summer brain drain Archives

Parents, are you scrambling about looking for camps, sporting activities and other projects for your children to engage in this Summer?

Brain drain is also a big issue for children during summer months when a lot of kids engage in mindless activities. If you would like to keep their mind sharp while doing some fun educational activities, we found some wonderful ideas from Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a nonprofit organization that provides a transformative learning experience for K-12 students and teachers across the U.S.. The organization has collaborated with some of the best teachers in the country and come up with a list of educational activities for kids to enjoy doing this summer.

Here are some ideas:

April Moon (@aprilsunshine77), Robert and Patricia Kern National Teacher of the Year – Waxahachie, TX, PLTW Engineering Master Teacher

1. Take a field trip to your local wastewater plant and / or water treatment facility. Tours are usually free but need to be scheduled beforehand. This is a great way for kids (and parents) to learn about water management processes and what we can do to help conserve water and properly care for our water resources. Water management systems involve many fields, including, but not limited to, biology, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and environmental engineering.

2. With so many products now being manufactured, many students do not get much experience with hand tools. One great summer project is to design and build a small structure with your kids, such as a dog house or a tree house. There are many design plans online that you can study before creating and building your own design!

3. Want a fun and educational adventure for the whole family? Visit a glass blowing studio to see demonstrations and / or take classes. This is a great way to experience the beauty of combining STEM with art through a creative manufacturing process!

4. Girls: Watch the TED Talk about Debbie Sterling (inventor and CEO of GoldieBLOX) about her journey as a female engineer and her quest to inspire young girls to pursue engineering.

Kelly Wheeler (@kwheeler_kelly), PLTW Launch Teacher of the Year – Menifee, CA

1. Roly Poly Adventures: Science Experiments with Pill Bugs! My daughter Madison is obsessed with roly polies! I found a great blog with wonderful science experiments to do with her over the summers using the Pill Bug!

2. Marble Run (Purchased Product) – My kids love the Marble Run. The set comes with curves, chutes, and wheels for the kids to design amazing marble runs!

Cardboard Boxes! There are so many fun things you can create with cardboard boxes to inspire the inner engineer in your child!

a. Design and build a car out of cardboard. Families could park their cars in the living room and enjoy a family night watching a movie in their own drive-in!

b. Design an arcade game! Get some inspiration from a 9-year-old boy named Caine who created his very own cardboard arcade. http://cainesarcade.com

c. Create a miniature golf course. Q-Tips and paper towel and toilet paper rolls work great!

4. Inventors Box!

My son Colin who is 10 loves to invent and create at home. This activity is inspired by him.

By having a “Tinker” Box at a child’s disposal it will encourage them to use their imagination and natural curiosity to design and build, not to mention it can also store all their items for building. I have a couple of rules for my kiddos at home: if it’s in the box, they can use it how they see fit in their designs. However, if there is something they want to use that is not in the box, they must ask for permission.

Items to include in the box: small boxes, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, yarn, egg cartons, empty butter tubs, broken toys, old toy parts, tape of all kinds, empty cereal boxes, white glue,glue sticks, paper clips, string, left over craft materials, construction paper, aluminum foil,plastic wrap, cotton balls, and any recycled materials around the house. The list could really go on and on. Make sure all materials are safe for children to use.

One fun idea for your child’s tinker box is to design a boat that can hold 10 to 20 pennies and then try to float it in the sink, bathtub, or small pool.

5. Books are always great ways to introduce students to STEM and their inner inventor. Here are a few of my kids’ favorites.

a. The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Sprires

b. What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada

c. Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty

Beth Fox (@bfox01), PLTW Gateway Teacher of the Year – Lenoir, NC

The Engineering Encounters Bridge Design Contest is an Internet-based competition that provides middle school and high school students with a realistic, engaging introduction to engineering. While the contest for 2016 has ended, you can still download the free softwareand try your hand at bridge design to get a leg up on next year’s competition!
Robot Virtual Worlds – Expedition Atlantis! Download this fun activity to learn how to code, incorporate math skills, and expand on your proportional reasoning skills!

Chris Hurd (@CazHSTechLabs), PLTW Engineering Teacher of the Year – Cazenovia, NY

Our local university, the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), offers a “RoboCamp” that is great for students. They actually have a week long robotics camp, as well as weekend programs. Look up a university or college program like it close to you. What kid wouldn’t like to go away for the weekend or the week and delve into the world of robotics?

2. Attend a local “Rocket Launch”! See rockets large and small take to the skies on a monthly basis at a local rocket club’s launch site. The Syracuse rocket club hosts a monthly launch and invites the public to come and watch, and even build one and launch it with them! They meet monthly, and launch monthly, and their members come into my classroom for Tech Club to work with my students on a regular basis. I have a group of students right now building a 6’ tall, two-stage rocket that requires six engines and a license to launch!

3. Visit a local science museum or STEM-based museum to keep students’ interest piqued all summer long. Most have daily activities and lots of hands-on displays as well as an I-MAX theater.

Darwin Shorters (@MrShorters), PLTW Computer Science Teacher of the Year – Charleston, SC

1. Try your hand at the various tutorials on the MIT App Inventor website. Basic tutorials are great to start, and once you have a basic understanding, I suggest the QuizMe tutorial to help students understand the concept of List and how to use indexes to iterate through them.

Dr. Julye Adams (@DrJulyeAdams), PLTW Biomedical Science Teacher of the Year – Georgetown, KY

STRETCH your body. Use stretching techniques to become more flexible. Then research the changes in your ligaments and muscles that have to happen for you to become more flexible. Record your observations.
Design your own toothbrush. What do you wish could be better about your current toothbrush? What issues do you see with it? Design a better version and test it. Record the steps you took to identify the problem, design a new toothbrush, and your final observations in a notebook.
Investigate a “crime.” Ask your parents to set up a mock crime scene. Then make observations and deductions from the scene to determine what happened.

4. Collect water samples from different areas in your house and backyard. Look at small drops with a high magnification magnifying glass. Do you see anything moving? Then research the various things contained in water.

Since school is out for many children across the nation, parents may be wondering how to combat the Summer brain drain. That is the effect of kids losing some of the information, skills and knowledge they acquired during the school year over the three months of vacation. These tips from our friends at PartTimeNanny are perfect to share again. Here are tips to boost your child’s information retention and reinforce the lessons she/he learns every day.

Vocabulary Words – Make learning these words fun by inventing games or incorporating the words into existing word games. You can post the week’s vocabulary words in strategic places around the house and quiz your child on the spelling at different times. Use the words in sentences and spell them out instead of saying them.

Reading – Take an interest in the books assigned to your student. Ask him about the books he is reading in school and hold conversations relating to the topics they cover. Kids may not have time for additional reading during the school year, but on holidays and vacations consider making suggestions. If your child shows interest in a particular topic, explore it with him. Not only will your interest help reinforce what he is learning in school, it will also provide you with valuable bonding time. You may find that you both have similar interests, giving you a foundation upon which to build a more meaningful relationship with your child.

Math – There are plenty of math games that you can play with your child. If you are working with a very young child, you can reinforce simple concepts like addition and subtraction with items like pennies or popcorn. Older kids may enjoy helping you cook, and you can help them with measurements and show them how to work with fractions. Have your child figure out the math for doubling a recipe or cutting it in half. Experiential learning with real world situations has a tendency to stick.

History – The Internet has an infinite wealth of information. You can take your child on a virtual tour of the world, visiting different eras without ever leaving your living room. There are many videos available on the various historical figures and periods. Sometimes viewing the right movie can have a long-lasting, positive impact. Also, if you travel during vacation time, consider going to some historical sites in your travels. Some families travel to such sites to make the history lessons real. The Gettysburg Address is probably easier to remember if you’ve actually stood on the historic spot, rather than just looking at a picture or two.

Helping your child to problem solve, think critically and develop a good memory will also help in reinforcing school lessons. Many school systems these days are less focused on teaching some of these skills, as more and more classrooms teach for testing. The problem with this method is that kids learn the information that they will need to know for the test, but once the test is over that information is quickly lost. When a child is taught how to think, comprehend and memorize, the lessons go deeper and less information is lost. You can help your child develop these skills by playing card games, board and memory games.

Playing with your child will also help improve your memory as well, so you will both benefit by the practice. There are several types of memory games available on the market, or you can create some of your own. Teaching your child games like checkers and chess will help her develop critical thinking skills as she learns how to strategize and anticipate the other person’s moves. The abilities she develops through these games will assist her in her school work as she begins to learn how to see patterns and figure out the plan for solving the problems.

Reinforcing what your child learns at school doesn’t always need to be about the exact lessons that are being taught. Part of reinforcing the lessons is making them relevant to real life. Look for ways to make them interesting, sometimes showing how that lesson is a part of a bigger subject. Getting involved in your child’s education is an investment you can’t afford to neglect. Working with your child may help develop skills that will eventually create a lifelong learner, enriching both your lives and your relationship

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