Your child has worked SO hard this year and deserves to maintain or even increase his/her skills over the summer! We hope you will make summer learning a priority. There are different levels of achievement available to allow all students the opportunity to participate and receive recognition for their efforts.
Ideas for student’s “Independent Reading” minutes:
- Students can use the new stories recently added to Seesaw. These stories can be accessed until Seesaw is no longer available for the summer. (Go to “Activities” and choose “To Do”). If your child wants to record themselves reading and send them to me, I’d love to listen and send a message back!
- Reading for All Learners iPad app (there is a cost)
- Visit the public library. Your public library has excellent resources for choosing appropriate books for your child. Or check out some great online resources, such as:
- https://www.ala.org/alsc/publications-resources/book-lists (check out their summer reading list!)
- https://www.greatschools.org/gk/book-lists/favorite-books-for-kindergartners/ (Kinder)
- https://www.greatschools.org/gk/book-lists/favorite-books-for-first-graders/ (First)
- http://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/book-lists-and-recommendations/ages-6-7
(You can click on the flyer below for a printable version of the Summer Tracker if you need another one).
Reading
No other skill is more important to maintain over the summer months than READING. Children who read regularly are shown to have higher intelligence and general knowledge, better fluency, improved analytical thinking, broader vocabulary, better memory and increased writing skills. Please use every opportunity (long car rides, waits at the dentist/doctor, before bedtime, etc.) to have your child read to you and you read to them.
- 2025 Summer Reading Programs (click for a digital flyer)
Writing
Writing is “backwards reading” and not only improves your child’s writing skills, but also improves his/her reading skills as well. Encourage your child to use best handwriting and to sound out words phonetically, and assist your child in creating complete sentences that include proper use of upper and lower-case letters, and to include proper punctuation.
- Encourage your child to keep a journal of happenings or discoveries over the summer months.
Math
It is important that your child practices their math skills so that he/she can build on them in 1st grade! Review counting to 100 by 1’s and by 10’s, writing numbers to 20, recognizing written numbers up to 100 quickly, count up to 20+ objects, adding and subtracting within 10, (especially using real life problems), and adding and subtracting fluently within 5 (you can find timings in your student’s yellow folder they brought home for the summer).