Summer holidays (or, any long holiday) means a lot of fun and excitement, and time away from school for the kids. However, the looming worry of the dreaded summer slide is always in the back of parents minds—but we can show you how to build a summer routine that stops brain drain and ensures that your children are ready for the new school year from the get-go.
What Is Summer Brain Drain, and Why Does it Matter?
In short, brain drain refers to a loss of academic skills or knowledge that students often go through over the summer holidays (or any longer holiday period) due to what they learned at school not being reinforced. The most common areas to suffer include maths and literacy, which can result in lower performance when school starts again—and this can be stressful for both you and your children!
Close to half of all students experience summer brain drain, with up to 20% of the year’s learning being lost over the weeks, and 40% over the years of school. Luckily, though, there are plenty of activities that you can implement in daily life over the holidays to prevent this from happening, and many of them are far easier than you might think.
While summer brain drain isn’t the end of the world, it can cause anxiety and stress upon returning to school. These gaps in their knowledge and regression in particular areas can be detrimental in keeping up with education and make them fall behind. So, how to build a summer routine that stops brain drain?
Why Do Routines Help Kids Stay Mentally Sharp?
Routines can help children stay mentally sharp because they provide emotional security and remove a lot of stress that comes with the unknown. Setting up and sticking to a healthy routine is fantastic for helping with self-regulation and regulating behaviours, leading to overall better mental and emotional health. This, in turn, will also help with focus and learning, and allow children to excel in what they do.
What Are the Key Elements of a Balanced Summer Routine?
To know how to build a summer routine that stops brain drain, you need to set a healthy routine that is easy to follow, and benefits everyone. Not only does this include brain-boosting activities, but also healthy lifestyle choices.
Some additional elements to remember in a good summer routine include:
- Plenty of time for breaks and downtime
- Lots of healthy foods and snacks
- Spending time outdoors to enjoy the weather and get some vitamin D
- Build up responsibility with chores and housework (suitable for their ages)
- Maintain strong and health sleeping patterns
- Spend time with family and other loved ones
- Be mindful of screen time and aimless scrolling
What Are Some Brain-Boosting Activities to Include Each Week?
Some brain-boosting activities that you can do might include DIY science projects, learning a language, reading, diving into new hobbies, or even enjoying physical activities like sports. However, you need to remember that things can change week-by-week depending on energy levels, the weather, sickness, obligations, and other factors in your life—so, while you might want to stick to a strict routine, it is key that there is wiggle-room, too!
To know how to build a summer routine that stops brain drain, you can choose a handful of different activities to do every single week, depending on your schedule. For example, you might want to incorporate daily reading, language learning, maths practice, and physical activities every day, while you can do a weekly DIY science project and/or educational trip. Every week might look a little bit different as you include more activities, but this is going to be something that you and your family need to work out.
Top activities that can help to prevent summer brain drain:
- Take part in a summer reading programme
- Practice everyday maths
- Learn or build on a language
- Spend time exploring the garden (and the critters in it!)
- Go on educational trips
- Try out cool DIY science projects
- Do brain-boosting games and puzzles
- Limit aimless time on technology/screen time
- Stay physical and enjoy sports
- Dive into creative outlets like art or music
- Participate in a brain training program
A Quick Note on Technology
It’s important to remember that technology is not a bad thing—but an overreliance on it is. We understand that everyone lives a busy life, but research has shown that too much technology, especially scrolling on social media, has a detrimental impact on children’s brains. So, while too much of it is bad, you should absolutely leverage it to your advantage and use it as a tool where you can, rather than a way to aimlessly pass time.
Get your kids using technology in a way that benefits them, and where they can learn from it. This could be through educational videos or podcasts, doing digital art, or learning any other skills.
Tips for Parents: Making It Fun and Consistent
When figuring out how to build a summer routine that stops brain drain, you need to remember to make it both fun and consistent. It has to be something that you and your children are happy to keep doing, and that means you really need to be realistic.
Like any routine, you need to have key elements fixed into the schedule, but you also need to be flexible and keep room for change—because the unexpected can always happen!
It Doesn’t Need to Be Difficult
It might sound like stopping the dreaded brain drain is hard work, but it doesn’t have to be! There are lots of activities that require minimal effort for everyone involved, and there is going to be something that everyone loves. For many activities, you might even find that they closely reflect what your usual summer looks like, so you don’t even need to change things—what’s better than that?
Listen to What Your Kids Want
Although you will always have the final say as the parent, please listen to what your children want out of their holiday, and take their suggestions to heart. There is nothing worse than forcing them to do something they don’t want to do for weeks, and fighting with them about it every minute of the day.
Be flexible, and find something that calls to them. If they are artistic souls, lean more on the arts and keep their minds active with arts and crafts, music, and more. If they love physical activity, there are great ways to incorporate brain-boosting activities into sports! Believe it or not, reading and maths can be woven into any day, whether you go to the beach, the back garden, or the couch.
How The Brain Workshop Supports Summer Learning
You can prevent summer brain drain by keeping your children’s minds active throughout the summer with activities. These activities can include everyday maths (you can even turn it into a game), a summer reading programme, exploring creative hobbies like art or music, brain training exercises, brain-boosting puzzles, and sticking to a routine.
Together, all of these activities will help you keep your kid’s brain working, learning, and growing, reducing the chances of it regressing and losing progress it has made over the school year.
Want to protect your child’s brainpower this summer? Explore The Brain Workshop’s summer training programmes designed to build attention, memory, and focus. Or, for more information, learn more about us at the Brain Workshop, meet our team, check out events, or read our FAQ.
Now that you know how to build a summer routine that stops brain drain, what are you waiting for?
