What Is The Summer Slide?

Every parent should know that children who do not continue to read daily will experience "the Summer Slide". What is the "Summer Slide"? Research has found that it is possible for children to regress in their reading by approximately 3 months. There are things that we can do as a family to keep our children from experiencing the summer slide...painlessly;) Let's face it for many of our children they are ready to "play hide and seek" when it comes to reading daily over the summer.  Here are some simply ways to help your child swing into the next year ahead, rather than sliding backwards:

1.  Be sure that your child has a book in their hands as soon as the summer vacation begins. Check out the library, thrift stores, or arrange a book swap in your neighborhood for books.
2.  Check out your local library for the summer children's programs that they have scheduled for the summer.  Be sure to sign yourself and your children up for library cards.

3.  Assist your child in finding a book that is at their independent reading level.  One of the main reasons students don't read or finish reading a book is that they are not reading a book at their independent level.  See your child's teacher for direction as to their reading level - they may refer to this as a Lexile Level. Use the following link to help you match the correct book with your child's reading level:  http://www.lexile.com/findabook/

4.  Use the technology....it is their world.  Reading digital media is reading!  There are many sites with digital book resources.  Here are just a few to get you started...
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/
http://www.magickeys.com/books/
http://pbskids.org/island/activities/stories.html

5. Plan a vacation with your family it can be a real vacation or a dream vacation and research the destination together.  Encourage your child to use both traditional resources and online resources to search and plan for the vacation.  Another fun idea is to pull out a map and read different stories of interest to your child and map the different locations of the characters from the stories ( a bookation).

Let me know what you think....