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What is the Summer Slide and How to Stop it

June 1, by Sarah White. Leave a Comment

Reading daily is a great way to help prevent the summer slide. Check out these other tips.My daughter is 6 and she’s been out of school for about a week already. This long summer — 12 weeks! — is great for lots of fun and time together, but it’s easy to see how all that time away from the classroom might cause her skills to slip a bit.

This phenomenon has a name, the summer slide, and it’s a real thing. Research has shown that kids do less well on standardized tests at the end of summer than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer, and kids can lose up to two months of grade level equivalency in math skills over the summer.

Of course we don’t want summer to feel like school, for our kids or for us, but there are simple things we can do to help prevent or at least limit summer slide.

One of the most important things we can do is to keep our kids reading. Just 20 minutes a day is enough to keep up that skill. Plan a weekly trip to the library and let you kids check out whatever they want, then make time daily for you to read to them, for them to read to you and for silent reading (or any combination depending on your child’s age).

Another great idea is taking kids to museums, historical sites and cultural events and to talk about what you see and how those things and activities relate to things they’ve been learning. We’re heading to the children’s museum this afternoon, which has great STEM activities as well as more traditional play.

Work a little age-appropriate learning into your day, whether through at-home science experiments, online math games or even watching educational videos. Search online for learning activities related to your child’s interests to make learning more fun for them. I added some activities related to math, typing and reading into our summer activity pot, so when she’s looking for something to do she knows those sorts of things are options.

If you have the means, enrolling kids in summer learning opportunities is also a great way to beat the summer slide. Whether it’s a weeklong engineering camp, an art day camp or a full-on summer program, every little bit of learning helps. My daughter will actually be in a summer program for about half the summer, and while it’s not the same as a classroom, it should keep her focused on learning in a fun way through the summer.

Need more ideas for beating the summer slide? Check out these tips from the Jenny Evolution and the Department of Education.

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Have you read?

10 Fun Ways to Decorate Easter Eggs

If you’re looking to go beyond the dye kits at the store for your Easter eggs this year, I’ve collected 10 fun ways to dye or otherwise decorate your Easter eggs. These are fun STEM and craft experiments for kids and are pretty fun for grownups, too.

One of the most popular ways to dye Easter eggs while still using items from the store is to use natural dyeing methods with vegetables, fruit and spices. I’m sharing links to a few different posts here because people have slightly different methods or recipes for achieving different colors, but the basic procedure explained by Real Life at Home is a good one. 

Check the recipe suggestions at Kaleyann, Mommypotamus and Your Home Based Mom, and let kids raid the kitchen or pick some fun things from the grocery store to try. Make sure to keep good records so you can repeat the process next year!

Another easy method to try is dyeing eggs with food coloring. This can make more vibrant colors than you tend to get from natural dyes, but it’s still an easy method and can be done with things you already have in the house. Check out these tips from Studio DIY to get started.

If you want to use food coloring to color your eggs but want to give them a different look, try this method of dyeing eggs with rice from Kids Activity Zone. Or get a marbled look by dyeing eggs with whipped cream, like these from My Home Based Life. So fun and messy!

For less traditional looking eggs, try dyeing eggs with old silk ties or shirts. The pattern from the fabric transfers to the egg in a unique way that’s a lot of fun to try. Get the instructions from A Thrifty Mom.

Use markers and coffee filters for an easy, pretty, low-mess way to color eggs. Learn how at The Savvy Sparrow. Or bring some nature to your egg decorating with these pretty pressed flower eggs from Little Pine Learners.

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