What is the “Summer Slide”?
The “Summer Slide” may sound like fun, but it’s definitely something you’ll want to keep your kids far away from this summer! It’s a phenomenon teachers know all too well the loss of knowledge and ability that typically occurs when formal education stops during the summer months.
- The average student loses approximately 2.6 months of grade-level equivalency in math computation skills over the summer months.
- Research shows ALL young people experience learning losses when they don’t engage in educational activities during the summer.
- Teachers typically spend 4 to 6 weeks re-teaching or reviewing material that students have forgotten over summer break.
In many ways, the brain is like a muscle and the old adage “use it or lose it” certainly holds true. Mental training can improve the brain, just as physical exercise can improve the body. So, here are some tips to keep your kids from “losing it” over the summer break.
Read Every Day!
Simply getting your child to read every day is a great way to slow the summer slide. According to Scholastic Parents Online, research shows that reading just six books during the summer may keep a struggling reader from regressing. When choosing the six, make sure they’re the right level–not too hard and not too easy.
Other Summer Learning Activities to Help
Many other simple, easy and fun activities can help you keep your kids off the Summer Slide, and possibly even make school easier for them when they return. These exercises keep the brain energized while building cognitive skills, the underlying mental abilities needed to learn. Some of these activities incorporate physical elements, some are perfect games to play in the car, and some are a great alternative to a video game when your child’s simply too hot, too tired or too sunburned to play outside.
When playing games with kids, parents should focus on seven major learning skills: attention, working memory, processing speed, long-term memory, logic and reasoning, auditory processing and visual processing.
The article is brought to you by the brain training experts at LearningRx
Michael Ginsberg is the owner of the LearningRx cognitive training centers in Marlboro and Red Bank, NJ. LearningRx, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the largest one-on-one brain training organization in the world. With 80 Centers in the U.S., and locations in 40 countries around the globe, LearningRx has helped more than 100,000 individuals and families sharpen their cognitive skills to help them think faster, learn easier, and perform better. Their on-site programs partner every client with a personal brain trainer to keep clients engaged, accountable, and on-task—a key advantage over online-only brain exercises. Their pioneering methods have been used in clinical settings for 35 years and have been verified as beneficial in peer-reviewed research papers and journals. To learn more about LearningRx visit www.learningrx.com.