Reverse the Summer Brain Drain

While some kids have been out of school for only a week or so, my kids have been out since the third week in May. Their summer is already 1/3 over and they’ve spent it swimming, bowling, bike riding and on the occasional day camp field trip. While I’m all for the activity, I’m also working hard to fight Summer Brain Drain with reading programs and workbooks, and the School Zone Start to Read and Little Get Ready series are supplementing my efforts.

My youngest son turns 5 in November, missing the cutoff for public kindergarten, which means he’ll move to the kindergarten room in his daycare. We’ve discussed starting him on learning to read ahead of his peers, some of whom are still learning letters and sounds, something he mastered months ago. The Start to Read! Level 1 Early Reading Program 6-Book Set series is the perfect system to get him started.

The set is aimed at ages 4-6 and includes a read-along and songs CD, 5 beginning reader books and a comprehension workbook, along with a parent guide offering tips and ideas for following the 3 step process of listen, read, review. Each beginning reader book corresponds to 2 tracks on the CD, where the book is read twice. The child is encouraged to listen to the story while following along in the book, and then reading it on their own. Zach was apprehensive at first but once we finished the first book, he requested another, and then a third. We stopped after 3 books because it was losing his interest, but he did a great job of following the story and sounding out the words. Some of his reading was more remembering the story, but the parent directions encourage allowing the child to tell the story in their own words. A few days later he requested the other books on his own, then announced “I can read!” after we finished them.

In addition to the Start to Read set, School Zone provided us with two Little Get Ready! Books. The Get Ready To Read! Little Get Ready! Book is aimed at slightly older children — ages 5-7/grades K-1 — and teaches and reviews reading and writing skills such as letter-sound recognition, letter-picture recognition, action words, vowels, matching, opposites, rhyming and many more. The skills begin simple and grow progressively more difficult, keeping the child’s interest and challenging them where needed. Zach was able to whip through the earlier pages with ease, then needed my assistance for the more difficult pages. He learned some concepts that were new to him, such as ending sounds, that will help as he learns to read.

The second Little Get Ready! Book we received is Multiplication Facts and is perfect for my rising third grader who learned the basic concepts of multiplication at the end of second grade. The books starts out with grouping, then moves into more complex concepts such as tables and arrays. It stresses using the multiplication concepts already learned to understand new concepts. Math is one of Alex’s favorite subjects and flies through workbooks in his grade level. The Multiplication Facts book challenges him to approach multiplication in a new manner and will give him an advantage when he enters third grade.

The books are reasonably priced and available as sets or individually. School Zone also has flash cards, software, and games in addition to dot-to-dot, hidden pictures and other fun activity books. If you’re looking for fun and educational material to keep your kids from suffering Summer Brain Drain, School Zone is the place to go.

It warms Nancy’s heart to see her boys pull out their workbooks unprompted. She writes about her 2 boys, books and life in Colorado at Life With My Boys and Books.