Great Summer Reading
St. Charles Summer Math Programs Add Up To Success!
Summer Brain Drain is the widely acknowledged loss of academic skills which happens during school's summer break. Studies cite anywhere from about 2.5 months to 3 weeks of learning lost or forgotten when skills are not being practiced.
When most of us parents worry about keeping our kids at the top of their game, we find a good summer reading program from the local library or book store. If we think there's a reading problem, we might step it up a notch and sign the kids up for an engaging summer reading program from a local tutor or learning center.
Check. Done. Right? NO!
Turns out, math skills deteriorate more from summer brain drain and deserve at least as much attention as reading skills. A thorough review of 39 studies concluded that math suffers the most from lack of practice during the long summer break.
Of course we can involve our kids with practical math in fun ways at home. One of my favorites is reviewing fractions while making cookies (e.g. measure two quarter cups of brown sugar because I need a half cup total). These at-home math drills can easily be adjusted for the appropriate age and grade with older students calculating surface area for painting projects and younger students counting out the right number of nails. Little gardeners can figure out how many plants or seeds to buy to fill an area with tomato plants. Young travelers can map out a journey and estimate how long the trip will take. Shoppers can calculate sale prices or which paper towel package has the lowest per unit cost.
While these activities help, especially when you know and focus on your child's weaker areas and computations which are easily forgotten, studies still show that much of the computational skills which generally are not practiced over the summer, are simply forgotten. For this very reason, many schools have changed from a traditional school year calendar to year round school.
Most states in the U.S. now have some schools with year round calendars. Many schools are currently debating or actively switching to year round schedules. If your child is not attending school year round, studies show he or she will be forgetting at least one month of math each summer, and that summer loss is cumulative. Your child will forget about a year of math instruction and will later be competing with students who had the advantage of year round school.
So what is a concerned parent to do?
The best solution I've found is to enroll kids in a great summer math program. While not as readily available as summer reading programs, summer math programs are out there and are even more important.
Some things to consider are as follows.
Is the program is individualized and targeted to your child?
Is the curriculum is both fun and comprehensive?
Are the teachers academically qualified with appropriate degrees?
Will you receive appropriate reports to track your student's progress?
Does the program deliver results?
This summer, give your child the opportunity to have fun and get a step ahead of the coming school year. Your choice of summer activity will either leave your child behind, with the old summer brain drain, or put your student far ahead of her peers, and spare you the tortuous nights struggling with math homework next school year. Polish those math skills this summer, and your student will shine later!
About the Author
I am a former elementary school teacher and mother of three (usually) wonderful children. I currently live in St. Charles, IL.
I have investigated the local summer math program options here in St. Charles, Illinois and found Learning Ascent's program to be clearly the best. You can find more info. here. http://www.learningascent.com/math/stcharlessummermath.html
I would encourage you to use the information in my article to carefully evaluate any summer math program before you choose one over another.
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