On Monday I wrote about fun summer games, and today I want to continue the “fun” theme with another game that kids enjoy, the scavenger hunt.  We teachers have used scavenger hunts in lots of creative ways.  We all remember the museum visits from middle school where we were challenged to bring back all sorts of proof of our explorations – drawings, maps, information, even the location of the museum café.

Kids love the challenge of finding hidden and secret things.  Easter egg hunts are a perfect example.  So why not use that natural childlike curiosity to create a summertime scavenger hunt that’s fun and maybe even a little “educational.”  (Don’t even think about using that word with the kids, though.) 

Even a short walk in the neighborhood can be a fun experience and help your child focus for a short period.  (“Let’s see if we can find two lightning bugs, a tulip, and three white rocks today.”)

Here are a few ideas.

1. Library hunt.  Based on the museum hunt.  Have the kids come back with a librarian’s signature, a book by a specific author, a book about a specific topic or person, the library’s top-ten fiction check-outs, directions to the computers, knowledge about the cost of the copiers or the color of the carpeting in the kids’ reading room.  Personalize the hunt for your kids.


2. Dictionary hunt.  You can do this at home.  What’s the definition of the verb “eke”?  What’s the first word listed on page 326?  What’s the longest word on page 412?  The shortest?  Find an unfamiliar word on page 18 and explain it.  What are the other sections of the dictionary besides definitions? 


3. Newspaper hunt.  Good for older kids.  This can be done with online or hard copy newspapers.  What are the major sections of the paper?  Whose opinions are given on the op-ed pages?  What do you think is the purpose of the op-ed page?  What are the subjects of the letters to the editor?  What’s the major news on the sports page today?  What’s your favorite cartoon on the comics page?  What’s the weather report for Paris today? 


4. Neighborhood hunt.  Use neighborhood localities such as parks, gardens, sports venues, athletic fields, and school yards as the focus of your hunts.  Find hidden objects or bring back information about the place. (“How many steps from the entrance gate to the jungle gym?”)  If your kids are too young for this, confine their hunt to the back yard.


5. Around-the-house hunt.  There are plenty of hunts right in the house.  Plant hidden treasures to be found with the help of clever clues you’ve written down for the kids to read.  (I’ve even seen some creative poems to be deciphered.)  Have them draw maps of the living room, including the positions of furniture, windows, doors, etc. 


6. Church hunt.  Ask your clergy for permission, of course, but this could be fun and instructional for a group of kids.  What’s the story of the third stained-glass window on the right?  Where are the hymnals kept?  Where’s the nursery?  What are the times of Sunday services?  How many choir members are there?


7. Photo hunt.  Give the kids one-time-use cameras.  Bring back pictures of selected sites in the neighborhood or your back yard.  A crossing guard.  A red Buick.  Mrs. Sloane, the nice old lady up the street.  A garden with roses in it.  A cocker spaniel. 


8. Art hunt.  No cameras this time.  Instead, draw pictures of hunt targets.  Draw your best friend.  Draw the new puppy next door. Draw the third house on the left on Hickory Road.


9. Beach hunt.  If you’re at the beach, use it as the basis for your hunt.  Bring back seashells, a lifeguard’s signature, pictures of a sand castle, red flip-flops, and blue sun umbrellas.


10. Theme hunts.  Have a theme for the day – baseball, rain, kittens, antique cars, vegetable gardens.  Bring back information or pictures.  Pick the theme with the kids and have them help come up with hunt targets.

Of course, you need to take into consideration the age and maturity of the children involved, and you’ll want to monitor the kids, especially when their teams are “loose” in the neighborhood.  This is a good joint-effort with older siblings or other moms and dads.  But the kids will have a great time exploring, discovering, identifying, collecting, counting, drawing, photographing, and reading about various hunt targets.  They don’t need to know they’re exercising their brains!

Regular readers of the Dr. Rick Blog know the importance I put on children’s physical activity.  Just as important as mental activity. Giving kids healthy habits of mind and body is a gift that lasts a lifetime.  True for kids, true for us adults, and especially true in the summer when kids are tempted to sit for extra hours in front of electronic screens for their entertainment.

During the school year, physical education classes give kids lots of vital exercise time.  Insist that your children’s school has a solid program and that kids get plenty of opportunity to move and let off steam.  Not only will they be having fun, taking a break from “book learning,” and getting the healthful benefits of exercise, they’ll be learning

• to follow rules
• to persevere
• to make friends
• to play fair
• to do their best
• to cooperate
• to respect each other’s skills
• to win fairly and lose with grace
• and even to shake hands with their opponents.

But now it’s vacation time.  What to do?  Here are some suggestions for active summer fun.  Many are games and activities I’ve picked up over the years from physical education teachers.  They can easily be transplanted from the school gym to your backyard.

1. Tag.  The age-old game is fun even in its most basic form.  But I’ve seen it updated with some creative tweaks. “Hand-on-Head Tag,” for example, where the tagger keeps one hand on his head.  Everyone tagged becomes a hand-on-head tagger, too, until no one is left.  Got to keep your hand on your head!  Last one “wins.”


2. Obstacle Course.  At each station, do some physical trick – crawl under a rope, throw a ball in the air and catch it five times, hop on one foot twenty times, run in place.  Or, here’s one I especially like.  A child “rider” steers a blindfolded “horse” with “reins” tied around his or her waist around an obstacle course of trees, plastic cones, backyard chairs, etc.  Teams compete to run the course in the shortest time.


3. Relay race.  Kids love the competition of two teams racing from one point to another.  Make it interesting by having each player having to accomplish something when she or he reaches the points.  Name a state, for instance, until all fifty are named, or their capitals, or a president until they’re all named.  Correctly spell a challenging word.  Correctly solve a quick math-fact question. Name an animal, or a tree, or the planets . . .


4. Dancing.  Learn a fun dance step.  The most recent trend or even something older can be fun.  Show pictures of 1920s Charleston dancers, 1940s jitterbuggers, 1960s twisters, line-dancers, and today’s TV ballroom dancing champs.  Challenge them to outdo the folks in the pictures and on TV.  I’ve seen kids really get into this.


5. Rope skipping.  Excellent aerobic exercise, fun, and rhythmic.  Make up clever rhymes as you’re skipping – especially rhymes that help them remember facts.  The rhythm is an excellent way to master spelling words, too!


6. Hop scotch.  An especially useful way to teach the younger kids counting.  Go from single to double to triple counting.  Go backwards to teach subtraction.  Do easy multiplication. 


7. Jump across the chasm.  Mark a deep, scary, monster-filled “chasm” in the ground with chalk or parallel ropes.  Jump over the chasm.  Make it wider and wider until only one champion gulf-jumper is left.


8. Trash can tennis.  Fill a trash can with old tennis balls, ping pong balls, nerf balls, softballs, etc.  Dump the balls on the ground.  Team One goes after the balls and throws them back into the trash can from a good distance.  Team Two tries to do the same in a shorter period of time.


9. Word Race.  Select a favorite story in a book.  Choose a “magic word” from the story, one that’s used often.  Read the story aloud to two lined-up teams.  Every time the word is used, the next kid in line runs – or swims – to a determined spot and returns.  Listen up!  First one back “wins” that round.  The team with the most won rounds gets bragging rights.


10. Your favorite games from when you were a kid.  Share with the kids your favorite games from when you were their age.  Tell the children why you liked these games, how you got to be a good player, and describe the best players you’ve ever seen.  Challenge them to become good players, too.

Have plenty of time for outdoor games this summer.  Be safe, play fair, drink plenty of water during the hot day, and build those summer memories!  Take pictures.  Keep a games journal. 

Have favorite games you want to share with us?  Click on Comments below.

As we’ve been discussing for the past few weeks, summer is the perfect time for a more relaxed approach to learning.  Remember my mantra: Summer is a time for slowing down, not shutting down.

Kids’ minds need to be stimulated, even in the summer when they think they’re free of learning.  As if.

Summer’s also a time when kids are eager to perfect skills they don’t get a chance to work on during the school year.  Improving their fifty-meter swim speed, throwing a mean softball, spiking the volleyball, learning the guitar chords to a favorite song, mastering the lyrics to a musical role in a play, building that challenging model, designing a new wardrobe, or just about anything your child could be interested in.

How do experts learn their skills?  They drill, practice, rehearse, exercise, prepare, work out, and run through.  Pick your verb.  But the underlying truth is they work on their skills so thoroughly, with such determination, and with a careful routine that the skills become second-nature, easy, and proficient.  Why do you think we have fire drills?

Here are some ways to make summer academic practice easier for you and your student.

1. Choose interesting topics.  Summer’s a time to let your child explore some interesting new topics she’s eager to learn about.  Let her choose a cool subject, then guide her to the books, websites, and experts that will facilitate learning.  If there’s a specialized vocabulary to learn, help her to learn it and spell the words.  Spelling drills made up of her own selected words, relevant to her interests, are especially motivating.


2. Keep it short.  If your child has a short attention span, keep the practice sessions short.  Agree on a time limit together, provide plenty of breaks, then get back to work.  But don’t call it work.


3. Make a routine.  Routines are helpful to kids.  I’ve written about this a gazillion times.  When kids get the structure they need to learn, they’ll learn faster.  Especially if they get to choose the subjects and get a voice in the time limits and break schedules.


4. Lighten up.  Turn learning into a game.  There are lots of creative ways to turn learning into fun.  Competition among family members, a relaxed atmosphere, and lots of laughter can turn even games of hangman or Scrabble, crossword puzzles or word searches, Sudoku or math puzzles into memory-making fun.  Take photos of family game night, then write captions for them without telling the kids they’re practicing their writing skills.  Make score cards that the kids can fill in, but don’t tell them they’re practicing math.


5. Make it clear.  When you’re practicing particular academic skills, make it clear why you’re working on them.  Writing helps him express himself clearly, math helps him keep up in the world, spelling helps him to be accurate.  If you’re working on skills he’s chosen, let him tell you why those skills are important to him.


6. Encourage heroes.  Show your child examples of success.  Let him have a couple of heroes – local athletes, musicians, scholars, actors, or experts in fields he’s interested in.  Tell him about the people you look up to, and discuss why their skills are important to you.


7. Show how those heroes became experts.  Let your child see that experts work hard to make their skills look easy.  Read about Michael Phelps’ excruciating practice routine.  Go to a rehearsal of a professional play or orchestra.  Watch athletes’ pre-game workouts.  Learn about the studies artists create before their masterpieces.


8. Keep informal, fun records.  Kids love to mark their height on the wall over time to see their growth.  Do the same for their learning.  Document their achievements together – creative scrapbooks, family web pages, score cards, spread-sheets, journals, and videos will become family keepsakes.


9. Remember, it’s summer.  Don’t overdo it.  There’s plenty of time in summer to indulge in its slow, easy pace.  Enjoy your family’s summer schedule and activities, but it’s okay to be on the lookout for “teachable moments,” even if you don’t label them as such.  Probably better if you don’t.


10. Use technology.  There are plenty of websites that can help.  There are even apps for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod. 

If you think your child is having difficulties in his or her academic work, summer is a good time to get help.  A couple hours a week with a good tutor can work wonders with skills and confidence.  The company I work for, Sylvan Learning, has been helping kids for over thirty years.  However you tackle this issue, the important thing is that you act.  Get help.  Don’t put it off.  It could get worse as the hectic school year gets into full gear.

In the last Dr. Rick Blog we talked about some summer math tips for kids, a list of thirteen ideas that you and your children can use to keep those math skills sharp during the summer.  We know that students can lose more than a quarter – that would be 25%, your kid should be able to tell you quickly – of their skills and knowledge from a school year if they’re not keeping their little minds active over the summer.

So, here are a few more ideas.  Let’s challenge ourselves to see if we can get to an even twenty.

1. Play hopscotch.  Or jump rope.  Or do jumping jacks.  Kids love to count.  What games encourage counting for little ones learning to count more than these?  Besides, there’s plenty of exercise, keeping kids outside in the fresh air and away from an electronic screen.


2. Time things with a stopwatch.  Get an inexpensive stopwatch and show your youngster how to use it.  Give her some suggestions of things to time – how long to walk around the block, to drive to the grocery store, to swim a lap, to make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, to take a shower.  Then get out of the way.  She’ll find all kinds of things to time. 


3. Compare and contrast.  After she’s been timing things with her stopwatch, show her how to compare and contrast the information she’s discovered.  Make simple charts and graphs.  Color code them.  Talk about them. 


4. Count stuff.  I mentioned this in last week’s blog, but there’s no shortage of things to count.  Come up with interesting and funny things – purple flip-flops at the mall, butterflies in the garden, yellow VW bugs (the old ones, naturally), crying babies at the grocery store, smokers throwing their butts out the car window (yuck!), the number of screams while riding the roller coaster.  Decide at breakfast in the morning what you’re going to count today.  Talk about it at bedtime.


5. Make and stick to a budget.  Have your kid allocate his allowance into categories the two of you agree to.  Entertainment, the collection at church, saving for a special toy, vacation spending, ice cream treats.  This not only teaches budgeting, it enforces math facts like division.  Show how you do the same thing with your household budget .


6. Get a math role model.  Point out people in your family and community who would make good math role models for your child.  The veterinarian, your pediatrician, a favorite teacher, an older student who’s a math whiz, those silly characters on Big Bang Theory.


7. Roll that spare change.  Everyone has spare change around the house.  Gather up all those pennies, nickels, and dimes.  Count them.   Then roll them and take them to the bank.  (It’s more educational than using those loud machines in the mall.)  Give your child a percentage.  Have him figure out what that percentage is.


8. Treat girls and boys equally.  Enough girls already have math phobia.  Show that you expect excellent math skills from your daughters as from your sons.


9. Find a helpful website.  There are plenty of websites that have really clever math games and exercises for kids.  It’s hard to choose just one, but here’s one I like.


10. Make flash cards.  With your child, make a bunch of flash cards that let him practice his math facts.  Quiz him with that stopwatch from tip #2 above.  Let him quiz you or other members of the family.  When kids know their math facts cold, they’re ready for higher level math.


11. Get help if you need it.  Everyone needs a little help from time to time.  The company I work for, Sylvan Learning has thirty years’ experience of helping kids with math.  Summer’s the perfect time to invest in some skill sharpening before school starts again.  If you suspect that he needs a leg up, do it now before the problem becomes too much for him to handle.


12. Don’t allow math trash talk.  If you had a hard time with math when you were a kid, don’t make a big deal of it.  Don’t let your child infer that it’s okay to hate math or to avoid it.  It’s a different world.  She’s going to need her math skills.

So, with last week’s thirteen, we made it to twenty-five suggestions!   And there are so many more.  Math surrounds us every day.  Be on the lookout for opportunities to talk about math, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly math phobia disappears and math confidence takes its place.

We’ve been concentrating during recent weeks on keeping kids’ minds active during the summer months away from school.  My summer mantra, as I keep reminding anyone who’ll listen, is “Summer’s a time for slowing down, not shutting down.”

We’ve discussed tips for keeping kids’ reading, spelling, and writing skills sharp and ready for the new school year.  Today, we’ll focus on math tips.  Remember, a major reason we keep our kids busily learning during the summer is to maintain their confidence for when classes start.  Confidence equates to quicker learning.  It’s that simple.

Here are a dozen tips for summer math learning.  Adapt them to your family’s needs.

1. Grocery store math.  Counting, estimating, and making change are good math exercises.  What can we get for $10.00?  Will you count the change for me, please?  Let me know when we’ve reached fifteen items in the cart, please.


2. Menu math.  What’s the most expensive meal on the menu?  What’s the least expensive?  We have $20.00 to spend – what can we get?  What’s the proper tip?


3. Kitchen math.  Practice fractions by using recipes or reading cookbooks.  Practice numbers by counting the cutlery we’ll need for dinner.  Measuring ingredients is a perfect math lesson.  Don’t tell them, though.


4. Map math.  What’s the distance from home to our destination?  How long will it take us if we travel the speed limit?  What’s the most direct route?  What do you think is the most scenic route?  Why?


5. On-the-Road math.  Numbers are all around roads if you look for them.  Add or subtract license plate numbers, speed limits, or route numbers.  Keep track of time traveled or how long you’ve been reading aloud to encourage learning how to tell time.


6. Money math.  Teach about making change.  Count change in a piggy bank.  How many ways can I make 45 cents?  Open a savings account and watch the amount rise with deposits and interest.  Talk about the advantages of saving for a big purchase or for a rainy day.


7. Reading and writing math.  Read books about math and mathematicians.  (A good website is www.mathmamawrites.blogspot.com.  The June 26, 2009, blog, “Dozen Delectable Math Books” gives recommendations for ages 2-adult.) 


8. Calendar math.  Count down the days to special events like the first day of school, birthdays, holidays, vacations, assignments, and appointments.


9. Game math.  Use cards, dominoes or dice (“math cubes”) to reinforce counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division skills.  Play Chutes and Ladders, Monopoly, and other games that encourage counting.  Together, do the sudoku  puzzles in the daily paper.


10. Computer math.  There’s no shortage of cool game and instructional websites.  Try the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ website, www.nctm.org.  Click on “Summer Games for Children.”)


11. Beach math.  Count starfish and seashells.  Umbrellas and pizza joints.  Flip flops and beach balls.  Dig holes, then encourage kids to fill one-quarter, one-half, three-quarters with water or seashells.  Draw geometric shapes in the sand – circles, squares, rectangles, triangles – and identify them.


12. Mail math.  Keep junk mail to make out “pretend” orders of clothes, books, groceries, etc.  Add up the orders.  Compare and contrast prices.


13. Growth math.  (Okay, so it’s a “baker’s dozen” tips.)  Measure everyone in the family.  Compare heights.  Measure growth over time.

You get the picture.  We’re surrounded by words and numbers every day.  Draw your children’s attention to them without making a big-deal lesson out of them.  Let them see you reading, doing math, and writing, as part of your daily life.  By including them, you’re encouraging them to join you in your grown-up world, something kids can’t resist (for a time, anyway).

Please share your family’s math fun activities.  Just click on Comment below.

Let’s continue with our summer theme of the past few weeks – keeping kids’ brains active and learning through summer.  Summer’s a time for slowing down, not shutting down.

We’ve had tips for reading, writing, spelling, and math.   Today we’ll concentrate on vocabulary building.

Words are the building blocks of language.  The more words we have at our disposal, the better we area at expressing our thoughts, ideas, feelings, and beliefs.  The more confident we become in school and work.  The more we understand.  The more facts we learn, knowledge we accumulate, references we recognize, cultures we discover, jokes we “get.”  (See my blog of  “Fun Ways to Increase a Child’s Vocabulary.”)

Here are some tips to try at home.

1. Keep reading.  Reading opens up many doors – imagination, curiosity, discovery, knowledge, maturity, confidence – so you want to indulge your child’s natural interest in new things.  As you read together, stop occasionally to explain unfamiliar words or to help him figure out their meaning by their context, by accompanying pictures, by their roots, or by their prefixes, or suffixes.  Talk a little bit about the words.  No lessons, just parent-child conversation.


2. Reward often.  When she correctly uses a word you’ve discussed or read together, reward her with praise.  Kids love to be successful and feel accomplished.  Just like us.


3. Create word lists.  Make lists of words you’ve learned together during the summer.  Write them in your summer journal, make a “chain” of words out of construction paper and drape them around the room.  Or create a “word wall” that shows how much you’ve learned.  Make flashcards – good, old-fashioned, low-tech flashcards – of these new words and have “word sprints” to see how many he can remember in a one-minute period.


4. Make the dictionary your friend.  Surely I can’t be the only person who enjoys browsing through the dictionary and picking up a bonus word as I’m looking up another.  Develop this habit – it’s like getting two words for the price of one!  It’s also a good way to reinforce alphabetizing.  Eventually “graduate” to the Thesaurus.


5. Use the words.  Now that you’ve learned new words with your child, use them often to reinforce their meanings and develop comfort and fluency.  Pronounce them, explain them when necessary, and give examples of how the word can be used.


6. Talk often.  Conversation is the best way to learn any language, so make plenty of time to share talks with your child about just about any subject.  Summer is full of fun topics like play, travel, the beach, sports, vacations, favorite family stories, memories of relatives, your own summers . . . You get the picture.


7. Memorize.  Memorization is an important skill for school and for work.  Make a game out of it.  Memorize poetry, song lyrics, even short scenes from a favorite play or movie.  It’s good brain exercise.


8. Play.  Have fun with words.  Play word games, do crossword puzzles and word searches, compete in low-stress family spelling bees.  Get a laugh out of tongue twisters.  (I love them.  Here are two of my favorites.  “The skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk.  But the stump thunk the skunk stunk.”  And, “She stood at the door of Mrs. Smith’s fish sauce shop welcoming him in.”  Google others or make up your own.)


9. Create themes.  Make up summer word themes for new vocabulary.  Concentrate on baseball, say, or Olympic swimming, sand-castle-building or favorite hobbies.  Learn as many new words about the theme as possible.


10. Have a study buddy.  You’ve heard me advocate for study buddies in many, many blogs.  When it’s time for your student to start studying for spelling and vocabulary tests again, encourage him to have a study buddy who’ll support, challenge, and celebrate with him.

We’d love to hear about your family’s summer vocabulary building activities.  Please share with us by clicking on Comment below.

This summer the Dr. Rick Blog has concentrated on some tips and advice for keeping learning alive during the school holidays (summer learning, summer reading, time management, and summer writing.)  More is coming.  My constant and familiar mantra is “Summer’s a time for slowing down, not shutting down.”

There’s plenty of time in the summer for kids to be carefree and active, liberated from school routines and free to indulge interests, discover new talents, and get plenty of outdoor exercise.  But that doesn’t mean their minds are shut down.

Today, let’s concentrate on a dozen tips your family can consider to keep kids’ spelling skills sharp during the summer. Remember, all language arts skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – are related, so when you read, write, speak, and listen with your child, you’re strengthening all those skills.

1. Create a word wall.  Write new words your child has mastered on colored paper and “chain” them around her room as a constant and colorful reminder of her increasing vocabulary.  A “mini word wall” can be equally efficient and more public on the refrigerator.  The more words, the higher the confidence rises.


2. Choose a Letter-of the-Day.  Together with really young kids, each day select a letter that your family is going to focus on.  Find words in the newspaper, magazines, online, on billboards, and around town that begin with that letter.  Make a list of those words.  Enlist the participation of older siblings and other family members.  Share the words you’ve all discovered at family time.


3. Do a scavenger hunt.  Find items that begin with a certain letter.  First to find ten items wins an extra ten minutes of bedtime story reading.  (Bedtime reading is one of the few times you can loosen up a routine!)


4. Be an artist.  With your children, draw or cut out pictures of people, items, and events that start with a certain letter.  Be creative and exaggerated for emphasis and vocabulary-building.  “F is for flaming fireworks, Fourth of July, fishing, frolicking, fast footraces, free time, fresh fruit, family, friends, and fields full of flawless flowers.” Exhibit these pictures for the whole family to appreciate.


5. Highlight names.  Write the names of family members and friends on cards so the youngest kids recognize them.  Start with their own names, of course.  Decorate the cards with pictures of these people or their hobbies.


6. Play word games in the car.  Kids really don’t need to be in front of a screen all the time, especially in the car.  For each five minutes on a ride, spot as many items as you can that begin with a certain letter.  Make a list.  After five minutes, change the letter.


7. Keep a summer journal.  Writing helps spelling like no other activity.


8. Play games that reinforce spelling.  Play Scrabble, do crossword puzzles (they’re a healthy addiction), make up silly words and rhymes.  Rhyming and word games help kids understand the main principle of phonics – letters make sounds and sounds make words.


9. Have a pen pal.  Kids love getting mail.  Snail mail is more fun than email.


10. Create your own spelling lists.  Use favorite summer activities, summer books, and summer interests as your source for words.  Find cool summer books by visiting the free www.bookadventure.org for book suggestions and kids’ prizes.


11. Have a family spelling bee.  Use words from your readings, your vacation, or your family interests.


12. Practice, practice, practice.  Then review.  If you’re looking for spelling practice workbooks, check out Sylvan’s, which are excellent.  Go to www.randomhouse.com/sylvanlearningbookstore for a virtual tour.

There’s so much opportunity to improve your kids’ spelling skills and get them confidently ready for the new school year.  Don’t waste summer with a lot of boring, passive time-wasters.  Have fun, certainly, just don’t shut down.

What’s your family do to keep kids active and learning during the summer?  Share with us by clicking on Comment below.

We’re in the midst of summer vacation.  You don’t need me to remind you of the obvious – if they don’t keep their minds active in summer, children are at risk of losing much of what they’ve learned during the school year.  There’s a ton of research, and our own experience and common sense tell us that’s true.  Check out the National Center for Summer Learning at the Johns Hopkins University for some of the best, most recent research as well as excellent tips for keeping kids’ minds active during the summer (www.summerlearning.org).  I’ve done some work with these folks.  They’re top notch.

Research tells us that summer brain drain is even worse for children from homes where

·     there’s not much reading, conversation, and quality time with parents or other significant adults

·     there isn’t access to books, magazines, and other entertaining reading materials

·     there aren’t role models to show how lifelong learning is important to children and adults alike

·     parents don’t actively value learning, and in some sad cases (for which the parents should be beaten with wet noodles), where it’s actively disparaged

·     summer is filled with boredom, passive time-fillers, and little intellectual stimulation

In the past few weeks, the Dr. Rick Blog has focused on summer activities for kids (summer learning, summer camp, and summer reading ). 

Today I’ll provide some tips for summer writing activities.  In the next few blogs, I’ll give tips on summer vocabulary, spelling, math, and reading tips.  As always, we enjoy hearing your ideas.  Share them with us by clicking on “Comments” below.

Summer writing can be fun, expressive, and skill-building (but you don’t need to tell the kids that).  Give your child the confidence to be ready for school in the fall, and help her teacher get right down to business without spending precious time reviewing skills kids have forgotten in the summer.

Here are some ideas to keep your kids writing this summer.

1.   Collect interesting, amusing, thought-provoking summer pictures from magazines, the Internet, or your own family albums.  “Prompt” your children with ideas about writing. 

o    What’s your favorite summer memory?

o    Write a poem about summer fun.

o    How do you think people kept cool before air conditioning?

o    Pretend you lived 100 years ago.  What’s summer vacation like for you?

2.   Interview older friends and relatives about their summer memories.  (They’ll love talking about this.)  Then write a short description or story.  Together come up with a list of questions for these interviews.

3.   Write jokes about summer activities like the pool, vacation, games, pastimes, etc.

4.   Keep a family photo journal and have the children write captions for the pictures or a short story summary.  A variation of this is to keep a summer scrapbook with pictures and memorabilia of your favorite things.

5.   Keep a personal or family “summer things I notice” journal.  Every once in a while, everyone in the family contributes a short piece of descriptive writing, a drawing, a favorite poem or an original one, favorite memories, interesting observations, etc.  Watch the journal grow.

6.   Yes, even in an electronic age, kids love getting letters in the mail.  Help your child have a pen-pal and keep up a correspondence for the summer and beyond.

7.   Go to www.bookadventure.com for cool reading ideas, and then write about the books and stories you’ve read together.  Don’t call this a “book report,” even if that’s what it really is.

8.   Create a story with friends and family members as characters.

9.   Write review of the programs your family watches on TV, the movies you attend, the books you read, the trip to the amusement park or any other activity.

10.   Compare and contrast summer where you live to summer in other parts of the world or the U.S.

You certainly don’t have to tell the kids that you’re helping them keep up their language arts skills, motivating an interest in geography or family history, or even encouraging a lifelong hobby.  You’re just helping them have fun over the summer, right?

Stay tuned for more tips on fun summer learning activities!

It’s summer again, time for changing the routines of the school year and slowing down a little.  (See my blog of June 8, 2009 for my thoughts on summer learning.  Hint:  It’s a time for slowing down, not shutting down.)

It’s also a great time to encourage or indulge a love of reading.  I’ve written many blogs about the importance of reading and suggesting some reading lists.  (Here are a few.  February 12, 2009, February 16, 2009, February 26, 2009, and March 6, 2009.)

Today, I’m sharing the thoughts of one of my favorite educators, a Sylvan Learning Center franchisee who’s not only a teacher but the mother of five – if those aren’t qualifications for keeping kids busily happy and learning and having fun during the summer, I don’t know what is.

Colleen Dunlavy, of the Chicago suburb of Homewood, has some great ideas for family reading tips.  She shared these with me not long ago, and now I want to pass them on to you.  They’re among the best I’ve seen.

1. Allow kids to read what they like.  Pick book topics that relate to their interests.


2. Offer a variety of publications (magazines, newsletters, books, etc.) so kids can make their own literary choices.  Availability is key.


3. Encourage your kids to read everything and read aloud – food labels, movie disclaimers, street signs, store names, music lyrics, restaurant menus, etc.


4. Make mail time fun.  Give young readers “junk mail” and ask them to circle the words that they recognize.  Become the family’s mailman.  Ask your child to read the names printed on the mail and have him or her “deliver” the mail to the specific family members.


5. Ensure books are always on –hand.  Keep books in each car, at the house, at the homes of family members, etc.   This ensures that a child can amuse himself or herself if a sibling’s sports practice is running late or if you are caught in traffic.


6. Schedule “library time.”  Just as a family schedules swimming practice, set a specific time aside for visiting the library.


7. Create a book-on-tape.  Encourage your child to read a book aloud and tape it.  As a special gift or surprise, send the book-on-tape to a loved one with a special message.


8. Write your name in your books.  When children write their names in their books, it gives the child ownership.  Store the books in a special place to create a personal library.


9. Read before bedtime.  Reading is relaxing.  Allow your child to stay up 15 minutes later each night – as long as he/she is reading.


10. Read aloud to your children.  No matter the age of the child, reading together can create a lasting family memory.

I love these ideas, Colleen, and I can just see your five beautiful kids enjoying these all year ‘round, not just in the summer.

Bloggers, what’s your family do for family reading fun?  Click on “comment” below and let us know your ideas and family traditions.

In the coming weeks, I’ll concentrate on summer activities for spelling, writing, vocabulary development, and math.

It’s summertime, and, as the song says, the livin’ is easy.  Summer vacation is an American tradition, as honored as apple pie, almost a sacred cow, not to be tampered with.  For us adults, it conjures up halcyon days of leisure, carefree, with plenty of time to let our imaginations and adventures roam.  I have my own memories of summers with neighborhood “shows” we’d put on, of hours of sitting in my grandparents’ grape arbor with Cousin Denny and stuffing ourselves, of endless games and play.  How sweet.  Could it really have been that idyllic?

Other adults have similar memories, according to websites I’ve seen recently and folks I’ve talked to.  Some people lament that today’s youngsters don’t have the same experiences, that we’ve “scheduled” them too much, that we expect too much from them, that they don’t have the freedoms just “to be kids” as we did.  Some people even belittle the idea that kids actually learn something during the summer, that the “brain drain” educators talk about is somehow false, misleading, or irrelevant.

As a teacher, I know summer brain drain is real.  Nothing’s more frustrating to a teacher – and students – than spending the first few weeks of a school year reviewing and re-teaching skills that students have forgotten to maintain during the summer.  There’s plenty of research to back it up – summer learning loss is real.  You can look it up.

So it surprises me when so many otherwise well-meaning American parents say to me that summers should be the equivalent of learning-free times for kids.  Forget about schedules and routines, let the little dears find their own happiness, indulge in what will somehow magically become future memories of summers gone by.  They’re “learning” all kinds of unspecified things.

Baloney.

Summer, of course, is a time for different schedules and routines, a time to be away from the formalities of school. But it’s a time for slowing down, not shutting down.  Summer’s no excuse to put kids’ brains on hiatus.  Summer’s for a different kind of learning.

• The truth is that many kids could benefit greatly from a couple of hours a week reviewing math or reading or writing.  Just as any skills improve from a couple of hours a week practicing (think athletics or music or art or horseback riding or video game designing or, well, you get the idea), so will their academic skills improve from the same investment of time and effort.  Confidence rises, and the new school year suddenly seems that much less scary.


• Many parents know this and make sure their kids’ summer time is a good balance of free discovery, play, leisure, and a realistic eye to the inevitable beginning of school in the fall.


• They find it compatible with summer memory-making to have their kids read a book or two, maybe with the whole family, and then discussing it, acting out favorite scenes, or seeing the movie.


• They find ways to write about summer – scrapbooks, family memories from grandparents, picture books, photo albums – that reinforce skills while still being fun.


• They find ways to sneak math into days by having kids help with travel plans (What’s the most direct route? What’s the most economical motel?), or preparing for family events (What’s the best buy for hamburgers and charcoal?)


• If their kids need extra help to catch up for next school year, they get that help, from tutors, from bored but smart high school kids who can offer help, from libraries, from online sites, from any number of other sources.

None of this detracts from summer fun, especially if it’s done with light-heartedness, an absence of pressure, and plenty of family quality time.  Going back to school with a sense of readiness, confidence, accomplishment, and happy memories will more than make up for any time lost idly watching reruns on TV or worse.

It’s never a good idea to let a day go by without leaning something.  That’s true the world over, any season.  Including summer in America.