5 Ways to Keep Your Child’s Brain Active This Summer

Did you know that your child could be experiencing summer learning loss? During school breaks, kids can lose as much as 30% of the academic progress that they made in the previous school year. After a long school year, many children prefer television and video games over reading and other forms of learning. Breaks and relaxation are important, but so is keeping their mind active. A lot of progress that was made during the previous school year can be lost in a couple of months. When planning learning activities, consider your child’s interests and introduce some new concepts in a variety of subject areas. Boredom never has to be an issue if you know where to look for learning opportunities. Your child may even find love for a certain subject area or an undiscovered talent. Avoid a summer setback by having your child:

Investigate Their Interests

Begin the summer by having your child tell you what they’d like to learn more about and encourage them to write associated questions. Place all of the ideas individually in a jar and choose one at random as your daily focus. Then, do some research (e.g., computer search, library books, outside exploration and/or watch a documentary). The randomness and the fact that they already have an interest in the subject will make it something to look forward to.

Learn About Logic

Sudoku is a logic-based puzzle that requires you to fill in numbers on a 9x9 grid. Each grid is composed of nine 3x3 subgrids. The objective is to make sure that every column, row and subgrid contains the numerals 1 through 9. Depending on the difficulty of the particular game, more or less of the boxes will be pre-filled. At first glance, it looks simple, but it’s a good way for kids and adults to have fun while keeping their minds active. Even better, these puzzles are great for extended waits or long car rides and can easily be completed while listening to music.

Gallivant the Globe

Teach your child about geography and the different cultures of the world by playing Geoguessr online. In this game, you’re placed in a random location on Google Street View. The objective is to guess where in the world you are. You can choose to play a world map or a specific region. Since it allows you to “walk” around and look at your surroundings, this is a good way for a child to recognize the difference in landscapes. They’ll also encounter people, homes and businesses. They can get a glimpse of how people live in different parts of the world. Road signs will familiarize them with all the different languages of the world.

Master Math

A quick and applicable math lesson can just about always be worked into day-to-day life. Baking is one of the most useful — and tasty — ways of teaching math skills. Giving them a real-life situation demonstrates that math is relevant in their everyday life and always will be. Knowing how to measure accurately and reduce fractions makes all the difference when you want something to taste the way it’s supposed to.

Contrive a Contraption

The egg drop challenge is a classic physics project for middle and high schoolers, but it can easily be modified for younger ages. Your objective is to protect a raw egg from a high fall by engineering a contraption for its (hopefully) safe travel. Generally, this project is done with random items that are easily found around the house such as recyclables, kitchen or office gadgets or packing materials. This is also an excellent way of familiarizing children with the scientific method. Get them to talk about different materials that could be used and have them explain why they may or may not work. After each trial, talk about what worked and didn’t work and how to modify the apparatus to work better.

There’s no excuse not to work some type of learning into your child’s day every day. Just about anything can be a learning experience, whether exploring in the woods or star gazing, there’s a good chance that your child will develop a love for learning.