Top Tips on Preventing Brain Drain this Summer!

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - May 22nd, 2015

Top Tips on Preventing Brain Drain this Summer!

It’s that time of year again with sleep away camps, vacations and swimming! With all the fun in the sun it’s easy to forget about keeping your child’s mind active during the long break from school. Unfortunately, many parents forget that a long break from school means the “summer slide”. With the heat of the summer means that the learning from the previous school year starts to melt away.

Sign-up for our free webinar on how to avoid the summer slide!

Here are some scary facts about the summer slide:

• Kids not involved in summer education backslide an average of 2.6 months in math and 2 months in reading.
• Learning loss is cumulative and can put a 5^th grader as much as 2.5 years behind in reading and math.
• All kids fall behind if they aren’t engaged in summer academic enrichment.

The good news is this doesn’t mean you have to do workbooks with your child to keep the summer slide from creeping in. There are lots of fun and engaging activities that stimulate a child’s love of learning. Here are a few suggestions:

• Choose wisely – TV and computer time!
• Reading – 30 minutes a day
  • Child’s choice
  • Family chapter book
• Family Vacation Scrapbook project
• Brain Quest decks, Highlights Magazines
• Word-a-Day
• Summer Diary
• Summer Passion Project – research project
• Cool Family Field Trips
• Free Play
• Do math just for the fun of it!
  • chess and checkers
  • tangrams
  • dominoes
  • sewing
  • card games (go fish, uno)
  • board games
  • origami
  • construction toys

Sign-up for our free webinar on how to avoid the summer slide!

 At Testing Mom we have tons of online learning activities as well to help your child avoid the summer slide. If your child is going to be online make sure it’s not mindless games and activities but rather learning time.

To get your little ones mind a jump start against the “summer slide” here are a couple of practice questions given to 4-year-olds to get into gifted programs across the US. Ask your child these questions to get a head start then get 100 more FREE practice questions (pre-K to 8th grade)!

Take a look at the pictures across the top. They show a piece of paper being folded. Then, one or more holes are punched in the folded piece of paper. Can you touch the answer that shows what the square piece of paper will look like when it is unfolded? Answer: 2

 2. Look at the shapes in the boxes on the top 2 rows. Do you see how they are related to each other? Can you find the answer that goes in the empty box so the shapes in the bottom row will relate to each other in the same way as the shapes in the top 2 rows? Answer: D