How to Prevent Summer Slide: 6 Tips from a Play Therapist
Takeaway: Did you know that children lose much of what they learn throughout the school year during summer break? Known as the summer slide, this learning loss can be detrimental to your child’s academic success if not accounted for. In this blog, I’ll discuss how to prevent this for your child during summer vacation.
Warmer weather means more time in your schedule to take a summer vacation, sleep late, and spend time with friends and family. For children, it's also a time to relax and have fun—things that aren't necessarily associated with the school year.
Yet, year after year, I see kids struggle to adjust to summer break after a rigorous school year, making it harder and harder to enjoy their free time.
Alongside restlessness and potential behavior challenges, a break from classes may also increase a child's risk for summer learning loss, also known as the summer slide. The costs of this learning loss are significant, potentially causing lower academic success as they enter the next grade.
So, in the middle of summer's carefree days, sprinkle educational activities into your routine to help your child retain the new skills they worked hard for this academic year.
In this blog, I'll review several tips I recommend to help prevent summer learning loss in children and offer ideas on activities that support learning.
What is the summer slide?
Summer slide is a learning loss that can occur between school years when children aren't engaged in educational activities.
One of the first research papers published about this phenomenon compares it to drops in standardized achievement tests, but it also affects students across all grade levels and all classes.
Younger children, like those in the first and fifth grade, who are still developing reading, writing, and math skills, are particularly susceptible to the summer slide, with some children losing up to two or three months of what they learned during the school year.
Why should parents prevent summer slide?
Summer learning loss puts your child at a disadvantage when the new school year starts, causing them to fall behind in academic skills, but the biggest disadvantage?
Over time, the summer slide can snowball, making it increasingly difficult for children to catch up academically. This can affect their confidence and motivation to learn in and out of the classroom, as students may feel overwhelmed or discouraged by the gap between their current abilities and grade-level expectations.
It also exacerbates the achievement gap, which occurs when one group of students significantly outperforms another. Research from the National Center for Education Statistics shows this gap between white children and students from diverse cultures or low income students, highlighting the need to motivate kids and parents alike to not leave education behind during the summer months.
However, some kids don't show signs of the summer slide until it's too late. It may be the next time their learning is evaluated before your child's teacher notices any deficits or problems in their learning.
That's why exploring options for early and consistent intervention is so important.
6 Summer Break Tips From a Play Therapist
Now, it's time to answer the question you've likely been wondering since the beginning of the blog: what can you do to prevent the summer slide or any more discreet forms of summer learning loss?
Like many parents, it's hard to know where to start. After all, it's summer, so you want your kids to enjoy it. But learning and having fun can go hand in hand. You have to get creative!
Here are six tips to help prevent the summer slide with your kids before the upcoming school year.
1. Create learning goals.
Work with your child to identify areas they want to improve, such as reading a certain number of books or mastering multiplication tables.
Write the goals down and display them somewhere visible, like on the fridge. You can also break larger goals into smaller, manageable tasks so they don’t get overwhelmed.
Lastly, consistently check in about these goals all summer, especially improving reading comprehension or problem solving.
These goals also help prepare children for the next school year by familiarizing them with some sort of structure. Your child's teachers will thank you for doing this, too!
2. Incorporate math into everyday activities.
Learning new math knowledge starts with making the activities fun. Since up to 40% of kids are behind in math, math learning activities are essential to have in your summer plans. Bring math into your everyday activities by having your kids cook meals with you. Have them measure and count ingredients and figure out how long to cook food. This is also a good way to help kids, especially picky eaters, explore new foods.
3. Take advantage of community resources and educational programs.
Let your kids choose what they participate in during the summer, whether they want to be a part of community service projects, summer camps, or reading groups. They'll meet new friends and prepare for school at the same time.
If your community has few free resources, you still have options. Explore the available programs and come up with new concepts to do at home.
4. Visit your local library.
Summer break is the perfect time to encourage kids to get more involved with reading, even if they aren't thrilled about it. Visit your local library to inspire your kids to start reading. Who knows, they may end up there all summer long!
Also, don't be afraid to explore other reading options, like audiobooks or reading out loud, to help your child develop the skills they need before school starts again. Even though your child won't necessarily be reading words on a page, they will be absorbing new knowledge in a format that works for them. Some research shows that most children who practice reading aloud with their parents enjoy it and consider it a special time with their parents.
5. Make learning fun by planning hands-on activities.
Learning has to be fun, even for the most academically inclined kids. Something as simple as engaging in 30 minutes of physical activity per day or making flowers out of construction paper helps to keep your kid's mind focused on learning and fun. The more hands-on, the better!
Here are a few more examples for summer activities that help students learn:
Make a volcano with baking soda and vinegar to teach basic chemistry concepts
Create a summer reading treasure hunt to hone reading skills
Go to an escape room to help them learn problem-solving skills
6. Monitor screen time.
While technology can be a valuable tool for learning, it's essential to monitor screen time to ensure kids have a balanced approach during the summer. By setting limits on screen time for fun, you're setting standards that their teachers likely set at school and in the classroom. Instead of allowing them to play video games or watch TV for hours on end, encourage your child to use educational apps and websites. However, let's be honest, you may need some serious motivational skills to make this happen during the summer. This is where planning fun activities comes into play during the summer.
Promote Summer Learning With Linden Tree Counseling
Are you worried about getting your child ready for summer learning? Are you considering summer school but looking at other options? Or do you have a child who enjoys learning, but isn't motivated to do summer learning?
If any of these questions apply to you, take advantage of counseling as a resource to help alleviate the anxieties you and your kids may have about the summer slide. Learning doesn't have to be a chore, and working through mental blocks helps students succeed instead of increasing their risk of falling behind.
