K5 Learning Blog

The Magic of Summer Reading

K5's resident book reviewer, Sheila Welch, has found her magic touch and conjures up four magic books we recommend for Summer reading.  These four books will entice even the most device-dependent children into their magical worlds.

Bill Peet’s  THE WHINGDINGDILLY is perfect for reading aloud.  Children from three to ten will enjoy the expressive artwork on each page that helps tell the story of Scamp, a farm dog, who wishes he were as important as the neighbors’ handsome horse. When his young owner laughs at him, Scamp runs away and stumbles upon a “helpful” witch who uses her magic to turn him into a huge, unique creature.  Of course, there is a happy ending with Scamp returning home as a happy dog.

Children who’re just starting to read independently will be thrilled to discover Ruth Chew’s Matter-of-Fact Magic series.  NO SUCH THING AS A WITCH takes its title from a statement that Nora and Ted’s mother repeats several times. The two children know better. They are certain their new neighbor is a witch, but is she a good one or a bad one? With just the right mixture of reality and magic, Chew’s books make a wonderful introduction to the world of fantasy literature.

The human brain is like a muscle – it needs regular exercise to stay in shape.  So when those lazy summer days come around, we need to make sure our kids don’t forget what they have learned over the last 10 months of school.
Studies Show
All students experience learning loss when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer.

On average, students lose approximately 2-3 months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills during the summer months.

At the beginning of each school year, teachers typically spend between 4-6 weeks re-teaching material that students have forgotten over the summer.
What Parents Can Do
It doesn’t take much.  Kids learn best in bite-size chunks. “Little and often” is the best approach. Here are some ideas to keep their brains ticking over:

No matter which side of the sight words debate you're on, we have added both categories as free and printable flashcards to our worksheet center. 

Dolch Sight Words

The Dolch Word List of  220 words includes the most frequently used words in the English language. Sight words make up 50 to 70% of any general text. Therefore, teaching The Dolch Word List is a crucial goal of education in kindergarten to grade 3. Learn the Dolch list of words with our preschool to grade 3 sight words flashcards.

Fry Sight Words  The Fry 1,000 Instant Words are a list of the most common words used for teaching reading, writing, and spelling. It is difficult to write a sentence without using several of the first 300 words in the Fry 1,000 Words List. Consequently, students need to be able to read the first 300 Fry sight words without a moment's hesitation.  Learn the Fry list of sight words with our 1,000 sight words flashcards.

The effects of technology on children are complicated. Whether technology helps or hurts in the development of your children’s thinking depends on what specific technology is used and how and with what frequency it is used.

Research shows the areas in which technology has the greatest impact on how children think are: attention, information overload, decision-making, and memory/learning. Importantly, all of these areas are ones in which you can have a counteracting influence on how technology affects your children. Negative indications are that attention spans are shorter, personal communication skills are reduced and there's a marked reduction in the ability to think abstractly. But is technology all bad? Not according to everyone.