The Importance Of Continuing To Learn During The Holidays
During school holidays, especially in the summer, it is common for our children to suffer a reduction in knowledge levels, even more if they do not have any learning activities. To prevent this from happening, it is important that they continue to learn on vacation.
When kids are enjoying their summer vacation, it ‘s critical that they keep their minds busy. That way, when the vacation ends, they’ll be ready to start the next school year.
Several surveys show that many children end up forgetting a part of what they learned during the year if they are not involved in some educational activity during school break.
As a result, many teachers need to spend between four and five weeks at the start of the school year to catch up on what students have forgotten while on vacation.
Is it important to keep learning on vacation?
This is the big question that arises here. Many adults have gone their entire lives without studying during the holidays, and nothing unusual happened to them when they went back to school because of that.
But if asked, any teacher will likely say they have enough content for the entire year and would love not to have to devote the opening weeks of the school year to reviewing what students have forgotten over the holidays.
Some research shows that during the holidays, children can lose up to a third of the information they learned during the previous year. That’s a lot of information since we’re talking about 60 days a school year.
Children who do not take the time to continue learning on vacation or to practice the content they have already learned would be at a clear disadvantage compared to those who do.
What does the data show us?
The data talks about the importance of continuing to learn on vacation. Researchers on the subject conclude that students who do not participate in learning activities during this period tend to have worse results in a math test taken at the end of the vacation, compared to the results obtained at the beginning.
Taking steps to prevent the loss of knowledge and skills gained during the school year helps improve student learning and makes them more likely to have attitudes that include learning in the future.
The solution
As tempting as the temptation may be, we shouldn’t get carried away with laziness and end up allowing our children to do nothing while on vacation.
It is important to take time each day to work and improve children’s skills so that they continue to learn during this period. It’s enough to do a few simple activities like reading together, spending time at the local library, or even cooking together.
It is not about doing your homework, as learning is also about living, discovering, doing real experiments, observing. Since this is a vacation, contact with nature is important. Living new experiences or discovering different things is possible. We can, for example, record all this in a holiday diary to be made with the children’s participation.
If this all seems like a little, we can introduce 10 minutes of simple math exercises a day. With this short time, we can ensure that children do not lose the habit and that they maintain their knowledge until the beginning of the school year.
Pedagogy experts say that the most important thing is that the child does not get bored. Don’t allow her to spend all day doing the same thing, like just watching television. The holidays are the period when the involvement of parents is most necessary in this regard, and this moment needs to be well used.
