Great Ideas for Surviving Summer Vacation

Summer is the best and worst time of the year. There are hours of time to fill with activities, time to explore interests that don’t fit into the school day, and time to get bored, very, very bored. Instead of being a time to learn more and different subjects, too often, kids lose ground in math and reading skills during the summer instead. This means that when school starts up again, teachers spend the first four to six weeks re-teaching material, which slows kids down in the long run.

Summer and the Achievement Gap

Filling those long summer days is easier said than done. “Many families are really struggling to find access to summer educational opportunities," says Ron Fairchild, Executive Director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. This is more pertinent for kids from low-income homes—more than two-thirds of the achievement gap between high and low-income students can be traced to how kids spend their summer vacation. Kids who have high-quality summer experiences, says Fairchild, “perform better on standardized tests and go back to school more motivated and ready to learn."

Preparing for Summer

Given that kids will lose some math, and maybe some reading skills, over the summer, preparation makes all the difference. Fairchild recommends setting up a May conference with the next teacher your child will have (the fourth grade teacher if they’re in third grade) to discuss what skills they’ll be working on when they come to school in the fall and what you can do to help your child maintain old skills and build new ones.

If your child is struggling in a subject, summer is a good time to make up ground. Ask your child’s current teacher how to approach summer practice and for activities that will help your learn outside of a workbook. Then, set aside time each day for studying, mix activities that your child likes with activities that she dreads.

Summer To-Do List

• Grow a Garden: Summer is prime growing season. Have the kids plan a garden, budget the money to buy seeds, plant the seeds, watch your garden grow (and gain some patience along the way). After harvest, decorate your house with flower bouquets or eat the bounty.
   
• Tell a Story: Use postcards, old photos, magazine and newspaper clippings, and your own words and pictures to tell the story of your family, your town, your city, or make up an imaginary story. When the work is finished, bind it and display it as your latest coffee table book. (High-tech tip: try a photo-sharing website like Shutterfly or KodakGallery that will give your book a professional-feel.)
   
• Take a Trip: Eventually, the kids are going to want to get out of the house. Assign the kids a location, could be as close as a day trip into the nearest city, or as lengthy as a two-week road trip, and have them use book and Internet resources to map the trip, plan an itinerary, and plot out attractions along the way.
   
• Get a Job: Assign children jobs and pay them for their work. Using their earnings, help them create a budget and savings plan, then track their spending and savings over the course of the summer.
   
• Be a Summer Investor: Older kids can take the summer to learn how to invest, and make some money in the process. Give them money (or let them use some of their own) to invest in companies that interest them, then follow the market throughout the summer at www.junior-investor.com.
   
• Go on a Museum Hunt: Heading to a museum? Make it more engaging and cut out anticipated complaining by hitting the gift shop first. Have each child choose a postcard that relates to the museum, then try to find what’s on your postcard.
   
• Don’t Forget to Read! Make sure you set aside time to read even though its summer. If the weather is nice, pour a glass of lemonade and get lost in a good book alongside your kids. Libraries have summer reading programs that will help keep your child motivated from June to August, and stacks of new books that don’t cost a cent. Need inspiration? The National PTA Web site has resources for summer reading www.pta.org.
   
• Get Out and Play: New research shows that kids are losing ground when it comes to health during the summer, says Fairchild, make sure that kids are eating healthy and spending time outside every day.