What is the Summer Slide and How to Stop it

June 1, 2016 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

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.

Have you read?

Books About Bugs Through the Seasons

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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