Summer Fun

Summer is almost here and with that comes a break from school. This break is needed but it is important to keep children’s brains active during this time off.  According to the US Department of Education the average student loses 25% of their reading skills and 2.6 months of math skills over the summer.

There are several fun ways to help children exercise their brains. One way is to play 20 questions. The adult should think of a person, place or thing and the child can ask up to 20 questions that will help them guess what the noun is. This helps with reasoning, logic and memory. Another game is to have a kid think for a few rhyming words and then link them together in a short story or poem. If the child is old enough to write then encouraging them to write down their story can also help with writing skills.

Another great idea is to encourage a love for reading. There are many wonderful stories to share with kids. One of my favorites is the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osbourne. These can be found at most libraries and book stores. Most libraries have a story time that help encourage reading as well. If possible, allow the child pick out a couple of books and then alternate with them reading to you and you reading to them. This helps enhance their reading and listening/auditory skills.

Most kids really enjoy playing on the computer. There are some wonderful, educational websites that help encourage learning. They have games that help increase both reading and math skills as well as comprehension and reasoning. A few examples are: www.starfall.com, www.kidsknowit.com, www.gamequarium.com, and www.howstuffworks.com .

The last suggestion is to either create your own, or purchase age appropriate flash cards. If there is something in particular that the child struggles with throughout the year, then focus on enhancing or at least maintaining that skill. For example, if a child struggles with addition, then create or buy math flashcards and have them sit down for 10 minutes a day and practice. Feel free to make this more fun for them by creating a chart. They can put an X every time they practice and at the end of the week if they did their cards every day, they can get a small prize. Or maybe once they get all the right answers they can have a reward.

However you choose to cultivate learning with children, always make sure to stay positive, uplifting and most importantly have fun!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Raleigh Nanny & Babysitting Blog, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.