The SUMMER SLIDE is real! You teach your heart out each school year then, bam, here comes the summer. Students and teachers need the break (especially after this past year), but summer magically erases learned skills. The expression, use it or lose it, takes on so much truth when it comes to students retaining information over their break; that slide can be HUGE for some kids.
The students return in the fall to their new teacher as if they remember nothing from the year before! We have some activities for teachers to send home as ideas for parents or use themselves if they are teaching summer school. Here are our 25 Activities to Avoid the Summer Slide. I think you’re going to use #16 every day in summer school!
ELA Activities for the Summer Slide
1–100 Sight Word Booklets (2 options) with a Sight Word Passage These easy print-and-go booklets are a great way to extend the practice of sight words with your students. Students can create a decorated shoe box to keep all their booklets to read again and again!
2 — Reading Games. Create some classic games such as memory or bingo or make some new ones. For memory, either make two sets of the words or possibly pair lower and uppercase alphabet letters! Need some bingo boards with sight words? Get a free set here at Bingo Card Creator!
3–Alphabet Foldables. These 72 booklets are perfect for kinders and 1st graders of ALL LEVELS and are packed with the cutest COLOR and BLACK & WHITE pics. You get three differentiated versions for each letter of the alphabet that can be used throughout the entire school year. The first book can introduce letters. The second and third can be used for sight words and fluency practice later. Don’t forget to add these to their little box of books they created in #1!
4–I Spy Phonics. I Spy Phonics covers a wide variety of phonics skills for K-2 students. Beyond just the phonics skills practice, these worksheets help your students strengthen their visual discrimination while building their attention and focus skills. AND they are fun!
5–Phonics Booklets. You will love these booklets. Easy to prep! Just print and fold! Yes, more booklets for the book box! Inside the foldable, you will find a passage for each phonics pattern, multiple-choice, fill in the blank, a short answer question, and word practice. You can see a sentence writing and parent connection activity on the back of the foldable!
Math Activities for the Summer Slide
6–I Spy Math Kids love playing I Spy, and our math I Spy sheets deliver the fun! They are differentiated for K-3 and super easy to print and GO!
7–Pop-Its NO PREP Centers—If your kids are not in love with collecting and using pop-its, are they even kids? This center allows you to meld math with a toy they already love!
8–Dice NO PREP Run and snag the dice out of any board game you have for some fun math activities using a die! When I want my kids to do their best work, I throw (no pun intended) items at them that they want to use! Kids can identify numbers, complete math problems, play games, etc. AND, all of these NO PREP centers cover both ELA and Math skills!
9–Math Activities Packet: Number Sense & Math Tools. We have included corresponding centers with the number sense and math tools worksheets and have broken them down into specific subject matter to make your job as easy as 1, 2, 3! See the cute counting worksheet below!
10–Math Activities Packet: Addition & Subtraction Within 100. Inside this packet, you will find 27 activities for adding and subtracting within 100! This packet is no prep; print and go!
Mixed Content Areas to Avoid the Slide
11–Once Upon a STEM. Besides a STEM challenge with a complete design process and vocabulary, we have included illustrated student readers to get your students thinking about the challenge. These readers are also written on three different levels to meet the needs of all of your students.
12–I Have Who Has. With 45 skills covered, your kids can review ELA and Math 1:1 or in a small group! Students can learn while doing something fun and effective!
13–1st Grade Summer Review Packets. Our review packets work on ELA, Writing, Math, Science, and Social Studies! Need a different grade? We also have K Review and 2nd Grade Review!
14–Bingo Chips/Daubers 1:1 Centers. This group of centers has over 55 options for review in both math and ELA! Use the same daubers or chips you have used for years in your bingo games (or improvise with cheerios!).
15–Scavenger Hunt. Scavenger hunts became huge during remote learning, so parents are super comfortable incorporating math, reading, and nature into their hunts.
Summer Fun to Avoid the Slide
16–EOY STEAM Activities. This packet is my FAVORITE on the list. If you check out only one thing in this blog to use this summer, CHECK THIS OUT! Over 30 STEAM activities, independent worksheets, games, and challenges perfect for summer school or at home with your own kiddos! If you don’t believe me, here’s what another teacher had to say:
“My kids go crazy for this! I love it as well because I love seeing how excited they get. It is really well put together, easy to follow and understand, and it is very engaging. I highly recommend.”
17–Directed Drawings. This Directed Drawings Resource with over 100 drawing activities is perfect for students to have an opportunity to connect art to writing & other crucial ELA skills.
18–Transformation Station. Similar to our Directed Drawings, Transformation Station allows students to combine writing with art. Starting with nothing more than a squiggle, students transform that into wherever their imagination takes them.
19–Grocery Shopping. I know it is sometimes a pain taking kids to the store, but there is so much reading and math involved in shopping! Whether you have them read the list to you or read the ingredients in an item, woo-hoo they are reading. Have them round up prices and keep track of how much you are spending, and just like that, MATH!
20–DEAR Drop everything and read! Sit in the park, have a picnic, and read chapter books with your students or children! Need some ideas for chapter books? We have 29 Recommended Chapter Books you can start reading today! Head to the library and after reading discuss the book!
Check Out These Activities Too!
21–Hopscotch. Instead of putting numbers in the squares, write in sight words. As kids hop to the squares, they read the words! Or if you are using numbers, have the kids tell you the number plus 1!
22–Swatter Games. My kids love anything that involves swatting or crushing. You can write letters or numbers on index cards and swat them with a flyswatter as you read them. For your readers, snag our Swatting Sight Words! Or, write words or letters on styrofoam cups and crush them with your feet as you read them!
23–You Read, I Read. My students always love it when I read, as did my daughter when she was little. But every once in a while, I would face angst if I asked them to read to me! With you read, I read, the littlest person picks the paragraph or page they read, then I read the next. They always think they have pulled one over on me when choosing the shortest paragraph or an illustrated page. But it is a WIN-WIN
!
24–PREMIUM Membership. There are three levels of membership to choose from, including our Premium Annual Membership, which gets you unlimited access to all of our printable resources and our digital ones!
25–Play! Drop everything and play!
Hopefully, some of these ideas will be exactly what you are looking for to help prevent the summer slide! Have some of your own tried and true activities that you use every summer? Please share in the comments below!
Combat the Summer Slide with Our Engaging Summer Worksheets!
The summer slide can lead to significant learning loss, but our summer worksheets are here to help! Keep your child’s skills sharp with our fun and educational activities covering math, reading, science, and more. These worksheets are designed to reinforce key concepts and make learning enjoyable during the break. By incorporating these activities into your child’s summer routine, you can help them retain their knowledge and be ready for the next school year. Explore our collection of summer worksheets today and ensure a smooth transition back to school. Happy learning!
WRITTEN BY – SUZANNE KELLEY
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