Summer Plan: Stimulate Your Child’s Brain

Summer is an ideal time to give your children a leg up in the classroom by building mental skills such as logic and reasoning, attention, processing speed and auditory processing.

The LearningRx brain-training program can effectively develop these skills with intense game-like exercises.

Parents and kids can use free, fun games and exercises at home, in the car and even online.

But first consider:

• The average student loses approximately 2.6 months of grade-level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months, and all young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer.
  (Research compiled for an Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Conference report.)
• Teachers typically spend four weeks re-teaching or reviewing material that students have forgotten over summer break, according to John Hopkins Center for Summer Learning.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Think of it like this: The brain is like the body. If you exercise it, you improve it, but if you let it sit idle, it’s going to lose ability.

To avoid the summer slide, try these brain games and exercises that build cognitive skills, which are the underlying tools needed to learn.

• Mental Tic Tac Toe

Similar to traditional Tic Tac Toe, this game uses a “mental” grid numbered 1 to 9.

Players remember where their opponent has already been and call out an unoccupied space. The player who calls an occupied space loses.

What it helps: Attention, logic and reasoning, and working memory.

• Needle in a Haystack

Take a page from a newspaper and time your child as she circles all occurrences of a specific letter. Focus on increasing both accuracy and speed.

What it helps: Visual processing speed.

• 20 Questions

Think of a person or object and give your child 20 chances to narrow down what you’re thinking of by asking yes or no questions.

To help your children improve their logic and reasoning, teach them to strategize by using questions that will significantly narrow down the categories, such as “Are they alive?” or “Is it bigger than you?”

What it helps: Logic, reasoning, memory.

• Poetry

Have your child choose four words that rhyme and then ask them to use those words to create a poem or a rhyming song.
Or say a word, then have them come up with another that rhymes.

Keep this pattern going as long as possible, then start with a new word.

What it helps: Auditory analysis, verbal rhythm, memory.

Info: LearningRx at (859) 373-0002 or learningrx.com/Lexington-south