summer learning - Stuff Parents Need

This post was sponsored by Carson–Dellosa as part of an Activation for Influence Central. I received complimentary products to facilitate my review. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Late last week we had the last day of first grade for my oldest child, Darah, and we pretty much immediately left after that event for our big family vacation. So for us, summer has officially begun!

Darah’s report card came home with her with some specific and helpful suggestions from her teacher about topics to give some extra attention to over the summer to help prevent that dreaded summer slide (a term referring to learning loss that can occur over extended breaks from school).

I’m really grateful for her suggestions, and it gave me a good start, but it wasn’t enough for me to feel as though I had a clear action plan. Searching Pinterest gave me TONS of ideas, but as a result, left me feeling completely overwhelmed about which activities to choose while also making sure that my daughter gets to simply be a kid and relax a bit. I have a really hard time finding that middle ground between overly scheduled days and total bedlam. Just me?

Oh, but friends, I have a FANTASTIC resource for you if you are looking for some help with your children as they leave one grade and prepare for the next. Carson-Dellosa (whose workbooks I simply adore) has just released Summer Bridge Activities workbooks and they are just exactly what I’ve been looking for to provide specific activities, a generous quantity of activities, yet not so much work that your child feels as though s/he is in summer school.

Check out what’s inside!

This book is broken into 3 sections (to go with the roughly 3 months of summer break) and each section has 20 lessons, for a total of 60 lessons to work on, little by little, over the entire summer. You can expect daily lessons to take roughly 15 minutes.

I love that each section covers a wide range of topics and skills (in fact, there’s an awesome chart that shows you which skills are being practiced for each lesson).

The learning activity pages seem appropriately challenging for a child who has gone through first grade, so the material shouldn’t be brand new, but it also isn’t basic (in other words, it’s not a review of the stuff your child was learning during the first few weeks of the school year).

I also am really impressed with all of the bonus learning opportunities. The book suggests various outdoor learning experiences, science experiments and social studies exercises. There’s even more great material that can be found online for free! And don’t forget about the suggested reading list, as well. I’ve already started requesting some of these titles from our local library. 🙂

Friends, I’m no stranger to workbooks. I’ve purchased dozens of them for extra enrichment. This summer bridge workbook is, without question, the most thorough and thoughtfully composed workbook I’ve ever seen. I very highly recommend it and I will most definitely be purchasing them in years to come for my girls. And right now you can score 25% off the price of Summer Bridge workbooks by using code SBA25 at checkout.

I feel so much less stressed about figuring out what I need to have Darah work on over the summer thanks to the resources available through Carson-Dellosa.

Have you started thinking about what you can be doing at home to help prevent summer learning loss? Any tips for the rest of us?

This post is brought to you by Camp Invention and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own, as always.

We are now less than 30 days away from my family’s week-long summer vacation. We love summer so much that we take our vacation the very first possible week of the break (in fact, my kiddos miss the last day of school! Ha!).

Once we return from our trip, though, it will be time to get in our summer rythym and I know from experience that if I try to wing it, it will be a disaster. The saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” is 100% true when it comes to summer break with kids.

Want to hear another phrase that can be painfully true? “Summer slide.” This refers to kids heading back to school in the fall having forgotten a fair chunk of the material they learned during the previous school year, and starting out behind. It is absolutely preventable, though, with a little planning on your part. Here are 5 things we are doing this summer to keep “summer slide” from occurring.

1. Communicate with Teachers

During the last week of school, I will be calling my daughters’ teachers and discussing where they are at in their learning paths and what we need to be working on during the summer. Your child’s teacher should have a very good handle on what is needed for continued success, so take advantage of their expertise and ask!

2. Gather Useful Resources

My girls really enjoy workbooks, so I have a large supply of those on hand. We also have a membership to ABCMouse.com, which they both enjoy immensely. Pinterest and your local library are also both incredible (and FREE!) resources for you to use. Find out what summer programs your local library might be holding and plan to take advantage of those. And go ahead and make a summer activities Pinterest board so you can start collecting great ideas.

3. Make a Plan for Your Unstructured Days

A little over half of my girls’ summer will be spent at home with me. I’ve learned that those “lazy days of summer” can quickly turn into boring days where kids just binge watch television all day long. But those days at home with mom are much more fun if I’ve spent a little bit of time the night before making a plan. I usually pick out some workbook activities for the day, a craft, a book or two to read, an outdoor activity and some less structured invitations to play, as well (bubbles, art supplies on display, puzzles on the table, etc.). I’ve found that throwing a bit of structure into the day makes things easier for everyone at home. And if the kids are used to only getting a small amount of screen time each day, they will be less likely to turn to it as a default when they are bored.

4. Choose Summer Camps (and Choose Wisely!)

I have enrolled my kids in summer day camps for 5 weeks of the summer, as well. I think summer camps are such a great resource, and I would highly encourage every parent out there to find at least one summer camp for their child each summer, if not more. I do want to caution you, though, that not all summer camps are equal! Be sure to read program descriptions carefully, talk with other parents who have enrolled their children in the camps in the past, and think critically about what might be an enjoyable, yet challenging experience for your child. You can also search for camps with a specific focus, such as a list of swimming camps or ones that focus on STEM or dance.

For example, Camp Invention is the only nationally recognized summer program that has a focus on real-world problem solving through innovation and creativity. Kids get to use science, technology, engineering and mathematics (that’s STEM!) and they have an absolute blast while doing so. Camp Invention curriculum is developed by inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and members of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. So the projects your children will work on are designed by the people who invent and help others invent for a living. How awesome is that?! Curriculum changes every year, and you can click here to learn more about what’s happening at the Summer 2016 camps. There are over 1,400 locations across the nation!

5. Visit Nearby Educational Hot Spots

Wherever you live, there are likely MANY great places to visit within a 3 hour driving distance (that’s the max time for us to do a day trip…your max time may be different). For us, we’ve got our own fabulous city full of great museums and other attractions, and we are striking distance from Knoxville, Nashville, Birmingham and Atlanta. We have many great choices of places to visit, and I have picked out a handful of museums for our family to choose from this summer. We will take a family vote to decide where we are going. We’ll do day trips on week days to help keep the crowd factor a bit lower. They will be fun educational trips that are totally different from our usual days at home, and will only cost us the drive and admission.

I hope I gave you some helpful tips to ensure that summer slide is not one of the things your kids experience this summer. And if you loved the idea of Camp Invention, I’ve got great news! If you register your child before May 10 you can get $15 off by using the code SPRING. Families with 3 or more siblings in the same household signed up for camp can earn $50 off per child.

And it gets better! The first 20 people to forward their registration confirmation email, along with the name of my blog, to communications@invent.org will get an additional $25 refund. Woo hoo! The refund will show up on your credit card 7-10 daus after sending the email. I’ll take down this offer once 20 people have taken advantage, so if you are reading this, then the offer should still be available!