Summer brain drain is real! Studies show when students return to school after a long summer vacation, they’ve lost one to three months worth of learning. That coupled with a virtual or hybrid year of homeschooling, Family Entourage is here to share some ways to set our kids up for success over the summer while still keeping it fun.
BOOKS BEFORE YOU EXPLORE
Research spanning over 100 years shows that kids typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of summer, but don’t underestimate the value of what you can do outside the classroom to help fight the summer academic slide. The easiest and least-expensive way to combat “brain drain” is by reading! It’s one of the best brain-building activities you can do and research tells us that reading, and talking about the books and stories your kids are reading, has a greater influence on your children’s academic growth than summer camps or vacations.
So we wanted to take it a step further and bring those books to life. We say, select a book that relates to an activity you can explore as a family. We love Kane Miller books and so many of their titles are perfect for this… like before you head to the Art Gallery, you can read Luna Loves Art and step inside famous works of art by Van Gogh, Picasso, Jackson Pollock and more! Plus there are FREE Discussion Questions and Art Coloring Pages you can download continue conversations.
Before you go to the zoo, hiking or exploring the outdoors let nature come to life through the beautiful pop-up pages of Across the Savannah, On the Mountain, What’s Above and What’s Below. From birds to bugs, bighorn sheep to bears… the books are full of facts and engaging information about the wildlife around us.
Museums are always a big hit and there are so many different kinds from Natural History to Air and Space, there is so much to see and learn and a few of our favorites to get us excited about exploring the different galleries are The Curious Case of the Missing Mammoth packed with fascinating facts, funny puns, and flaps that lift and unfold to make it an interactive experience, and Dinosaurs the Shine-A-Light book where you hold a flashlight behind the page to discover surprises about these prehistoric creatures.
We can’t not mention Where’s Will? and Where’s Jane? These are amazing introductions to literary greats with a fun search-and-find spreads. Spot William Shakespeare and a selection of his colorful characters from 10 of his best-loved plays! Or look carefully and you’ll find Jame Austen hiding among the colorful scenes from some of her best-loved novels, including Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma and Persuasion, and more.
We could go on and on with more of our favorites, but we’ll let you check out your family favorites. Plus, from coloring pages and puzzles, to discussion sheets, study guides and mini lessons, Kane Miller’s Talk, Play, Teach section on their website is full of FREE resources for your family.
A challenge I face each summer is finding fun ways to get my children to practice what they learned in the classroom all year. When I would say, “I’ve got a worksheet,” they would run the other way! But then I found these Wipe Clean books from Usborne. My kids loved that they were bright and had fun characters that needed their help solving problems. Whether it was helping the monsters fit on the bus in Wipe Clean Adding or learning how to tell time with Wipe Clean Telling the Time they often ask to do these books, which is always great when it comes to learning. For those wanting a little more structure, the Key Skills packs are great. They come grouped by levels and have four different wipe clean books to practice math, spelling and grammar for each stage/grade-level.
One of our favorite series is Usborne’s Lift the Flap. From multiplying and dividing to measuring and coding each book has 50-100 flaps filled with facts for kids to discover! There are so many different titles to support whatever subject your student wants to learn more about. My children can’t quite read on their own yet, but will sit and look at these books on their own. Then, when someone is available to read to them they have specific questions and pages they want to look at because they have been discovering on their own.
For example the Lift the Flap Grammar and Punctuation has 125 flaps to lift, children can learn about verbs, pronouns, commas and more. Discover apostrophes at superhero school, defeat a dragon in a quest to understand adverbs and meet a pair of sloths who know the difference between its and it’s. Another one of our favorites is the Lift the Flap Adding and Subtracting. My son enjoys practicing the different equations and lifting the flap to see if he got the correct answer.
Usborne also has an amazing free resource called Quicklinks which is a curated page with over 40,000 links to free content that go along with their books. From activities and games to virtual tours and video clips, picture galleries and quizzes, it is all organized by subject and themes. You don’t have to spend hours thinking of a lesson plan. It is all right there for you. And the best part is that it is designed to bring a book to life! You can use it alongside their titles by searching with the title or you can use it coupled with what your student might be assigned by their teacher and search by subject.
COGNITIVE GROWTH WITH SENSORY PLAY
Children, and even adults, learn best and retain the most information when they engage their senses. Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, which lead to the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks. It supports language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and social interaction.
Our family loves the sensory kits and activities for kids from Young + Wild and Friedman. Whether it’s space, sports, ballerinas or mermaids, the kits filled with dough and creative elements are big hits with our kids. We love the story behind the brand too… it was born out of need. A mom who had a child diagnosed with a speech disorder coupled with severe anxiety and unable to communicate, their child was understandably frustrated. Their doctor recommended incorporating more sensory play opportunities into their daily routine, as it may help calm anxiety and encourage language development. So she began reading and researching and was amazed at what she found. From there she started making her own play dough and assembling sensory bins. After seeing first-hand how sensory experiences helped calm her child’s frustrations, and how incredible it was to see behavior and language grow through sensory play, she launched Young + Wild and Friedman. And we’re so thrilled she did!
MATH AND SCIENCE IN THE HOME
One of the challenges this past year presented was that STEM was one of the first things that was cut out or limited in the classrooms due to the challenges of being online or the time in the physical classroom being shortened. Hand2Mind has some great resources to make STEM fun at home. From Water Bead kits to Rainbow Measuring Cups, our kids enjoy filling the measuring cups with water beads. They don’t even realize they are learning about fractions as they play! The kit also has different experiments to learn about the different stages of matter and other chemistry concepts. There are even STEM Bins that come complete with maker materials and task cards so that students can experience open-ended engineering challenges.
Growing up, I remember going to our school’s library and using Versatiles. They are workbooks where you answer a question and match the tile to the correct answer. When you complete the page, you check to see if the pattern is correct. When we were looking for resources to help our boys read, we were pleasantly surprised that Hand2Mind has a Versatiles set in partnership with Bob Books, which is designed to help your child learn how to read. The kids enjoy doing a puzzle and we love that the practice is what helps our children to comprehend what they are learning. In addition to the Bob Books series, they also have individual workbooks for each grade and various subjects. These are great especially if there is an area that your child needs some review or extra practice on. Hand2Mind also has Cross-curricular kits that span all of the different subjects for each grade.
Over the course of this past year, I have used the Hand2Mind – Free Activities in the Parent Support Center. The videos and worksheets are designed to supplement at-home learning. Whether you need some curriculum for over the summer or are needing ideas for the school year, this free resource is amazing. There are 12 weeks of daily videos and worksheets for math, reading and STEM for K-5th grade! We watch a video and then do the corresponding worksheet. My son often asks if he can work ahead as he enjoys doing the lessons. You can use the manipulatives at-home kit from Hand2Mind too as a way for the student to work through the problems.
CULTIVATE AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
With all the change and adaptation over the past year, it begs the question, how can we help our kids embrace a mindset for innovation? We want to build entrepreneurial spirit within our kids and let them know the sky is the limit. It can start small with something simple like starting a lemonade stand or selling candy bars for your sports team to coding your own video game or writing code for a website.
Whether it’s a service based company or actual product you can help your kids understand how to take something from an idea, all the way through to a viable company. We found resources like Entrepreneur Academy and Wonder and Wise helpful for everything from learning how to test your ideas, stand out from the competition, become a great manager and give back to the world to accessories needed to pretend or use imagination to reach a goal.
Plus never underestimate the power of a conversation with your kids explaining what you do, allowing them to shadow you at work, or even reaching out to a professional in their desired industry requesting an informational interview. Why wait until an internship, use your childish charm to soak up skills now!
We were given items by Hand2Mind, Kane Miller, Usborne Books Wonder and Wise, and Young, Wild & Friedman for review. All of our thoughts and opinions are our own.
