How To Prevent The Summer Slide: 10 Ways Parents Can Ensure Their Child Is Prepared For The New School Year

The summer slide is something that many parents may be unaware of, but with the school year flying by, and the prospect of a six week break from learning on the horizon, preparation for summer learning loss should form an important part of any summer holiday plans.

The start of the primary school summer holidays represents a gap of six weeks or more from education within which your child won’t be:

• Learning new skills;
• absorbing new knowledge;
• testing and practising their existing knowledge.

This means that over the holidays, many children may suffer from the phenomenon of the summer slide, where they struggle to retain the knowledge they have already picked up throughout the school year.

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What is the summer slide?

The summer slide is a decline in a child’s academic skills that occurs over the summer holidays when school is not in session.

The summer slide explained for parents

The summer slide goes by a number of names including the summer learning loss, and the summer brain drain, but in essence they all mean the same thing, and that is that:

“over the summer holidays your child is likely to forget a lot of the information and knowledge they have picked up over the past academic year.”

This is a phenomenon that occurs amongst almost every student of every age, but it has a particular tendency to occur in KS2 when children are learning a lot of new concepts for the very first time.

It can be hard to tell whether or not the summer brain drain is happening over the holidays as nothing seems to change on a day-to-day basis, however even if your child:

• Is forgetting the answers to simple times tables questions such as 11 x 12;
• is forgetting simple grammatical rules such as capitalization of proper nouns;
• is forgetting the difference between their, they’re and there;
• is not reading as fluently as they were previously,

then it is a sign that a loss of learning has taken place.

Further Reading:

• 10 Minute Maths At Home: Number Facts Paper Flip
• How You Can Create Amazing Before And After School Routines
• How To Help Your Child Learn Times Tables At Home

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So why is the summer slide a problem?

Aside from the obvious point that your child has forgotten some potentially valuable knowledge that they had previously squirreled away in their brain, there are other issues caused by the summer brain drain.

The first of which involves the class teacher.

If a group of children come back into school after a summer packed with fun, frivolity and no  maths, English or science then this likely means that there is going to be a lot for the teacher to recap and go over come September.

This also means that no new learning can take place until the old knowledge gaps and holes that have appeared have been filled in again.

The second issue is that children who suffer from summer learning loss will likely end up behind their peers. Children who avoid a summer learning loss will come back into school raring and ready to tackle all of the new topics and concepts that will be thrown at them.

Children who suffer from the summer slide will have to work to get back to the level of their peers, and therefore fall behind in their learning.

Now, this may sound a little scary as a parent, but you’ll be pleased to hear that there are a number of simple things you can do to help prevent summer learning loss in your house!

How to prevent the summer slide

There is a simple, yet very effective method to prevent the summer slide from becoming an issue, and it is the following

Keep your child learning all summer long.

There is no need to panic.

This does not mean that you’ll have to turn your spare bedroom into a primary classroom.

Learning throughout the summer simply means providing your child with opportunities to continue practising their skills and use their knowledge outside of the school environment.

We’ve come up with 10 ways you can do this below, so take a look get ready for a summer of KS2 learning!

10 ways parents can stop the summer slide

Here are 10 quick and easy ways you stop the summer brain drain from taking place this summer!

1. Introduce a summer reading programme

Whether it is 15 minutes of reading per day, or finishing 6 books over the break, creating a summer reading programme for your child can be a simple yet highly effective way to keep them learning over the holidays.

Activity idea

Ask your child to choose 4 books (that are appropriate to their reading level) to finish over the summer holidays. Then, when they have finished each book, ask them to prepare a 5 minute presentation on some of their favourite things about the book.

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Having time set aside for reading over the summer gives children the chance to not only cement the vocabulary they have learnt over the past year, but also incorporate new words into theirs.

By having a short debrief with you after they have finished a book, they will not only be able to practise their vocalisation skills, but also check and clarify any words or phrases that they are not familiar with too!

2. Bring maths into the real world

Unfortunately, maths is one of the schools subjects that often suffers the most from the summer learning loss. With so many different areas of maths to remember, some children may find themselves forgetting elements of it over the summer break.

Fortunately, the variety of activities that most children partake in over the summer holidays presents the perfect opportunity to test out some real world maths skills. Something as simple as going for a walk or heading to the swimming pool can lead to any number of maths problems being discussed.

Activity idea

This one is very simple, but it does require you to use your creative skills. Whatever you have planned over the summer holidays, see if you can add an element of maths into it.

A trip to the supermarket becomes “The deal says I can get three packets of burgers for £10, but they are £3.50 each. Is the deal worth it?”

Or a simple walk could be elevated by asking “If every tree has 2,000 leaves on it and there are 15 trees, how many leaves are there in total?”

The possibilities here are endless!

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Testing maths in a real world environment will not only give your child a chance to continually test their maths knowledge, but it will also enable them to do so in a real world context.

Percentages will always come in handy when looking at discounts in a shop, and money is a huge part of our everyday lives, so take time over the summer to test as many areas of maths as you can.

For more ideas, see our summer maths activities and holiday maths activities.

3. Learn a language

Even though the summer holidays aren’t long enough to become fluent in an additional language, they are a great chance for young linguists to test out their talents.

If you are lucky enough to be heading on a family trip abroad over the summer break, you can use this time to test out your child’s basic French, Spanish, or any other local language!

Activity idea

Under your careful supervision, ask your child to take part in an exchange in a local shop or restaurant.

Teaching them how to ask for a bottle of water or to say thank you for some food can be a quick and fun way to incorporate learning into your holiday.

We’ve got a blog all about maths in French that you can use if you are looking for inspiration on this topic.

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Learning a language is one of the best ways to keep your child’s brain is ticking over throughout the holidays.

As anyone who has attempted to learn a language later in life will testify to, it is no mean feat, and as well as testing their brain to the max your child will be able to use their  newfound language skills to verbalise with lots of new people!

4. Get your children to work in the garden

The sun is out (hopefully), you’re looking for something to do with your children, and the garden could do with a spruce up.

Luckily, all the ingredients are there for a fun summer learning activity!

By getting your children to help in the garden you are introducing them to a nature filled classroom on their (back) doorstep, which can open up a whole new world of exploration and potential interests that are not necessarily covered in the curriculum.

Activity idea

Ask your children to dig up an old flowerbed and see which animals they can discover living in the soil. Will they be able to spot a worm, woodlouse, and a butterfly hiding away somewhere in the garden? If so, how many of each?

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Working in the garden isn’t just a great way to become immersed in nature and lessen screen time over the holidays. It also presents a chance to introduce cross-curricular learning into the summer schedule.

As well as the obvious scientific elements that go into spending time in the garden with animal and plant life, you have the option to introduce maths:

If there are 10 worms in 1sq meter of soil, how many are there in our 30x30m garden?

I’ve seen 12 different species of birds in our garden this week, and each bird has laid 6 eggs in their nest. How many birds will there be when they all hatch?

Or to introduce English:

Write me a story on how the animals in our garden work together in their ecosystem.

Or to introduce any other topic you can think of!

5. Visit an educational place that isn’t the classroom

If you can arrive early enough to beat the queues, summer is the best time to take a trip to a museum or other place of learning with your child.

After a while classrooms can lose their allure to young minds, but a trip to the science museum, the zoo or even a national park can help spark or rekindle a love of learning amongst your child, and this is something that could prove invaluable come the start of school in September!

Activity idea

If there are hands-on activities taking place in the museum or other location you visit then try and sign your children up to them as this is a fantastic way to help them learn more from the experience.

If there are not any activities taking place when you visit, or if places are filled, then take the time to ask your child to interpret what they see and encounter. Children learn best by answering open ended questions, so try and ask things like:

What do you think the Romans used this tool for?

How do you think it would feel to sleep in a cave?

Why do you think some dinosaurs were so big?

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Children love hands on learning and this is exactly what this is!

They will be outside the classroom, sometimes looking at things that they will have never seen before, and by asking them questions that require deep thought about the answer you will be providing a very engaging learning experience!

6. Get the equipment ready and start baking

The perfect activity for a trip to the grandparents, learning whilst baking is a great pick for many children as on top of the chance to learn and grow their knowledge, more often than not there is a tasty treat at the end!

Activity Idea

Luckily, baking lends itself to maths very well, and making a cake means your child will be able to test out their fractions, and weighing skill amongst others.

As the cake is being created, why not ask your child how much of each ingredient would be needed to make a cake that would be twice as large, or one quarter of the size?

Challenge them to convert the unit of weight between kilogrammes and grammes.

There are a number of ways to bring maths into baking thanks to the precision needed to bake that perfect cake!

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Maths is often one of the first skills to be forgotten over the summer holidays, and when you aren’t tasked with deciphering decimals or figuring out fractions on a daily basis this makes sense.

So, bringing these areas (amongst others) into a real life situation can help to cement this knowledge in children prevent summer learning loss.

7. Put the tools away and do some DIY

Doing DIY doesn’t have to be boring, especially if it comes in the form of a DIY science experiment with your child.

With a huge number of free resources available online, it is easy to locate a number of simple science experiments you could do with your child over the summer holidays.

Activity idea

It was a classic school activity for many of us, but figuring out how to protect an egg from a high drop can be a great way to get your child thinking outside the egg box.

Make it a competition with an ice cream for the winner, and see who can best protect their egg from a high drop. Will your child choose to use cotton wool and cardboard, or will they go with something more elaborate like a paper parachute?

Leave the choice up to them, and the result will be a fun and interesting science lesson for you both!

This is an example of using concrete resources within learning, and if you’d like to learn more about what concrete resources are and how you can use them with maths we’ve covered that in our blog.

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Keeping your child’s brain working over the summer is very important, and activities such as the one described above will do just that. It forces them to think about the solution as a whole rather than just thinking about individual elements of it, and problem solving skills like this are very important when school starts up again.

8. Keep a record of the summer holiday

Writing has not had much of a mention in our list so far, but this activity is the perfect way for your child to continue practising their writing over the summer break.

Whether it comes in the form of a diary detailing what they have been doing, or even a weekly postcard to their teacher telling them all about their favourite thing from the last 7 days, writing on a regular basis should form an important part of your child’s summer holiday structure.

Activity idea

Get your child to ‘send’ a weekly postcard to their teacher that details their favourite thing they have done over the past week.

Writing about all of the different things they have been doing over the holidays will present a challenge to your child as they’ll have to think of the right words and phrases for each activity.

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

It can be easy for children to fall out of writing practice over the summer holidays, and by initiating a simple task such as the one above you will be eliminating this problem.

From the day they arrive back at school your child will be expected to write about a wide variety of topics, so ensuring they do so over the break means that they will not need to spend time catching up upon their return.

9. Set some learning based goals

‘When school ends for the summer, learning does too.’

Try to avoid this mindset. Regular practice can help to prevent the worst of the brain drain.

This can be split into slots over the week so that you can fit it around any activities you have planned.

Start small by introducing 15 minutes of daily work practice, regardless of the topic, and by doing this your child will be able to track and monitor their own progress over the summer.  

Activity idea

Print off a simple weekly calendar from the internet and pin it to the fridge. Then sit down with your child to make ‘maths Mondays’, ‘science Saturdays’ etc.

If you both agree to the schedule they are much more likely to stick to it!

The reason this will help prevent the summer slide

Without regular time scheduled in, it can be easy for children to slip out of the routine of learning, and if this happens the summer learning loss will become all the more pronounced.

By ensuring that there is a small portion of time attributed to learning every day (or at least every other day), you will help to keep summer learning loss to a minimum.

10. Bring in some outside expertise

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try you just can’t make learning in the summer holidays seem like a fun option for your child, and this is especially the case when it comes to maths.

Fortunately, making maths fun is something we are particularly good!.

We’ve worked with 1000s of primary school aged children to help them improve their confidence and attainment in maths, and if you are looking for an affordable way to ensure your child does not suffer from the infamous maths summer slide this year, then consider joining the Third Space Learning family.

Summer learning is important, but it isn’t everything

It is important to remember that when we talk about summer learning, we don’t mean that your child should be tied to the desk and made to answer question after question, depriving them of their summer of fun.

We simply mean that learning should not be forgotten about over the summer holidays.

Little and often is the way to go here.

It doesn’t matter how you approach it, but working to prevent the summer slide will help your child return to school in September with a spring in their step and no gaps in their knowledge.

Let us know how you get on this summer!