With finals and tests behind them, school is out and summer break is here for kids! Summer is a much need break for students to regroup and have fun before moving on to the next chapter of life, which usually means the next grade or set of courses. However, summer is also a time where students can lose a lot of the skills they learned the previous year. Students lose about 2.6 months of math learning during the summer, on average. This is known as the “summer slide.”
Summer learning loss can be present in many subjects, and according to researchers, it can have long term effects, including lower self-confidence, lower test scores and a lower chance of overall success in school. Many teachers understand that summer slide occurs for a lot of students and will spend the first month or 2 just covering skills that were taught the previous spring. This is especially true with math, because concepts build on each other so much.
While awareness is the first step in preventing the summer slide, there are other active ways to prevent this. The summer months are an ideal time to keep practicing last year’s learning and possibly introduce new concepts that will help in the upcoming year. Again, summer should be fun, and without kids being in school and attending extracurricular activities, they are less tired and have more time. It’s then a great way to incorporate some of activities below into your summer routine.
Music and math are the perfect duet! From rhythmic patterns to sound waves, math is what give music structure and what keeps it sounding good. Having your child attend a music camp, summer concerts, and listening to music at home can help them connect math to the real world. Even simple songs like No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed incorporate basic math skills, including counting and subtraction (by reducing numbers with each verse), matching and comparing (through changes and pitch) and pattern sequencing (through a repetitive melody, lyrics and rhythm).
Not that everything is about keeping score, but keeping score is certainly a good way to practice math! And scores are really just the beginning of using math for sports fans. Encouraging your child to keep tabs on their favorite baseball teams and players is a great way to practice counting, addition, subtraction, estimation and statistics. There are also fantasy team leagues that can be played to really help practice math.
Most places won’t hire until kids are at least 15 years old, but that shouldn’t stop your child from trying to work in exchange for money. Babysitting, yardwork, making lemonade or goods to sell at craft fairs, walking dogs and pet and house sitting are all things your kids could potentially do to help them make some extra cash. The earning and exchange of money is one of the best practical uses of math and, who knows – maybe it might start a little entrepreneurial seed in your child that will blossom as they grow older to become a legitimate business plan.
Summer is great for the freedom, but some of your child’s summer should include some routine and books are a great pastime to add to that routine. Reading books about math benefits kids in two ways; math and reading. It’s then a great way to prevent summer slide. “The Number Devil” by Hans Magnus, “Math Curse” by Jon Scieszka and any of the “Sir Cumference” series books by Cindy Neuschwander are all recommendations, and there are many more recommendations we have, depending on age.
When there are days you can take off, go to museums! Many cities have museums that are very engaging for kids and adults and so many exploratory museums have math-focused experiences. From kinetic interactive exhibits, to science experiments, to imagination driven history, science museums are a great way to stimulate your brain to think mathematically. Imagining a future using science is a great way for your kid to pass summer time.
Summer is not only a time for possible loss of knowledge, but looking at the positive side, it also presents a time for kids to focus on areas that were sticky while they were in school and get a little ahead of the math curriculum and concepts they will be headed into in the next grade. They can learn at their own pace in the summer, too, which provides less pressure. If you’re interested in looking for summer math programs that specialize in creative, effective ways to teach math and works with your family’s schedule, we’re happy to help at Mathnasium of Parker. We offer Summer Programs that focus on multiplication, long division, fractions, algebra and more. We help kids head into the school year successful, while having fun.
This summer, have some fun in the sun and let your kid discovers how fun math learning can be!
