You're exhausted. You're ready to take a break, and you deserve it. As we enter the summer months most parents and educators are thinking about their upcoming vacations, or finding a way to relax after the school year. While relaxation is crucial, so is making sure your child doesn't forget the lessons they learned during the schoolyear. Research indicates that your child could lose as much as one month's worth of school year learning over the summer. So our focus turns to creative ways to prevent learning loss during summer break.
Resting up is important, and I'd be the first to encourage kids to play all summer. So rather than missing out on the vigorous exercise kids desperately need, let's go outside to keep building those vital brain connections. This summer, let’s keep the learning going, and how about making it fun at the same time?
We all want the very best for our children as we prepare them for life. Ironically, instead of pressuring more and more, we should be letting them play freely more and more.
The benefits of outdoor play are too numerous to recount. One thing is for sure, whether or not we know scientifically what is happening in our child's development, we DO know that outdoor play, and plenty of it, makes or breaks our child's development and later his or her experience in school!
