Fun Facts Summer Fridays!
Brain Drain Busters:
Shaving Cream Sky Writing!
The Alphabet Aerobics Speech blog will be taking a cue from our corporate-minded friends and enjoying "Summer Fridays."
However, don't fear! We will continue to blog through the summer on Thursdays.
Stay tuned for tons of summer fun and activities to prevent the dreaded summer learning loss, or "Brain Drain" every Thursday in June and July!
Shaving Cream Sky Writing
Two tremendous problems that educators face are the summer brain drain and getting new skills to carryover. Summer learning loss, or “brain drain,” is not a myth. Many children forget the skills and information that they have learned during the school year. Studies have shown that children lose up to 2 months of reading skills during the summer. When they return to school in the fall, as much as 5-6 weeks are allocated to reviewing skills they’ve already learned, rather than pushing them to explore new challenges.
We need parents and summer educators to help. Check out this easy and entertaining letter-learning activity that parents can use to improve summer learning and carryover!
For children who are just learning new letters, numbers and shapes, you can easily make this creative and fun activity using just shaving cream or whipped cream.
Instructions:
Step 1: Spray foamy shaving cream onto a table.
Step 2: Trace a letter and have your child copy it.
Why it works: This activity is fantastic because it's quite adaptable for any age, cleanliness, and snacking level.
For instance, to make this into a delicious snacking activity, you can use whipped cream instead of shaving cream. Additionally, if you would like this to be a more contained mess, you can spray the foam into large, disposable foil baking sheet.
You can also work on a few different skills:
* articulation sounds
* letter and sound identification
* sight words, vocabulary ("drawing" pictures)
* expressive language organization and formulation (talking about pictures), * answering wh-questions (What did you "draw?")
* prepositions (Where should I "draw" the picture?)
* adjectives, nouns, and verbs
You can adapt this to any age by holding your child's hand to trace the letter, tracing the letter yourself and having your child copy it, or even, calling out a letter and allowing your child to "write" it independently. You can even help you child work on sight words, shapes, and numbers using this activity. On a nice summer day, you can easily take this activity outside and on-the-go! The "sky" is the limit!
Important Tip: If your child has sensitive skin, consider using a "gentle" cream or rubber gloves.
