What is Summer Learning Loss?

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What is summer learning loss? It is the time it takes children to achieve the level they were at when they left school for summer. For some children, it can take significant time to gain back the levels. Many schools require summer work to alleviate the loss. It can be anything from workbooks to book reports. Also, schools require students to work online with supplemental resources.

Preventing learning loss is for your child to engage in activities that make them think. You want to keep their brains thinking like how the brain was working in school. Learning activities can be related to so many summer activities. So, think about all the things you do in the summer. Involve your child in the planning. Kids get excited when they get to plan the family outing and/or the family vacation. Give them a budget and area to research. Have your children write all the possibilities and the pros and cons for each place. Have them present the findings to you. The skills they will do are reading, writing, research skills and presentation skills.

When the brain is not actively engaged it can forget the information that was on in long-term memory. The more practice the children have reading the more the skills will be committed to long-term memory. Another example,  have a book club for your family. Each person in the family can pick a book for everyone to read. The whole family sets up a book club night to discuss the book. Have everyone write a summary and their favorite parts and characters and why. It is getting the kids involved and designing activities to keep the brain and body engaged. It can be picture books to chapter books. Have fun picking out books and talking about them as a family.

Activities do not have to be expensive. You can take walks in the neighborhood. Collecting items on the walk can spark creative thoughts and ideas to research and discover. You can have the kids draw pictures and present what they found.

Just a simple trip to the store can be mentally engaging. Talk about budging and if you have $20 dollars how many boxes of cereal you can buy? It can be for them to figure out if this item is on sale for 25% off and what is the actual price. Have them figure out sales taxes. It gives the child practice with math, estimation, planning, etc.

Think about all the activities you do daily. Putting dishes in the dishwasher can be engaging by estimating how long it takes to fill it or put the dishes away. For example, it 5 minutes to put the dishes away and 12 minutes to fill the dishwasher. How long did it take in total? Relate it to what the children are doing. If they play sports, you can keep stats and scores and estimations and predictions.

The possibilities are endless. It is how you think about things. Avoiding learning loss is to engage the children in activities that get their minds thinking. Have them actively involved in learning in the summer and they will not know it is learning. Be creative and have fun!