Community Corner

Keep Kids Engaged During the Summer

Georgia Connections Academy offers these tips.

Students may be on break for the summer, but Georgia Connections Academy online school advises parents that keeping kids engaged contributes to their academic success.

Principal Heather Robinson says in a press release that turning to the arts is one way to keep learning alive when school is out.

“There is a strong and growing body of research that shows the positive correlation between involvement in the Arts and academic achievement,” she said.

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These top ten learning activities from Connections Academy allows students to practice skills while expressing their creativity and having fun:

  1. Star in the living room theater: Ask children to act out some of their favorite story books. Taking the written word to the “stage” deepens reading comprehension, expands creativity and is entertaining for the whole family. Write scripts, assign a director. Crafty kids can make costumes, programs and tickets. 
  2. Study music…online: Kids everywhere can now study music online from one of the world’s most famous conservatories. Juilliard eLearning offers elementary, middle and high school music courses online that include lessons, a music tool and demos from Juilliard faculty and students. Courses are reasonably priced and available 24/7.
  3. Guess the titles of works of art: Visit a local museum or gallery with your child and observe works of art, but don’t look at the title.  Let your child guess what he or she thinks the title should be based on his or her observation.  Ask kids to explain what influenced their title.  Once finished you can reveal the real name and compare and contrast — a great way to boost reasoning skills.
  4. Test your music IQ:  Play the Connections Academy Quiz Bowl Challenge. A free interactive online trivia challenge with 20 questions of varying difficulty and all about music. Test your skills and then challenge your friends. Trivia games are a great gateway to research skills. Don’t know an answer? Look it up together online or at the library. Chances are you’ll come away with far more than just the answer you were seeking.
  5. Play with story cubesStory cubes are great educational activity starters for writing, making plays, dances and works of art. Roll the dice, each painted with a different icon, to inspire your artistic creations.  For example, what story can you develop when you roll a sun, arrow, a key and a bridge? Can’t find them in stores? Try making your own.
  6. Dance your name: Ask children to make up a dance using the letters of their name. They may trace the letters in the air with their hand, foot, elbow or other body part. They may write the letter on a piece of paper and use the lines of the letter as a map to follow and inspire movement. Ask them to try different tempos and levels. The key to this activity is challenging kids to come up with a beginning, middle, and end – just like writing!
  7. Compose your own theme song and reinforce abstract thinking skills: Write down five words that describe yourself. Now, think about what musical sound best represents each word. Does the characteristic “kind” equal a gentle happy sound? Does “powerful” equal strong sounds? String together your sounds and compose your very own theme song. Be sure to give it a title.
  8. Make a masterpiece: Break out the paints, crayons, colored pencils and… ruler.  Show children works of art by the famed Piet Mondrian such as “Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red,” and inspire them to make their own versions of his noted horizontal and vertical grid works. Ask kids to measure each of their lines and practice calculating area. Don’t feel limited though, play with other colors and explore other geometrical shapes.
  9. Move your math facts: A really fun way to reinforce math concepts is to dance them. Ask your child to solve an equation by dancing the answer.  Each hop, skip, leap equals “one.” So for “two multiplied by two” a correct answer would be four hops or four leaps, etc. 
  10. Keep Reading: No summer learning list is complete without reading – to keep with the Arts theme, pick up biographies about great composers, artists, or dancers. Check out “Ballet for Martha” written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan about modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham or author James Mayhew’s “Katie” series, as in “Katie Meets the Impressionists” and “Katie Meets the Mona Lisa.”

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