When the end of the school year approaches, we are a mix of emotions! Excited to have made it through the school year, and also sad about sending your sweet students off for the summer. We tend to wonder if they’ll forget everything they’ve learned in kindergarten over those few short months! We have all worked way too hard for that to happen. So, why not send them off with a little kindergarten summer review to avoid that cringe-worthy summer slide?! Here’s to getting your kiddos Ready Made for First Grade!
What is the Summer Slide?
Have you heard of summer slide? And I’m not talking about the fun ones you get to ride at the water park 😉 The summer slide is a term we use that refers to when a student regresses and loses some of the skills they learned during the school year over the summer. This happens in all content areas, especially in reading and math. The loss of skills each summer can cause some learning gaps for students as they start the next grade. If they don’t continue to practice these skills during the summer, it can cause some difficulties during the school year as new skills are built on a not-so-firm foundation.
Research has shown students lose about 20% of their yearly gains over the summer. Yikes! That is the equivalent of 36 days of learning in the classroom! That’s a lot of learning that is just g.o.n.e.
An even scarier statistic is that younger kids are even more at risk. Why? Because they are at a more crucial point of development at this stage in their lives.
How to Avoid the Summer Slide
There are many ways to avoid the summer slide by providing our students with lots of opportunities to continue practice what they learned in kindergarten. And these don’t need to be drill and kill activities. Actually, it’s better if they aren’t! Having your kinders practice the important skills in FUN ways will ensure that they will want to practice and in turn, learn more.
You can encourage your students’ parents to continute the learning over the summer to make sure their kids are ready for first grade.
Here are some fun ideas!
- Engage in Learning Play-Games such as puzzles and BrainPop cards are interactive and keep the brain working and moving. Encourage parents to have games available for their kids to pull out when they get bored. This is a much better activity than hours of screen time.
- Get Outside-Take a walk around the block or visit a park to get those imaginations going. Encourage them to go on a scavenger hunt and look for different animals, shapes, numbers, and sight words. Draw with chalk, water paint, or build structures with sticks.
- Read, Read, Read-This will look different for every child and family. Encourage kids to read what they are interested in, and have parents read to their children. A great idea is to choose a novel as a family and read it together before bedtime every night.
- Practice, Practice, Practice-Send home a ready made packet that parents can easily pull out when needed. This packet covers math practice, reading practice, writing, and problem solving skills.
Free Summer Bingo
This Summer Bingo is perfect to send home with your kindergartners to give their parents ideas of what to practice over the summer break. There is one bingo board for incoming kindergarteners and one for soon to be first graders to practice at home. It also includes some handwriting practice and a suggested book list to read over the summer. Click the image below to download it for free in my shop!
Kindergarten Summer Review: Ready Made for First Grade Summer Packet
Are you looking for more summer practice to send home with your kindergarteners? Well, you are in luck! I created this Kindergarten Summer Review Packet to help you! This summer review is really easy to put together into a little packet (or you can email it directly to parents if you need to) and send home over the summer to make sure my sweet littles are Ready Made for First Grade!
It is loaded with more than 70 pages of summer review worksheets including math practice, reading practice, writing, and problem solving skills, so that your students will have everything they need to keep kindergarten skills fresh and ready before first grade.
The Kindergarten Summer Review Packet Includes:
- A summer journal with 10 optional writing prompts {two handwriting lines to choose from}
- 20 daily practice pages aligned with math and literacy standards
- 6 additional math practice pages
- A summer reading list and a fun reading incentive
- A summer bingo board to motivate the learners
- 12 reading comprehension cards to use with any book
- 5 graphic organizers for reading response for any book
- PLUS even more math fluency practice
Have your already sent your kinders off for summer? That’s okay! This resource is great to be used at the end of kindergarten for a review or during the first few weeks of first grade too.
Help Your Students Avoid the Summer Slide
You can find Ready Made for First Grade summer practice resource in my shop! Not only will your students and their parents thank you, but the first grade teachers will thank you too!
Save These Kindergarten Summer Review Activities!
Be sure to pin this image to your favorite Pinterest teacher board, so you can come back for more ideas on how to avoid that summer slide!
