When you hear the words “summer slide,” do you think of water parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, or retaining your child’s academic skills that they’ve accrued through the school year? The correct answer is the latter. Summers are meant to be fun and full of vacations, camps, and making memories, but if you don’t want your child to fall behind when school starts back up in the fall, here are a few tips and resources to help prevent the summer slide for your kids.

1. Let kids read what they want
Kids will be more willing to read if they get to choose the books. Your school may provide a suggested summer reading list, or you can use our good friend, Google, to find some excellent lists like this one from Barnes and Noble.

2. Keep it Fun
In addition to letting kids pick what they want to read, Scholastic has developed a really cool game where kids can track what they read, play games, and interact with other kids online. Tracking reading will also help Scholastic donate books to underserved youth in the community. What a fun way to avoid the summer slide!

3. Explore different types of reading materials
Change things up with magazines, chapter books, pictures, or even consider an audiobook during a road trip.

4. Play Games!
Similar to hiding vegetables in food, hide learning in a game. Play games like Apples to Apples, Boggle, or Pickles to Penguins to help build vocabulary during the summer months. Here’s a great list of other games to play as well.

5. Go to the library
Check out your local library for storytimes and other engaging events for kids. Visiting the library and getting your child a library card is also a budget-friendly way to continue reading throughout the summer and beyond. In an attempt to avoid the summer slide, many public libraries also have reading incentive programs. The Cobb County Public Library has a program that allows your student number to work as a library card number!

Cheers to happy reading and happy summer! May your summer slides only be of the happy variety that you find on the most fun of playgrounds.

Find out more about local programs for Cobb County here:
https://www.cobbcounty.org/library/learning-programs

Discover more about local programs for Paulding County here:
http://www.wgrls.org/

Learn more about local programs for Dodge County here:
http://orls.org/wordpress/branches/dodge-county-library/

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