17 Apr The Summer Slide! What Families Want and Need In the Summer!
Guest post by Vicki Whiting, president, editor, and founder of Kid Scoop News a monthly newspaper for children. She is also in charge of Kid Scoop, a weekly newspaper feature geared to children ages 7 to 12. It appears in over 300 newspapers with a combined circulation of more than 7.5 million. A former elementary school teacher, she is also a consultant to newspapers on the topic of developing youth readership and educational partnerships.
Too many kids end up on the Summer Slide when school stops for the summer. If kids don’t read over the summer they fall behind in their reading skills. Sometimes by as much as two-three months. This is known as the Summer Slide.
Companies, organizations, and people in your community that care about kids and education are looking for ways to stop the Summer Slide. And a subscription to your newspaper is an effective, and cost-effective, solution!
The easiest way for families to prevent the Summer Slide is to keep their kids reading.
Kids who read 20 minutes a day read about 1.5 million more words in a year than kids who only read 5 minutes a day. Those who read 20 minutes a day score in the 90th percentile on reading achievement tests. Kids who read 5 minutes a day score at the 50th percentile.
In short, the more kids read, the better they read. The better they read, the better they do in school.
Another interesting tidbit? Children who come from homes with newspapers and other reading materials read more and score higher in school.
Newspapers in the home can be loads of fun!
Here are just a few reading games a family can enjoy together, or a busy parent can direct a child to do:
Escape the swamp!
Have your students imagine they have to overcome obstacles to get out of an imaginary swamp. Give them a list of obstacles to overcome such as a pit of quicksand, a wall of vines, a crocodile, a bunch of snakes and more. Challenge your child to find items in the newspaper to overcome each obstacle. Encourage creative explanations of how each item works to banish the obstacle. Make it fun! There are no wrong answers!
Summer Scavenger Hunt
The newspaper is chock full of great learning fun! Ask your child to find each of the following in the newspaper:
- A symbol of summer.
- Something to do outdoors.
- A kind of transportation.
- Two words that rhyme.
- Five numbers that add up to 25, 50 and 100.
Get a Life
Have your child make a list of everyday needs (food, shelter, transport). Next, find ads in the paper that meet these needs. Glue the ads to a piece of paper and find out what the different items cost. (If the ad doesn’t provide the cost, come up with some estimates. Add up the cost of the things your child claims to need. What is the cost for a day, a week and a month?
You can also provide families with a Summer Slide solution that also drives new revenue and circulation for you!
Give your local kids and your circulation a boost this summer by offering an in-paper summer reading series from Kid Scoop. This summer Kid Scoop will publish an “Out-of-This-World” 12-week series of pages to promote summer reading and foster partnerships with local companies, organizations, and individuals who support literacy. The pages all tie to the theme of space and our solar system, including a page timed to appear in August for the Solar Eclipse. Topics will include a virtual visit to each planet in our solar system, black holes, moons and more.
In addition to being lots of fun, the pages are designed to encourage kids to explore the entire newspaper, reinforcing math, science, literacy and social studies skills — and providing motivation to read more.
Get your local businesses involved as sponsors and donors of prizes for kids who complete Kid Scoop pages! It gets the entire community celebrating the importance of reading, boosts circulation and raises revenue!
To order the Kid Scoop Summer Series Contact Dan at: firstname.lastname@example.org or call at 909.793.9890.
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