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Health & Fitness

Smart Ways to Spend the Summer: Preventing "The Summer Slide" for Your Child

Learn how to prevent your children from losing the knowledge and information they learned throughout the school year.

By Susie McDaniel, DPT and Beth Ardell, MPT*


Every fall, many teachers and parents receive a shock when they see the first test grades of the year.  The initial reaction is usually, “what in the world did they do last year?”  In reality, it’s not what they spent the previous year doing, but what they spent the summer not doing: exercising their brains.  This loss of knowledge is often called “the summer slide,” and many studies have noted its significance:

• According to the U.S. Department of Education, on average, children are set back by 25% in reading skills each summer.

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• The average student loses approximately 2.6 months of grade-level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months.

• Teachers typically spend four weeks re-teaching or reviewing material that students have forgotten over summer break, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning.

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But the summer slide is not inevitable.  In fact, it can be prevented rather easily with brain games and exercises that build cognitive skills.  Cognitive skills are the underlying mental abilities that we all need to read, think, remember, reason and pay attention.  These types of brain-building games are readily available.  Many are free and easy to use at home, in the car, on vacation and even online.  Most of these games are so much fun your kids won’t even realize they’re getting a mental workout!

Here are just a few to try:

• Mental Tic Tac Toe: While it is played much like traditional Tic Tac Toe, this games uses a ‘mental’ grid numbered 1 to 9.  Players remember where their opponent has already been and call out an unoccupied space.  If a player calls an occupied space, he loses.

What it helps: Attention, logic and reasoning, and working memory

• Needle in a Haystack: Take a page from a newspaper and time your child as he circles all occurrences of a specific letter.  Focus on increasing both accuracy and speed.

What it helps: Visual processing speed

• 20 Questions: Think of a person or object and give your child 20 chances to narrow down what you’re thinking of by asking yes or no questions.  To help them improve their logic and reasoning, teach them to strategize by using questions that will significantly narrow down the categories, such as “Are they alive?” or “Is it bigger than you?”

What it helps: Logic, reasoning, memory

• Poetry: Have your child choose four words that rhyme and then ask him to use those words to create a poem or a rhyming song.  Or say a word, then have him come up with another that rhymes.  Keep this pattern going as long as possible, then start with a new word.

What it helps: Auditory analysis, verbal rhythm, memory

Online games can be a great way to exercise the necessary cognitive skills to prevent loss of basic math facts.  Some great websites are Iforc.com and Mathdrills.com.Simply getting your child to read every day is another powerful way to slow the summer slide.  

According to Scholastic Parents Online, research shows that reading just six books during the summer can keep a struggling reader from regressing.  When choosing the books for your children, make sure they are at the correct level—not too hard and not too easy.

The right games will help your child retain the knowledge he has gained this year, but there is also a way to use the summer to actually strengthen your child’s cognitive skills.  Cognitive training (or “brain training”) is a process of improving the cognitive skills through a series of intense yet game-like mental exercises.  The most effective brain training is performed one-on-one with a certified cognitive skills trainer.

While all students experience a “summer slide” if they stop using their mental skills over the summer, all students also have the opportunity to retain or even improve their cognitive skills if they use their summer days well.  For more information about improving your child’s intellectual abilities, call your local LearningRx brain training center at 404-252-7246 (Atlanta-Buckhead) or 770-475-3276 (Alpharetta-Johns Creek).

 

*Susie McDaniel and Beth Ardell are the owners and directors of LearningRx Atlanta-Buckhead as well as the owners of LearningRx Alpharetta-Johns Creek, a brain training center that works with individuals to improve their learning ability through cognitive brain training. Both are mothers who have seen their own children’s cognitive abilities improve greatly through LearningRx brain training.  LearningRx offers cognitive skills testing and intense one-on-one brain training that is proven to increase IQ, improve academic achievement and boost self-esteem.  For more information about these and other learning topics, contact LearningRx Alpharetta-Johns Creek at 770-475-3276 or LearningRx Atlanta-Buckhead at 404-252-7246, or visit www.learningrx.com.

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