Ways to keep your kid’s brain sharp all summer

As far as your kids are concerned, being out of school for the summer months is all about doing things that matter to them. There’s summer camp, travel, time spent playing with friends and other kid-friendly activities. Summer break is the time that they’ve been looking forward to for months and usually they are grateful to get out of the classroom at last.

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For parents, however, it’s those many weeks of being away from class that can cause them to lose a little bit of what they learned during the school year. When classes resume in the fall, both parents and kids scramble to make up for knowledge and comprehension skills that are lost over the two to three months of summer vacation. Here are some ideas on how to keep your kids’ brain active and help to keep them ready to return to school in the autumn.

Encourage Summer Reading

Kids love a good story and books can offer an incredible doorway into other times, places and worlds by keeping their imaginations active. In addition to story hour at the children’s section at most public libraries, there are many which also offer summer reading programs or clubs that offer rewards for reading a certain number of books. If there is no library close by, you can do something similar at home by creating charts or projects that center around fiction and non-fiction reading over the summer months.

Play Board and Card Games

Playtime can also double as learning time with games that don’t have to be played through a screen and encourage their ability to think.

●    Card games such as Uno and Skip-Bo utilize numbers, addition and counting in order to play and win the game.

●    Scrabble has long been a favourite for players of all ages as a way to increase vocabulary and concentration skills. Players create words in a crossword fashion. Each letter is given a value so both maths and reading can play a part in this game. The player with the highest score from putting together words from the tiles that they are given wins.

●    Bingo is one of the world’s most versatile games and can be easily adapted to teach almost any subject. Math bingo can teach kids at every grade level, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, geometry or even algebra.

Online Games and Applications         

The best type of play for kids is that which encourages them to be outside and out enjoying the days of summer. During those times, there is no need for an electronic device. However, there can be some time allowed for computer games as well. Here are some popular games and apps that also help keep young minds sharp:

ABCMouse (https://www.abcmouse.com) – This website offers learning games for the computer, tablet or smart device. There are a number of games that offer reading, mathematics, language skills or social studies. Kids can even play bingo games online. This app may also be downloaded from either Google Play or the Apple Store so kids can play anytime and anywhere.

Brilliant - Designed for junior high, high school and adult students, this app offered by Google allows users to sign up for free to learn about math and science projects through their social media or email account.  

These are just a few of the apps and activities that parents can do to help their kids avoid the so-called Summertime Slide and be ready once school starts again in the fall.