But don’t take too long of a break. If summer days are consistently lazy – a significant amount of what went into building your child’s brain during the school year will start to leak out. Summer brain drain can amount to a significant learning loss, as much as 2 ½ months per student, with the biggest losses in math and reading. Consistent summer losses can cause a child to be 2 years behind their peers by 6th grade. By 9th grade, summer losses are considered responsible for 2/3 of the achievement gap. When kids head back to the classroom in the fall, teachers spend valuable teaching time, anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks, re-teaching what was lost over the summer.
Now let’s consider our visual kids. Many of them have already been struggling in school and can’t afford any leaks. They’ve been taught and tested in left-brain school systems and are desperate for a break, while still needing to shore up what they’ve learned during the year. The good news for these kids – and all kids- is that summer learning is way different than what happens in the classroom. And it should be.
So how do we make the most of summer? How do we plug the drain and make gains, especially for our right brain visual kids? The key is to make learning hands on, make it visual, add lots of art and time to create and above all – make it FUN. There are tons of great ideas out there and we’ve compiled the best and brightest ideas for you and your visual learner into our eBook, 7 Creative Ways to Stop Summer Brain Drain.