Keep Kids’ Skills Sharp With Outings, Projects
Summer can provide as much learning as school if parents direct their children toward activities that stretch the mind.
According to Maggie Crawford, director of the Spokane Sylvan Learning Center, skills mastered during the school year fade with disuse and need to be reinforced.
Crawford offers these tips for parents to span the summer learning gap:
Stimulate curiosity by planning family trips to museums, the zoo, the library or other places packed with educational opportunities. Have your child write to grandparents or pen pals to improve skills in language, spelling and reading.
If your child is old enough, have him or her keep a diary or write a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Encourage book reading by developing a reward system for reaching specific goals.
“By using summer as a time for encouraging learning,” says Crawford, “you can help set the stage for a sound performance next fall.”
To obtain a free brochure with ideas for summer learning, or to enroll your child in a summer enrichment program, contact the Spokane Sylvan Learning Center at 467-8715.
Something fishy
A group of volunteers working to start the Children’s Museum of Spokane are offering a T-shirt printing class at the Cheney Cowles museum, July 19 from 10 a.m. to noon and again from 1 to 3 p.m.
Using real fish and a 200-year-old Japanese process called “gyotaku,” children 6 and up use textile paints to design shirts into works of art.
Classes are $5 per child which includes the T-shirt. Pre-registration and pre-payment are required and class sizes are limited. For further information or to register, call the museum at (509) 456-3932.
Play it safe
Sports such as soccer, baseball and hockey provide young people the benefits of fitness, coordination, self-discipline and team work. They also cause injuries to more than 775,000 youths in the United States each year.
Play It Safe is a new program designed to help parents, coaches and children prevent sports injuries through education. A free brochure, A Safety Guide for Young Athletes, is available which describes types of typical injuries, diagnosis and treatment of those injuries and prevention guidelines.
To order the brochure, call (800) 824-BONES.
Parenting tips
“This summer, provide your child the opportunity to be bored. Being bored is the mother of invention. Invention requires creativity. Creativity requires thinking,” says Joan Boom in her booklet, There’s Nothing Common About Common Sense: 110 Tips for Parenting.
Boom, a public school educator, offers practical parenting advice in this pocketsized reference covering topics such as communication, respect and discipline, family activities and school relations. Also included in her booklet is a supplement, Sixteen Summertime Tips, to make the next few months more enjoyable.
To order the booklet and supplement, send $5, which includes shipping and handling, to: Child-Wise: Learning for Parents, P.O. Box 15107, Seattle, WA 98115.
xxxx