This first appeared in The Washington Post:
The smartest summer ever: Hazy, but not lazy
By Eisa Nefretari Ulen, Published: August 7, 2013
Summer time is fun time, when kids can make and sell lemonade, read for fun, catch and release fireflies at twilight, and daydream. These last few weeks of the best time of year can provide your child with rich opportunities to grow their brains while enjoying the traditional past-times of the season.
While the emphasis on testing in American public schools might compel you to drill your child with worksheets all summer, ?this type of learning should not replace original problem-solving,? says Your Child?s Growing Brain author Jane Healy. Save the worksheets for rainy days or short daily practice time over the summer months, and allow your child the opportunity to develop original thoughts and deepen understanding through active learning.
Float Like a Butterfly
Active play builds language skills. In fact, when children are asked to name tools, the same region of the brain is activated as when they physically use those tools. That?s important to keep in mind as you fret over the reading tests you know your child will begin to take again in the fall. Feeling the tickle of a caterpillar in his hand may just do more for your child than a flash card with the word caterpillar printed on it. Preparing for the DC CAS or SATs? Healy says, ?If you want to help your child build a keen brain for vocabulary, make sure plenty of physical play is on the program.?
Likewise, children develop greater abilities with spatial relationships when they explore more actively (think hunting for the caterpillar rather than passively sitting with that stack of flashcards). And Healy says ?greater ability with spatial relationships is one of the best predictors of math, physics, and engineering aptitude.?
So order a butterfly growing kit online. Let your child observe metamorphosis in preparation for biology class. Render the life cycle through art. Sequence the stages of development from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and prep for math. Then, on a shining August day, release the butterflies in Rock Creek Park, lay back with your child, and let him daydream about the miracle of the life he helped grow.
One article published in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science advocates for incorporation of more daydreaming, or ?mindful introspection,? in the classroom. ?While outward attention is essential for carrying out tasks and learning from classroom lessons, for example, the reflection and consolidation that may accompany mind wandering is equally important, fostering healthy development and learning in the longer term.?
Lay back in the grass and let the butterflies elevate your child?s mind. And if it rains a little and the butterflies fly away, you can stay right there in the park and still help prepare your child for math class: ?Making mud pies, believe it or not,? Healy says, ?is a readiness activity for algebra ? the science of describing relationships of quantity.?
Turns out the old saying is true: If you move your behind, your mind will, indeed, follow.
Twist and Shout
From the day American kids rush out of the school building on the last day of classes, yelping into the heat of their first real summer afternoon, they?re actually stimulating their growing brains. Letting them run, leap, and twist through vacation time (and for at least 30 minutes every day of the year) might be the best thing grown-ups can do for children?s cognitive development. According to Healy, movements like rocking, spinning, and hanging upside down all stimulate the cerebellum, the part of the brain that ?interacts with higher, frontal levels in the brain for cognitive skills such as language, social interaction, music, the ability to perform repetitive activities automatically (e.g., handwriting), and perhaps attention.?
Healy says that the cerebellum goes through a significant period of growth from birth to age two, and continues to grow and change through adolescence. ?The fact that most kids love to spin and hang by their knees ? and most adults don?t ? is one more evidence that the brain tends to seek out the activities that it needs at different periods of development.? Encourage free-range roaming as much as possible. Healy says that experimental rats raised in enriched cages have bigger and heavier cortical tissue than rats raised with little stimulation ? but rats who live in the natural environment and who therefore face the natural challenges of life in the woods have the biggest brains of them all.
Resist the urge to speed along with a stroller, unlock those straps, slow down, and let your baby enjoy toddling around as much as possible. Your little one will be marching toward a future of higher math and reading comprehension scores as she circumnavigates the world around her.
Big kids and teens also require free play to stimulate the brain. Make sure they go digging for clams, chasing fireflies, running back and forth with the waves in Ocean City. According to a January 2012 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Pediatrics, ?In addition to the positive physical and mental health impact of physical activity, there is a strong belief that regular participation in physical activity is linked to enhancement of brain function and cognition, thereby postively influencing academic performance.?
Relax and Read
All that screaming and running through a tide pool or local playground is enough to exhaust anyone. When your kids (and you!) need quiet time this summer, resist the temptation to spend money on baby genius apps or school-age educational DVDs. Instead, turn off the screens and turn on the world through reading. Some media products marketed as learning tools can actually reduce a toddler?s vocabulary according to John Medina, author of Brain Rules for Baby, and big kids with TVs in their bedrooms scored an average of 8 points lower on language arts and math tests than kids with TVs in the living room.
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests absolutely no screen time up to age 2 ? that includes phones, tablets, and laptops, as well as good ol? fashioned TV. Experts like Healy encourage parents of preschoolers over age 2 to ?limit TV, movies, and video and computer games to one to two hours a day (or less, or even none) of educational, nonviolent content.? Your young one will become a better thinker if you keep media away from her growing mind.
Instead, read books to your baby every day. Some of the best award-winning picture books are written and illustrated by African Americans and feature beautiful brown faces to delight your own perfect angel child. Look for authors like Virginia Hamilton, Muriel Feelings, Tom Feelings, Varnette P. Honeywood, Jabari Asim, and Walter Dean Meyers to start building your child?s library. As your child grows, his library should grow, too.
A paper published by the UK-based National Union of Teachers (NUT) calls reading ?one of the most effective ways to engage social change.? According to the NUT, ?poor reading skills correlate heavily with unemployment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.? Encouraging reading can change all that. Students whose parents had lower occupational status but read more for pleasure scored higher on reading tests than students with parents of middle or higher occupational status but who read less.
Books can change the game for your child.
Lemonade Stand
Want to give yourself another break without switching on the TV? Help your kids squeeze and mix a few pitchers of lemonade, then send them out to the front stoop to sell it. Count the lemons, measure the sugar, gaze at the pulp as it twirls with each swish of the wooden spoon, then let them manage the money they?ve earned selling Dixie cups of the sweetness they just made to your neighbors and friends. Their math and science teachers say thank you.
Fly a Kite (But Build it First)
Just as you resist the urge to spend money on video games, why not scale back on the costs of summertime toys, too? Look online at Aviation for Kids (http://www.aviation-for-kids.com/kites.html) for instructions on how to build a kite, and spend your money on the inexpensive materials you?ll need to share one Saturday bonding and building with your child. Manipulating the materials needed to construct a kite increases fine motor skills in your child?s fingertips, measuring the materials before assembling them improves math skills, and, according to AviationforKids.com, building a kite with your child can also help her learn about lift; drag; tension; center of gravity; center of pressure; and torque, so she can really make sense of the fundamental laws of physics. NASA will be calling her in no time.
In the next and last part of this series, we?ll talk more physics as we examine the new science, technology, engineering, mathematics (or STEM) initiative in American schools.
Eisa Ulen has an MA from Teachers College Columbia University and over 20 years of experience in education. This summer, she developed Camp Fort Greene, a program for young people in her Brooklyn neighborhood to have fun while they learn all summer long.