Avoiding the Summer Slide
Making Kids Use Their Minds in the Summer
As a high school teacher, I knew that the “Summer Slide” was a real thing. I could tell which children actually read during the summer and which ones did not. (Here is some more information on the Summer Slide from Scholastic.) It was very evident in their reading and writing, so I decided that I would do everything I could to prevent my own children from losing educational ground during the summer. Here are some things that worked really well in our house.
Educational Workbooks Every Summer
I didn’t want to spend all summer finding materials or making this some big assignment. I found grade level workbooks at Sam’s Club that were pretty inexpensive. These workbooks have multiple content areas in one book. I typically purchased the grade level that the children had just finished, so the book served as a review of the things they learned that year in school. They only had to do one page from each content area. This realistically only took my kids about 15 minutes each day. When they were younger, I would tear the pages out and have them ready for them. As they got older, I allowed them to choose which pages they worked on each day.
Now that they are in their teens, I allow them to do online review from a program that our school utilizes for test prep.
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My mother-in-law once made fun of me for doing this, and she didn’t really see the point. She even watched them for a week while my husband and I were on vacation, and I had all of their daily sheets in a folder. They did their work each day without being told. A couple of years later, one of her other children was having issues with their child falling behind during the summer. She was very quick to admit that the summer workbooks must really make a difference, and that maybe they should consider using them.
Summer Electronic Rules
My kids get plenty of screen time, but I had certain rules that I put in place. When they were really young, they would only get one hour a day on game devices. After they finished homework, they got an hour. That was all. This was something I was very strict on from about 1st-8th grade. When that hour was up, they had to turn it off. It didn’t matter if they were in the middle of a level or about to save the world- they turned the system off. The upside of all of that has been that me fighting with their screen time as they are in the teen years has not been a fight at all.
During the summer, they are not allowed to play their game systems until after 2:00. This eliminated the questions every day of when they could play. (I made this same rule for snacks during the summer, and it worked wonders!) Now, my kids are in 15,13, and 11. They still do not even ask to play electronics until after that time. So, what to they do until 2:00? They play outside, read, play games together, or whatever they want. The hammock and front porch swing are often a place that I have to look to find my kids during the day.
During the 2020 shut down, we played a lot of games in our house. Prior to the shut down, I had a feeling it was headed that way. I immediately began ordering things that would occupy us while we were stuck at home.New board games, outdoor equipment, puzzles, and other items to keep my kids entertained. Because our 2:00 rule was established years ago, the kids didn’t really have issues with being stuck home for a solid month. Sure, it was a little different because there were no sports practices or church events that we had to attend, but for the most part they knew the drill.
I believe these two rules have made a huge difference in preventing my kids from falling victim to the summer slide. While the time limits and expectations have changed as my kids have gotten older, there is always some sort of expectation that they grow their mind during the summer months.
