“The Summer Slide” is the phenomenon of losing academic skills during summer vacation. With the exception of the children who insist on you buying them workbooks and those that read a book a day by choice, all summer long, summer slide will happen to most children.
Here are some strategies to limit it’s effect on your child’s handwriting skills by using fun activities, not rigid homework:
* If you must use a book, use Handwriting Without Tears workbooks and limit practice to one page a day. Five minutes of work is better than 30 minutes of stalling and avoiding a page filled with poorly designed assignments. HTW’s pages are so targeted and organized that they get the job done fast.
* Think beyond workbooks. Write a book with your child on a topic they love. Use drawings and photos to illustrate it. Pretend play may need restaurant menus or store signs. Pretend garages or hair salons need price lists or bills-of-sale filled out. Be imaginative and have fun.
* Find or make notecards to send mail to relatives. It is often more fun to get mail back from them, so make sure grandparents have something fun to send back, even if it is a blank coloring page. Even though we are a digital society, everybody loves receiving personal mail, and children really love seeing their name on an envelope.
* Arts and crafts projects aren’t cop-out activities; they have real value. While creative craft play teaches many pre-writing skills for the younger kids, they can also preserve or develop skills in older kids. Look for fun kits, such as building a rubber band racing car or rhinestone mosaic picture kits, if your child isn’t the kind that grabs your empty egg carton and a glue stick and emerges with a masterpiece. Buy colorful writing tools, decorative craft scissors, and definitely make something crafty yourself. Seeing parents writing and creating is probably the best motivator for children to engage in these activities that prevent the summer skills slide!
