5 Tips to avoid Summer Brain Drain

It is so common in fact that it has a name: Summer Brain Drain.

On average kiddos lose 2 months of reading ability and 2.6 months of their math skills during the summer.

But it doesn’t have to be so.

Your brain simply prioritizes knowledge it has to readily use. Therefore kids easily drop math-facts used regularly during the school year, but not so much after growing cob-webs during the summer.

If you ever broke your arm in the beginning of summer you would easily understand this analogy: Think of your arm resting in its cast for months at the time. Remove the cast and your arm isn’t just oddly pale, but significantly smaller than the non-injured one. It will take a few weeks to build strength back into your healing limb. Your unused summer brain functions very similarly.

As one can imagine, summer brain drain is completely preventable by maintaining the use of this already existing brain juice throughout summer vacation.

And no, we are not saying you should enroll your 5 year old in calculus (children breathing a sigh of relief).

Formal learning is less important than exercising basic facts. And experts everywhere encourage summer learning to be extra fun.

Here are 5 tips to avoid summer brain drain:

1. Create a summer reading list and read at least 30 minutes per day
2. Play board games that incorporate math facts
3. Research and read up on sightseeing vacation destinations
4. Use creative math manipulatives for simple math games (one of our favorites is what we call Skittle-math)
5. Have your children pay at the store using cash

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