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 9th grade, summer losses are considered responsible for 2/3 of the achievement gap. Let’s consider our visual kids. Many of them have already been struggling in school and can’t afford any leaks.
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. If this is your child, it sounds like you have what I affectionately call an ‘art kid’.
The key to prevent 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. Summer is great for messy, creative and experimental activities because everything can be done outside!
It’s common over the summer for the kids to lose some of those hard-earned handwriting skills that they practiced all year at school. With all the playing and creating, they may not get a lot of opportunities to physically write things down to stay in practice. We’ve made something great just for you. Well – for you and your young writer.
This Independence Day, encourage the knowledge of what this day signifies by having the kids sit down for a few minutes and draw this cartoon soldier.
Father’s Day is a great time to do some experimenting with dad. Dads just seem to have that way of jumping right in and letting the open-ended learning develop and, there is nothing like spending some quality time exploring and testing out some math and science theories with him. Shh, don’t tell him that you’re learning while you’re playing.
Art matters, being creative matters. The right side of our brains are there for a reason – and it’s up to us to develop and use all the gifts we have been given. So have some fun finding ways for your kids to explore and enjoy doing art. And invite your self to the party.
