Search Results for: Brain Drain

July 25 2016

What Are They Going to Do in the Car?

Bette Fetter Activities, Tools & Tips, Tools & Tips videos, Videos, Vocabulary and Sight Words activities for kids, geography games, kids activities, kids games, road trip activities, road trip games, summer brain drain, summer learning learning activities, summer slide

It can seem overwhelming to be stuck in a car for hours on end with the kids and you may be worrying about how to keep them entertained and engaged.

I have great news!

Road trips provide a unique opportunity for learning with your captive audience and I have some great ideas for ways to make it fun and engaging while learning a little something along the way.

Here’s a taste of what we have in the eBook.

• Fun with Maps
• Road Trip Bingo
• Billboard ABCs

Remember, learning games can also be played in the car on road trips. I’ve added a couple art and movement activities to ramp up the fun factor and keep it visual too.

These activities should keep them busy for hours. But just to change it up a bit, don’t forget to try the classics like, I Spy and 20 Questions. Keep it light and fun!

Download my eBook Stop Summer Brain Drain: 7 Creative Ways and see what kind of learning develops while you’re on the road.

July 20 2016

A Handy Summer Learning Schedule

Bette Fetter Activities, Education Extras, Tools & Tips activities for kids, brain drain, free ebook, infographic, kids schedule, summer learning, summer reading

The first step to keeping the brain drain plugged is having a plan for the summer. I have created this simple infographic to help you with your summer learning plan.

Our new summer eBook is perfect for keeping brains active. “Stop Summer Brain Drain: 7 Creative Ways” has insider tricks, like this handy schedule, on how to stop summer learning loss. Download it today!

July 14 2016

Is Knowledge Leaking Out?

Bette Fetter Creativity, Education Extras, Handwriting Help, Reading Tips, Tools & Tips, Writing Tips brain drain, brain games for kids, drain brain, summer brain drain, summer break, summer bridge activities, summer learning loss, summer reading, summer slide

The laid back scheduling of summer can lead to some summer knowledge leaks. Lucky for you we’ve created a new eBook to keep brains active this summer. “Stop Summer Brain Drain: 7 Creative Ways,” has insider tricks on how to stop summer learning loss. Download the book today.

June 20 2016

Keep Reading This Summer

Bette Fetter Activities, Reading Tips, Tools & Tips videos, Videos alternative reading ideas, brain drain, free ebook, fun reading activities for kids, reading help, sneaky reading tips, summer break, summer reading

The best way to keep the brain drain at bay is to continue reading everyday throughout the summer. It doesn’t have to be just sitting down and reading a book, there are lots of ways to sneak reading into your day. Find other ways for the kids to make connections to the material. Just 20-30 minutes per day of any kind of reading is going to keep them fluent while exposing them to new ideas and ways of reading.

Try these simple ways to make reading fun.

• The library summer reading program
• Audio books and literacy apps.
• Read summer reading lists together
• Have a family book contest.
• Poems, magazines, nonfiction, comic books, etc.
• Compare the movie and the book.

June 13 2016

DON’T Let the Learning Stop

Bette Fetter Activities, Creativity, Hot Topics, Tools & Tips, Tools & Tips videos, Videos brain games for kids, drain brain, free ebook, summer brain drain, summer learning loss, summer reading, summer slide

Learning shouldn’t stop just because it is summer break… Get the new eBook from Bette Fetter, Young Rembrandts founder and CEO and stop summer learning loss.

If summer days are consistently lazy – a significant amount of what went into building your child’s brain during the school year will start to leak out. Summer brain drain can amount to a significant learning loss, as much as 2 ½ months per student, with the biggest losses in math and reading. Consistent summer losses can cause a child to be 2 years behind their peers by 6th grade. By 9^th grade, summer losses are considered responsible for 2/3 of the achievement gap. When kids head back to the classroom in the fall, teachers spend valuable teaching time, anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks, re-teaching what was lost over the summer.

Get it today!

June 2 2016

Watch Out for Summer Slide!

Bette Fetter Activities, Creativity, Handwriting Help, Reading Tips, Resources, Tools & Tips, Writing Tips activities for kids, drawing for kids, kids activities, kids games, multi-sensory learning, prevent summer slide, summer learning loss

Kids can lose up to 2 months of what they’ve already learned over the laid back days of summer. Don’t let your child fall behind. We have created an eBook full of fun and free ways to keep the learning alive without sacrificing the freedom that no school allows. Get on the list to be the first to receive Stop Summer Brain Drain 7 Creative Ways when it is released on June 6th. And, sneak some learning into the play this summer.

July 20 2015

Why Summer Art?

Bette Fetter Creativity, Education Extras, Tools & Tips, Visual Learner activities for children, activities for kids, art class for kids, art classes for kids, Art for Kids, art workshops, Bette Fetter, brain based learning, children education, differentiated learning, drawing for kids, kids activities, kids and art, kids learning, learning for kids, learning kids, multisensory learning, visual learning, visual thinking, Young Rembrandts

Do you have a kid that wants to spend their summer doing art? They want to build things. Make things. Draw things. Paint and color. All day. Every day. They just can’t seem to get enough. It seems that’s all they’re interested in. And maybe you’re wondering what’s going on or is there something else they should be doing ?

If this is your child, it sounds like you have what I affectionately call an ‘art kid’. Art kids are visual learners, driven to satisfy what the right side of their brain is craving and that’s art. Their brain wants hands on creative activity. The right side of everyone’s brain is about innovation and big picture thinking and, doing art is the way young children best explore, satisfy and develop this side of them.

Why so much art in the summer? The right side of our brain is always driven to do art. It needs art the way a fish needs water. But during the school year there are many other things to attend to and unfortunately not enough time devoted to the arts. This is even more of a predicament when schools don’t include art as a core subject or integral part of a child’s learning. Visual kids need art to learn and without it they’re fish out of water.

Summer is a perfect time to indulge and immerse in art. The ‘lazy days’ of summer are by design full of opportunity to think, day dream, imagine – all things that can lead to endless hours of creative pursuit. And not to worry, when your kids are busy doing art, they’re also busy building their brains. The right side of the brain thinks in color and pictures. It sees and thinks 3-dimensionally. It craves multisensory input, thinks in patterns and loves the pursuit and expression of multiple ways of seeing. Doing art allows the brain to do what it does best.

So whether it’s a morning spent drawing, building and making or an afternoon at art and drawing camp; relax, knowing great things are happening in your child’s development. Your kids are happy. They’re minds are active. Their brains are growing. Their hearts are full.

For some more great ideas for keeping the Summer Brain Drain at bay, check out my other STOP Summer Brain Drain posts.

July 15 2015

19 Easy and Educational Family Activities

Bette Fetter Activities activities for children, activities for kids, activity for kids, Being Visual, Bette Fetter, children education, craft activities for kids, educational games for kids, elementary, engineering, fun learning activities for kids, games for children, handwriting, kids activities, kids games, math games for kids, multisensory learning, physics, science, science projects, stem education, story starters, story writing, summer activities, summer activities for children, summer activities for kids, turn off the tv this summer, visual thinker

The key to preventing summer learning loss for all kids, especially visual learners, is to make learning hands on, make it visual, add lots of art and time to create and above all – make it FUN. There are tons of great ideas out there and we’ve been busy gathering the best and brightest ideas for you and your visual learner. Summer lends itself to messy, creative and experimental activities because everything can be done outside! As part of our Summer Brain Drain series, I would like to offer you a list of simple, fun and educational activities to try with the kids this summer.

Make some “snow”, only 2 ingredients and soooo much fun!! Click here to learn how.
How creative can you be with a cardboard box? Check out these ideas to keep the kids innovating on a rainy day.
Explore polymers with this glitter slime recipe!
Encourage the kids to play in the mud with this Mud Paint Recipe!
Discover physics with this Paper Airplane Experiment!
Don’t let the kids spend a rainy day inside have some fun with these Get Up & Move Dice!
Go for a nature walk collecting sticks, flowers, leaves… then make art out of your findings.
Get the kids to tell stories and work on composition writing with some help from Story Stones!
This family friendly engineering activity can bring everyone’s creativity to life: Build a Fort.
Draw outside with Squirt Bottle Sidewalk Chalk.
Keep cool and learn about the laws of matter with this sponge transfer activity.
Practice spelling and letter recognition with Backyard Scrabble.
Create you own giant board game for the backyard.
Put a science spin on bubble blowing with Alien Bubbles.
Work on color, shape or letter recognition with Escape the Volcano.
Encourage your little geneticist by extracting DNA from a strawberries.
It’s not too late to create a summer bucket list and practice writing too.
Summer is the perfect time to create an outdoor science lab.
Refine those story writing skills with mini-picture books.

For more STEAM activity ideas, take a look at my Pinterest board. Get out there and experiment with the kids. Who knows what they will discover.

July 8 2015

Play IS Research

Bette Fetter Inspirational Quotes, Visual Learner Albert Einstein, Being Visual, Bette Fetter, children and learning, children education, Einstein quotes, kids learning, kinesthetic learning, learning for kids, learning kids, learning quotes, play-based learning, quotes from Albert Einstein, value of play, visual learning

Keep brain drain at bay this summer by encouraging the kids to get outdoors and explore, create and innovate. They are researching for the future.

June 21 2022

Draw Kids Into Reading

Bette Fetter Reading Tips draw for comprehension, drawing and reading, read draw write, reading comprehension, reading help, sneaky reading tips, summer reading tips

Today I have an easy, fun activity you can do with your young reader to improve reading comprehension, story writing and handwriting. It’s a very simple reading, writing and drawing activity that’s easy to adapt for any reading level. To do this you’ll need my story paper, a book or story your child can read on their own and a pencil.

The complexity of the book or story depends on their reading level. You want it to be something they understand and are comfortable with; especially for the first few times you do this.

Step One: READ

Start by reading the story, or part of the story. For kids 3-6 years old, you can read to them, and the activity will center around your child retelling what they heard. For kids 6-9 years old, they do the reading on their own.

BVLearning Activity_ReadandDraw — Click the image to get this activity.

Step Two: DRAW

After reading or listening to the story, have your child draw on the top half of the story paper. They will draw a picture of something that happened in the story. Don’t worry about the ‘quality’ of the drawing, or assume that if you’re not comfortable drawing, they won’t be either. Young kids, especially right-brain thinkers, will jump at the chance to draw what they’re thinking instead of writing it out.

Step Three: WRITE

Once they’ve thought about the story and done their drawing, they’re going to write a few sentences to explain it. First have them tell you about their drawing. This is huge for connecting and making sense out of what they read. This is what reading comprehension is all about! After talking about their drawing together, have them write a few sentences about their drawing on the bottom half of the story paper. Younger kids may need some suggestions to get started but the picture they drew will be a huge help.

This is a great activity to do with readers of all ages, just adapt it to match different reading levels. Enjoy talking about the story and the characters. Enjoy the story in pictures and overall keep it light. Make it fun. Remember this is not another chance to be graded or judged on spelling, handwriting and drawing – to be effective it needs to be spontaneous and organic.

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Search Results for: Brain Drain

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