Keep the Words during Summer Vacation
Taking a break from schoolbooks during the summer doesn’t mean your children need to push words into the closet until autumn. Without the pressure of deadlines, structured assignments and exams, reading and writing on a lazy summer day can be just plain fun.
If just plain fun feels too dangerous or too lazy, you can always tell yourself that you are improving your child’s writing and reading for next year’s school term. And of course you will, because the more your children read and write, the better readers and writers they will become. However, remember the fun during summer. It’s okay if they would rather read the latest book of adventure instead of a classic or if they would rather keep a journal of their summer camp activities instead of writing an essay—it’s the writing and reading that count.
If your young children are struggling readers, you can find help at ReadingRockets.org, a Web site dedicated to helping young children learn to read. It was the first element of a national multimedia project geared to provide tried-and-tested tools to help kids read at an acceptable level. It was launched by WETA TV 26, a public broadcasting station serving Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
It is a wonderful place for parents and teachers to find reliable information about helping children read.
Some of the features of the Web site are practical tips and online forums for parents, teachers, tutors and child care providers; a guide of the best children’s books with a searchable database; milestones of language development; articles on the latest reading research and practice as well as informative interviews with nationally recognized reading experts.
The site also has a searchable state-by-state resource guide and feature articles with celebrities about how reading has affected their lives. The news section offers the latest articles from national media that keeps parents and educators informed about reading studies, updates of legislation affecting reading curriculum and what parents and community groups are doing to give their children a head start in reading.
Some of the most fun is the behind-the-scenes visits with noted children’s book authors, found in the Book Club section Your children may discover another dimension to reading by learning more about these authors. The Book Club section also provides many lists of recommended books, top ten books in categories and best-sellers.
How could your children miss summer fun while reading Click, Clack Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Joffe Numeroff, Olivia Saves the Circus by Ian Falconer, Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say and Tuesday by David Wiesner?
You can also view specially produced television shows about reading online at the site also.
Elementary school students can practice their writing skills while still having fun. Sylvan Learning Center is contributing to the cause by offering a free online writing journal with decorative pages and suggested summertime writing topics. Each week the Center will post a new journal page featuring a suggested writing topic on their web site at http://www.educate.com/activities. Parents and children can go to the site, print out the new page and start writing. At the end of the summer children will have 13 unique stories about their summer, which can be bound by one of three journal covers, posted online for children to personalize and decorate. Sample journal topics for students include writing about their best friends on June 8, Best Friend Day, what they would do if they could go into outer space and where they would travel in a hot air balloon and what they would do.
“Summer break is a great time for children to relax and have fun. However, it is also a very important time for children to continue to practice key skills such as writing so they can make a strong start when school returns,” says Richard Bavaria, Ph.D., vice president of education for Sylvan Learning Center. “Sylvan Learning Center’s summer journal helps children practice their writing over the summer to retain what they learned during the school year, while having fun by writing about their favorite summer memories — a key aspect of summer learning.”
If your children don’t even need this structure, you can buy them a simple notebook, give them their book of the day, point them to their favorite shade tree with a glass of lemonade and let them unleash their imaginations. They can drink the lemonade, drink in a fictional world through the words of the book’s author and also just watch nature get along with the business of the day. Then, they can jot down a few words of their own. Ah, those lazy, hazy days of summer.
