Avoid the Summer Slump

To avoid the Summer Slump means engaging your child’s brain during the summer to keep them in “learning mode” and ready to jump into a SHORT review and brand NEW concepts as soon as possible.

Ready to learn more? Keep scrolling! Stay in your own “learning mode”!

I want to start off with one big idea:

Your family (and you and your child(ren) are unique! You grew up with summers looking one way, and now your family has their own summer routines and expectations too.

Now for the fun stuff :)

1) The best way to stay in a “learning mode” is to….

learn something new every day (or at least every week)!

Find a local zoo, museum, reading program at your local library! If being at home works better, find documentaries on YouTube, TubiTV, PlutoTV or other free video platforms. National Geographic, PBS, and the History Channel are also examples where they have clips and some full shows for free (with ads) on their websites. Use the library books you check out as a starting point to the google and search for more on those topics.

Other online resources to search for could be virtual summer camps, tours, or field trips. When I taught at an online school, each teacher was required to do two field trips. During COVID these were all virtual. One of mine was researching the strange, cool mathematical phenomenon of Phi and how the Golden Ratio is all around us. My second trip was online and we could interact with different camera angles on the Great Wall of China! There are even games like this such as “Geoguessr”. Google “Geoguessr” to play and compete with your child who can be the closest to the GPS coordinates.

Wait. How does a “learning mode” really help avoid the Summer Slump?

Exposure! Every year there are gaps in my students’ common knowledge due to lack of exposure. Some that come to mind this year for my middle schoolers are:

- Science: What is a sail? How is it different from a flag? What does H2O stand for?

- Math: What is a round trip? What is a silver dollar? (And for some obscure word problems in our textbook- what is a brigantine? Who was Admiral Nelson?

- English: Why were black and white flags important in the Iliad? What is an adverb? How many sentences is a paragraph?

Not all of these are solved by going to a zoo, but they are solved by being exposed to more ideas, different ways people live, and older classics and newer books.

2) Another way to stay curious this summer is to get MORE OUT OF your new experiences.

While going to new museums or parks and reading new books with AWESOME vocabulary is all well and good, they do nothing unless you ACTUALLY engage your brain.

How do you engage your brain? How do teachers engage you in class? (Hint – look at the last line again)

Teachers ask you QUESTIONS! Teachers make you THINK, and this engages your brain. When you read that new book, ask yourself (or your child) why did they want to write about this topic? If it is a mystery, who do you think did it and why? Look at the cover; is the artwork eye-catching? What marketing strategies did they use to make sure YOU picked that book or that exhibit to visit?

As I reflect on this last school year, there was a class that got off topic when we were talking about money. Since everyone was curious, I asked if someone had a coin. I pointed out on the dime where the little “D” was on the coin. This meant it was minted in the Denver mint. There are only 3 mints in America where our coins come from. We did still finish our lesson for the day, BUT we made time to talking about mints, why you cannot take money from a mint, a little bit of inflation, why you cannot 3D print your own coins with metal, and even (these were 7th graders) that “launder money” does NOT mean washing it. They all asked great questions and were LEARNING BECAUSE they asked questions and listened for the answers.

What questions can you ask your child this summer? What questions can THEY find the answers to this summer?

3) Our last strategy today is one I repeat over and over in class during the school year – make mistakes. When you try something, make a mistake, and then CORRECT it, you are strengthening that neural connection for the concept. If you ace every single thing you ever did on the first try, those connections would be neither revisited nor strengthened. Failing, correcting, and practicing what you just LEARNED is the way you build your brain and your long term memory up so that next school year, you only need a quick reminder before building on that prior knowledge.

Okay, you are sold, but how to introduce mistakes? The quick way would be to google “summer math practice” or find a book that is a bit beyond their reading level and practice reading it out loud and use a computer to help pronounce new words correctly. Orrrrrr PINTEREST! Yup. Pinterest. Google Images would work too. Find some summer craft, simple machine, or a new organizer for your toys, receipts, or art supplies you want to make. Try to make it ONLY FROM THE PICTURE. That is a challenge sometimes, right? Measure the right dimensions, cut it out from an old cereal box, tape it together, and see how close you got! How many drafts will it take until you find the BEST one to decorate and keep forever (or at least until the next idea comes along)?

All three ideas of staying in a “learning mode”, engaging your brain, and making mistakes (so you correct them and learn from them) are GREAT strategies to avoid the Summer Slump and enjoy fun memories along the way.

Have a fun activity that needs its own shout out? Email me at punnymathteacher@gmail.com with details; I would love to hear all about what you learned!