TOLEDO, Ohio — Heads up parents, we are only six weeks away from the start of school!
Your kids may still be in vacation mode, but some experts say it's time to start thinking about ways to avoid summer learning loss.
The term 'summer slide' is used to explain the decline in student's reading and academic skills over summer break.
Early literacy librarian with the Toledo Lucas County Public Library Cristin Brown says summer slide is a real thing, and it happens often.
"Once we're out of school for the summer, we think 'oh, freedom' but we want to keep our brains active and learning. So when we come back to school we're already set up for success. We don't want that summer slide to happen where we forgot what we've learned," Brown said.
Brown says it's important to make sure we keep our kid's brain active. The Toledo Public Library has options for parents who don't know where to start or what to do.
"We always have our summer read program," Brown said. "That is happening right now through August 7. We are encouraging families, babies all the way through adults, to read for 20 minutes a day."
Parents can also have their children do a few pages in an educational workbook. Brown says it doesn't take much time for either and keeps them engaged with what they learned during the school year.
"It doesn't matter what you read, as long as you're having fun. We want you to have fun reading because the more we read, the more we know," Brown said.
There's a number of other events and resources to keep your child's learning up before school starts in August.
Links can be found below: