tendency to lose some of their academic progress over summer break. Most of the parents can relate to this.
This is a considerable challenge that teachers, parents, and school administrators face every year, both at the beginning of the summer, when they must try to create an environment to reduce or prevent some academic pressure, and at the beginning of the new session, when they must try to reverse its effects.
And this is for every age group children.
Testament
An NWEA study showed that elementary students in grades 3–5 lost about 20 percent of the knowledge they had gained in reading over the previous school year, and about 27 percent of their math skills.
Summer Fun with Learning
Let’s a have look at what can help children have fun along with not losing academic learnings…
1. Encourage access to books
Access to books and continuous reading is number one indicator of academic success. It’s also a crucial weapon in the battle against learning loss over the summer. Whenever we travel we keep some of our academic books, an activity book and some story books so that we take out some time and have a look at our books, just to not forget the learning from previous months or session.
We do use our gadgets, email and social media connections with friends to ensure we don’t miss on significant topics. Local public libraries, museums, and community centers can also be used to keep kids with books and help them read new books with familiar, related or new topics. If your school has a summer reading program, this should be blasted on all social channels. School could even highlight students who are participating in the program in their newsletter and on their social feed.
2. Varieties of summer Activities
We make sure we have the right toolbox to get over the boredom of summer. We sign up for online reading programs and math challenges too. We do communicate with other parents and discuss learning resources along with other new activities we have found, with each other.
3. Sharing is caring
Teachers usually have a ideas for games, activities, and other innovative ways of learning. Being in touch with the teachers for such ideas and sharing these ideas with our fellow parents also help children in learning without boredom.
4. Games and play is as important as learning
Playing also helps our mind to unwind and learn new things too like teamwork, healthy competition, keeping an eye on opposite team or player, trying to visualize and judge the outcome of next move, Patience to wait for turn, following rules.
5. Parents Involvement and consistency
Parents’ involvement in children’s learning is equally important so, now is a good time for us parents to spend some quality time and ideas to help minimize learning loss over the summer along with creating memories together. Tips may emerge for how Parents’ budget, time and space to keep the kids on track. Consistent efforts of “Parents and Children” together will lead to an amazing, fun and learning outcome beating the summer boredom. 🙂
learning activities/games apart from board games- We like to play Sudoku, Read aloud to each other, Do Gardening, Painting, Sketching, Cooking, Dancing, Singing, Making cards, Play our musical instruments, Watch a couple of movies in a month, Weave and Tell stories to each other, Chant together, Do Meditation and Yoga, We go to park for walks, climb on monkey bars, ride bicycle and play outdoors too, like Badminton and Football.
Share your ideas
All of us have our own way of beating boredom. Do share your tips from your childhood and ideas for overcoming boredom.
This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’
hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla
in collaboration with Monidipa Dutta.
Great tips! Inculcating a love of reading in children is the most important thing.
Every summer parents struggle to keep their kids engaged. Thanks for such a relevant post at the right time.
keeping a child engaged and away from gadgets is a tough job especially during vacations, your tips are really handy.
Reading is one of the best things I like doing with my kids. Also, we love playing word games that help improve vocabulary and play puzzlee too. There’s lots one can do, it’s great family time.
Sometimes vacations scare the hell out of me! While I don’t have to wake up at 5, but keeping 2 kids engaged is a Herculean task! I have made them a Library with loads of books. I wish they can read instead of mindless screens..
I am not a parent yet, but I am sharing this to friends and cousins. The tips are quite useful, especially for young parents. Now that the kids are home during the holidays, it is quite a Herculean task to find ways to entertain them while being productive too.
I am not a parent but your post reminded me of summer vacations and these were exactly how we spent them. I feel summer vacations are meant to be enjoyed and not a packed schedule leaving kids with very little breathing room.
It’s summer vacation time and one couldn’t read a more helpful post as this, when children are home and don’t know how to spend time. This is a great time for family vacations, to do activities and engage in fun and play with children. Books are important as they foster imagination, promote language development, expand knowledge, cultivate empathy, and inspire a love for reading. Summer time makes for bonding time when parents can read books to children to stimulate their imagination and creativity. Enjoyed the post. Your insights are truly invaluable. The tips you’ve shared hold great worth and provide a wealth of knowledge and guidance. Thank you for sharing such valuable advice. 🙂
You are absolutely right. Summer vacations are also about enjoying and playing games. Even simple ones teach a lot.
Parents as well as teachers worry about the decrease in the academic performance of the children after the holidays. Your pointers are the perfect directions to involve in activities that let children practice maths, science, or any other subject.
I couldn’t agree more with the importance of parent engagement during the summer break to prevent academic regression. It’s a common concern among parents to ensure that their children don’t lose the knowledge they gained during the school year.
I appreciate the first tip you shared about encouraging access to books. Reading is a wonderful way to keep children engaged and continue their learning journey during the summer. Whether it’s visiting the library, setting aside dedicated reading time, or discussing books as a family, fostering a love for reading can have a significant impact.
Well, my idea for this summer is…. We will be traveling with our kids this summer.
Traveling to new places can be a great opportunity for your kids to learn and explore outside the classroom. It offers a chance to expand their horizons, experience different cultures, and develop a broader world perspective.
loved these ideas so going to use these tips for my students online. Well written, useful and thanks for writing.
Lovely tips you shared for the parents and I am sharing the same with my friends with small kids. I am still not in this segment yet as my son is just one but in future your post will be a guide for me too and so I am archiving it. Thanks a ton for this post.
It is tough when both parents are working and the kids have to spend time at home by themselves during summer vacation. I usually reserve the doing together things for weekends and let them do their assignments, give them some chores – watering the plants or helping prep a meal, or get books for them to read.
This is a great guide for parents. Summer vacations can be fun for kids but they do need to remember education as well. Keeping them in the loop with activities and different knwoledge-based programmes along with play is such a marvellous way ofmaking optimum use of the vacations.