What Summer School Curriculum should you use to keep your child from forgetting what he learned during the summer?

Do you want to help your child learn more during the summer time or wonder what to use for a Summer School Curriculum?

Using carefully selected Summer School Curriculum can keep your child moving forward with his learning.

One thing I learned through my Special Education Advocacy training is that learning regression during the summer is a major issue for kids with learning disabilities.

It’s difficult for Learning Abled Kids to learn things in the first place. It is so EASY for them to forget what they’ve learned during the summer.

Therefore, daily review with a summer school curriculum can keep your child’s learning moving forward. That way he can continue moving forward when next school year begins.

The key to maintaining your child’s progress in the core academic skills is to have your child engage in some learning-based activities each day.  Spending 20-30 minutes each day practicing reading, writing, and math can help your child stay on track.

We termed our daily summer practice “The Power Hour“!  I told my children it would help them remember everything they learned the past school year. My children were able to understand that most kids forget skills during the summer. I also let them know it would help them remember if they “practiced” a little each day.

Making my children aware most kids forget things over the summer and calling it our “Power Hour” made my children feel empowered by our summer school curriculum. They were excited about spending their power hour (to an hour and a half some days) doing a little bit of work in each subject.

Our Power Hour Program

The main goal of our Power Hour was to prevent learning regression by using carefully selected summer school curriculum. However, we also engaged in esteem-building activities during the summer to help our kids build a sense of personal empowerment and strength.  We participated in Swim Team most summers, summer bowling league, kayaking, and other activities that my children were GOOD at and that they loved.

SUMMER POWER HOUR
Our simple summer school curriculum consisted of 20 minutes each:

~ Reading or a Computer-based Reading Practice Program (Like HearBuilder)

~ Math Worksheet or a Computer-based Math Practice Program (Like Reflex Math)

~ Journal Writing – one page of any kind.

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Whatever your child LOVES and/or does well is a great activity to immerse him or her in during the summer.  Let your child gain new skills and become even more passionate about things he is good at.  Building your child’s self-esteem goes a long way in helping your child’s willingness to tackle what is difficult for him, whether that is reading, writing, or math.

For the academic portion of a Power Hour, I recommend the following if you don’t already have summer school curriculum you prefer to use:

How about a FREE Summer School Curriculum for Math to start your Power Hour?

Prodigy Math and English games, is offering their program for FREE right now!! You can Sign up for FREE. See if this summer school curriculum works for your child. I get NO commission for this recommendation and we have not used Prodigy Games. However, it looks like a great, fun summer school curriculum. I’d LOVE to know if you like it or find it helps your child.

WHILE we’re talking about Educational providers, did you know the Kindle has a Text-to-Speech function built in for reading? The Kindle Screen Reader features IVONA’s award-winning natural language text-to-speech voice. Kindle was one of the first tablets to offer accessibility options built-in. They do a great job with it. You can use a Kindle for Kids to read aloud books if your child is struggling with learning to read.

For a child with dyslexia or reading problems, having the text-to-speech function can help the child with the decoding of words he can’t figure out independently. Additionally, there are a large number of Phonemic Awareness Apps, both FREE and paid, that you can put on a Kindle so your child can practice concepts while on the go.

The Kindle is a great little tablet to use for on-the-go learning. Check out the programs that are available to see if you can find some great summer school curriculum for your child to use on a Kindle or another tablet. If you need help using the reader function, they have a support page telling you how to use the Assistive Reader.

For Math Worksheets, we used the McGraw Hill Spectrum Math series. I purchased the workbook for the just completed grade level. My children worked one page spread (two pages) of math problems each day. The problems were all review at that point. Therefore, the problems generally didn’t take them too long. I had them start at the beginning, so it was easy from the beginning.

For Journal writing, my guys often chose to write a synopsis of what they had just read, about something that happened at one of their activities, or what they wished they could do.  Sometime they made up creative stories! If you want to encourage them to write stories, I find that a nice lined writing journal can help them feel like they’re writing their own book.

The journal writing is designed to be an easy, unedited task simply to maintain their current level of achievement.  When reading, I did not correct spelling or punctuation. I would issue reminders to use good punctuation and spelling as they began writing in their journals.

I also recommend strengthening memory and processing if your child has a slow processing speed or working memory deficits.  While this can lengthen the Power HOUR past an hour, if your child has one of these cognitive issues, building it during the summer time will help learning during the upcoming school year.  Since the programs are primarily on the computer or game like, especially memory games, we did the cognitive enhancement last. It seemed more like FUN than like work!

Check out the recommended Cognitive enhancement programs to find one your child can use on a daily basis..

To help your child with cognitive improvement or the advancement of his academic skills, check out the following by clicking on the link:

Reading Programs
Math Programs
Spelling

Hope that helps you keep your child on track for the summer!! More POWER HOUR to you!

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