Research tells us that kids are more successful in school when parents take an active interest in their homework.  It helps students understand that what they do when they aren’t in the classroom is also very important to their education.

Of course, helping with homework shouldn’t mean spending hours hunched over a desk with your child after you have been at work all day. Parents can be supportive by demonstrating organization skills, sharing their own experience setting and achieving short-term goals, explaining a tricky problem, or just encouraging kids to take a break if they get overwhelmed. And who knows? Parents might even learn a thing or two!

So, how can you as a parent help your child get the most out of their homework?  Here are some tips to guide the way:

1. Know the teachers — and what they’re looking for. Attend school events like parent-teacher conferences and meet your child’s teachers. Ask about their homework policies and how you should be involved. Knowing the teacher’s expectations upfront can help avoid frustrations later.
2. Set up a homework-friendly area. Make sure kids have a well-lit place to complete homework. Keep supplies — paper, pencils, glue, scissors — within reach.
3. Schedule a regular study time. Some kids work best in the afternoon, following a snack and play period.  Others may prefer to wait until after dinner.
4. Help them make a plan. On heavy homework nights or when there’s an especially hefty assignment to tackle, encourage your child to break up the work into manageable chunks. Create a work schedule for the night if necessary — and take time for a 15-minute break every hour, if possible.
5. Keep distractions to a minimum. This means no TV, loud music, or phone calls. (Occasionally, though, a phone call to a classmate about an assignment can be helpful.)
6. Make sure kids do their own work. They won’t learn if they don’t think for themselves and make their own mistakes. Parents can make suggestions and help with directions, but it’s a kid’s job to do the learning!
7. Be a motivator and monitor. Ask about assignments, quizzes, and tests. Give encouragement, check completed homework, and make yourself available for questions and concerns.
8. Set a good example. Do your kids ever see you diligently balancing your budget or reading a book? Kids are more likely to follow their parents’ examples than their advice.
9. Praise their work and efforts. Post an aced test or art project on the refrigerator. Mention academic achievements to relatives. Don’t underestimate the power of praise!
10. If there are continuing problems with homework, get help. Discuss any issues that arise with your child’s teacher. Some kids have trouble seeing the board and may need glasses, while others might need an evaluation for a learning problem or attention disorder.

While summer camp may seem like just a fun way to keep kids busy on the break from school, summer camps offer so much more. This answer to prayer for most working parents can help build life skills that serve students throughout their pre-teen and teenage years, and even into adulthood.

Learning-based summer camps provide a balance between routine and opportunity through a mix of structured and unstructured time, helping students develop essential life skills using methods not typical of classroom environments.

Here are just a few ways summer camp can help students grow socially, emotionally, intellectually, morally, and physically.

1. Build new relationships. At camp students are challenged with making social adjustments to new and diverse types of people, gaining new relational skills and increasing their self-esteem through the process.  Children also learn how to come together to work for something bigger than themselves – the team. They learn that relationships benefit from investment, and teams benefit from strong individual relationships.
2. Develop confidence and self-esteem. The camp environment teaches resilience as children learn to get back up and try again after failures, leading to increased confidence and building self-esteem. Challenges teach them how to take calculated risks and learn from their mistakes along the way to achieve a desired outcome.  Michael Popkin, family therapist and founder of Active Parenting says, “The building blocks of self-esteem are belonging, learning, and contributing. Camps offer unique opportunities for children to succeed in these three vital areas and even beyond home and school.”
3. Learn how to make decisions. Camp experiences grow confidence and develop good decision-making skills. As challenges are presented and risks are taken, ownership emerges, and responsibility and accountability are formed. This promotes self-determination and teaches children how to set goals and make appropriate decisions to ultimately achieve their goals.
4. Discover talents, interests, and values. Peter Scales, noted author and educator says, “The biggest plus of camp is that they help young people discover and explore their talents, interests, and values. Most schools don’t satisfy all these needs.”  Students who have had camp experiences end up healthier mentally, emotionally, socially, and even physically because they get to know themselves and how they fit into the world.

While today’s world makes it very easy to seek out only what is enjoyable and avoid what is unpleasant, camp nudges children to move out of their comfort zone to overcome challenges while building essential life skills.  And when students learn to push themselves to grow, they develop understanding around what it takes to be a productive, independent contributor to society.

The summer break from school brings exciting vacations, uninterrupted playtime, plenty of hot sunshine, and relaxing mornings sleeping in.  The sound of water play and screams of joy fill the air with summer bliss for months. While the “summer slide” may sound like the embodiment of summertime well spent, this phenomenon is anything but adventurous.

“The Summer Slide” is when students become stagnate in their development or lose skills that were obtained in the previous school year due to lack of structure, routine, and lost access to educational resources.  Researchers have found that summer learning loss is responsible for two-thirds of the development gap between low income students and their peers.  Foundational skills required for the fall semester can be forgotten by the time the new school year rolls around.  Students who experience summer slide start the new school year behind their peers before the bell even rings for the first time.

The Effects of Summer Slide

• Inability to begin new lessons.  Students who have lost the skills required to begin new lessons are already behind on the first day of school.  They can’t pick up where they left off in the prior school year. Valuable time in the classroom is spent re-learning important skills before children can begin learning new things, and teachers are required to modify lesson plans to effectively engage students.
• Loss of structure and routine. Adjusting to the structure and routine of a school day is not something that comes easily for many children.  Re-teaching proper procedures and setting expectations is typically necessary at the start of a new school year, but this can be extremely challenging for student who have experienced summer slide.

It takes patience and persistence from both teachers during the school year and guardians at home to ensure that children remain challenged, engaged and excited to learn year-around. And prevention is key!  Great learners aren’t built overnight, but they are built – one day, one year, one summer at a time.

Teachers use certain instruction styles to help promote retention and prevent summer slide during the school year by bringing the lessons of the “real world” into the classroom.  Using real-life examples in lessons helps students draw meaning out of everyday life.  You might see this style of instruction play out in open-ended projects throughout the school year where students pick their own topics in areas of study.

So, how can you as a parent come alongside your child’s teachers to prevent summer slide?  We’ve provided a list of ideas for you to try at home!

• Engage with your student daily. Taking time to engage with your student daily is essential to helping them retain fundamental skills required for learning. Asking questions, challenging them, creating fun learning games to help them explore their environment are simple ways that you can engage with your child and help them continue learning and growing through their fun summer activities.
• Establishing and maintaining a routine is the key to foundational learning. Children need order and structure in their daily lives to feel safe and secure enough to try new things and expand their horizons. The structure that works for one family and one child may not suit another, however, so finding a daily routine that is healthy for your individual child and family is key.
• Read summer stories. Grab a book (or a whole series!) to enjoy with your child over the summer. Read it to your child out loud or let them read it to you.  Read for just a few minutes every day – perhaps at night before bed.  You can have your child speculate and write their own ending to the story, draw pictures, act out different scenes from the story – the possibilities are limitless.  Tying in fun, creative projects and activities to your summer story is a great way to make the most of these efforts, and it’s a sure way of maintaining a learning environment.
• Go on adventures together.  Adventures are as wide and expansive as your child’s and your own imagination.  Go places, explore new environments, learn new things, and experience all that summer has to offer – together! Technology and traditional teaching resources may not always be available, but the resources of the imagination are limitless.

Don’t slide – just glide!  Keep the forward movement of learning over the summer, and your child will hit the ground running in the Fall.  School will be back in session before you know it!

S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is quite the buzz word these days when it comes to educating our children.  But what does it really mean? And why is it so important?

This month we dug into the details with Katherine Allen, Education Research Analyst with IMPAQ International, to get some answers around all the STEM buzz!  The Quest Zone recently partnered with IMPAQ International to study the impact of arts-infused math curriculum on students in afterschool programs.  Here are Katie’s answers to a few of our parents’ questions!

Why is STEM important for my child?
STEM skills are required to understand the issues of today’s global community. In fact, most jobs in the American workplace today require some amount of skill in science, technology, engineering, and/or math. It isn’t just about math and science; it’s about preparing our children for college, careers, and life in this century.

Many afterschool programs that focus on STEM report an increase in student interest in STEM subjects and careers, with many going on to earn college degrees and build careers in the STEM field.  Students with access to high-quality STEM learning become more confident in these areas of study – areas that can take them far professionally in today’s world.

What if my child thinks he/she isn’t “the math and science type”?
STEM Identity refers to the idea that a student must see him or herself as “a STEM person” to remain engaged. Children are often their own biggest hurdle when they begin to see themselves as “not the math and science type.”  Knowing that students often carry these pre-conceived notions into their studies, STEM curriculum emphasizes curiosity, engagement, and increased interest in the subjects.  Students identify role models and potential careers within the field, helping them visualize how their STEM learning can play out long-term.  After some time in the program, your child may begin to change their point-of-view.

How can I support my child’s STEM Identity?
As a parent, you can support and nurture your child’s STEM identity simply by working it into your daily conversations.  Here are just a few examples.

• Talk with your children about how you use math and other STEM skills in your job or in other areas of life.
• Point out how other adults they know use math and STEM skills.
• Avoid negative comments about math and STEM, such as “I can’t do math” or “I’m not a math person.”
• If your child is having trouble with an assignment, let them know it’s normal to encounter challenging problems, and they can succeed through persistence.

The blended subject environment, combined with application to everyday life, is what separates STEM-based learning activities from the traditional math and science classes of years past.

STEM teaches students computational thinking and focuses on real-world applications of problem solving. These are skills your child can take far beyond grade school and into careers that will shape the future of our communities!

Ask your site director (or your child!) about the latest STEM projects underway in your Quest Zone today!

As your child’s first and most important teacher, you can play a vital role in helping your child develop effective studying habits. Those skills are often the tipping point that turns good students into great students! And, we promise, it really can be a fun bonding experience for everyone!

How do you get started? Here are 5 practical, painless ways to get involved in study time.

1. Repetition, repetition, repetition
   Repetition is often key for retention. The human brain needs to hear something 14 times before it moves from short-term to long-term memory. The method of modeling and mocking is one way to make repetition a bit more exciting at home. What do you do? “Model” a concept you’d like your child to “mock.” For example, have your child watch you complete a math problem they may be struggling with at least once before attempting it on their own.
2. Connect concepts to movement
   When information is connected to movement, it’s easier to remember. One way to do this while studying is to create a song with choreography, acting out the concept you’re studying while singing a catchy tune about it. Don’t be afraid to get creative and silly!
3. Write the answers
   When students write in response to their learning, they are more likely to retain the information. Ask your child to recall information by answering your verbal questions in writing. Writing will help them remember the information, and it will also sharpen their language skills. Use note cards, sticky notes, markers, pens, colorful paper, and other items to make writing a fun and exciting exercise.
4. Frame learning
   One of the best study techniques is to frame learning. Asking your child what he/she did or learned at school gives him/her a chance to capture or “frame” their learning in a verbal snapshot. Doing this regularly will cause the child to think deeper about what he/she learned, and it will encourage them to use relevant vocabulary daily. A great time to perform this exercise is during snack time, in the car on the way home from school, or even at the dinner table. This promotes communication between you, while allowing your child to practice “framing” on a regular basis.
5. Set goals and celebrate
   Help your child set goals for how long he/she should study and how often. Then celebrate when your child meets their goal by doing something they enjoy. Create a chart or graph that displays their progress over time. Or have your child draw a picture that represents the goal they are working toward, having the child color a portion of the picture each time they complete a session. When the picture is complete, they will have met their goal. This also promotes commitment to goal completion.

Children tend to have a more positive outlook on school and do better overall when parents and families are involved. Many studies show that family involvement is more important to a child’s school success than many factors – including family income and the education of the parents.

Supporting your child’s learning at home is important, but it doesn’t have to be all business. With a little creativity, it can be a fun experience for all of you!

As our society and family structures have evolved, two full-time working parents in a household has become the norm.  With the typical full-time job hours being 8am-5pm, the question arises – what will the kids do after school while they wait for their parents to get off work?

Afterschool programs offer something we call extended day enrichment. That means we make the most of those few hours every weekday afternoon. Children commune together while growing academically, building character, and developing communication skills through three primary methods:  academic reinforcement, academic enrichment, and parental involvement.

1. Reinforce skills learned at school. Academic reinforcement is vital for the growth and development required to become stronger, more confident students in the classroom.  In afterschool programs students receive tutoring and homework help. And they can work through additional activities to strengthen areas where they may be struggling. Parents can enjoy uninterrupted family time with their kids after work knowing their child has already completed their homework.
2. Academic enrichment. Students also participate in interesting activities not offered in their regular classes. STEM, Lego-robotics, and NFL Play 60 are just a few enrichment programs offered through select Quest Zones. These activities are designed to develop a host of skills, including critical thinking, proper social/emotional development, and problem solving/reasoning skills – all vital to becoming life-long learners and strategists.
3. Parental involvement. Parent involvement is extremely important to igniting a student’s love of learning and education. Afterschool programs offer parents the opportunity to take a more “hands-on” approach with their students’ education. The Quest Zone hosts family nights that promote literacy and math, seasonal food and clothing drives to help community members in need, and more to connect parents and communities with our students.

Saying “YES” to afterschool enrichment opens the door to new possibilities for students, families, and even communities. Children who are eager to learn become empowered to explore exciting possibilities – a life-changing catalyst that extends beyond the student’s elementary or middle school life.  And it starts with just a few hours afterschool each weekday!