The PEACE Fund Blog

The activities parents and educators engage in between now and September are going to be really important to making sure that this learning loss doesn’t happen. These are some tips:

• Join your school’s summer reading program – Many school districts offer a Summer Reading Challenge in elementary and middle schools where students are challenged to read so many minutes over the summer break. Studies show that reading 20 or more minutes a day prevents summer learning loss. If students read approximately 20 minutes a day during summer break, they will reach 1,500 minutes.
• Find Fun Ways to Use Math ­– From measuring in the kitchen to counting change in the grocery store to home improvement projects, math is everywhere. Help your kids find the fun by showing them the usefulness of math. The kitchen is a great place to practice math, as long as there’s an adult home to supervise. How many tomatoes will you need to double the recipe for sauce? If you put 10 slices of mushroom on the pizza, ask your child to put to twice as many olive slices. How many is that? If there are three people in your family and 15 strawberries to divide equally among them, how many strawberries will each person get?

• Study Science in Nature – Take the family on a nature walk or visit local parks to spark learning about the environment, plants, animals and insects.

• Get Your Kids Writing - One way to do this is to have them keep a summer journal, a great way to capture memories. Encouraging your kids to write about their activities helps boost their vocabulary and practice their handwriting as well as their grammar, spelling and creative writing skills. You can even go beyond the journal. You might ask your child to write a book, a short play or a story.

• Take Virtual Educational Outings – There are hundreds of experiences to suit all ages and interests: Zoo webcams, museum tours, exhibits, online activities for kids, streaming performances, reading/story time, and stuff that's just for fun, from North America and all over the world. "Walk" through some of the world's most prestigious cultural institutions, like The Met and The American Museum of Natural History, then go for a "ride" on Disney's new Frozen rollercoaster with the kids.

• Have a Family Board Game Night - There are so many great board games on the market now, and they teach everything from fractions to phonics. They make learning fun. Boggle Jr. is perfect for spelling and Yahtzee for math. Pictionary practices reading, and Scrambled States boosts geography skills.

• Scholastic’s Summer Read-a-Palooza: Partnering with the United Way, publisher Scholastic reimagined its summer Read-a-Palooza program to be completely kid driven to encourage independent learning during the coronavirus lockdown and to ensure engaging experiences to keep kids reading this summer. The free digital program launched earlier this year to accommodate school closures — it runs May 4 through Sept. 4 — and can be found on Scholastic’s Home Base. It is designed to increase book access through its Reading Streaks portal, which unlocks a donation of 100,000 print books from Scholastic, distributed by United Way Worldwide. Kids will be able to create their own reading zone, download books, track their reading streaks and meet authors.

Your kids are going to be spending a lot more time online, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Here are some suggestions on places to pass the time, entertain, and educate. This is just a few of the wonderful resources at your fingertips:

Khan Academy, grades K–12, free: Step-by-step videos and practice exercises make this a great academic website for kids. Every type of math is covered here in addition to computing, science, and history. This resource gives kids access to independent, self-paced learning.

BJ Pinchbeck's Homework Helper, grades 2–12, free: From geography to mythology, this site offers a wide variety of topics and links so kids don't have to wade through a confusing Google search results page.

Wide Open School, free: Wide Open School is a free collection of the best online learning experiences for kids curated by the editors at Common Sense. This site was built in a matter of days on a shared vision. They plan to keep building until things get back to normal. A group of more than 25 organizations came together and raised their hands to help, and many more are joining on a daily basis. They highlight the need to connect all kids and are working to close the digital divide. As they do so, Wide Open School will offer many resources that can be completed offline and on smartphones, as well as bilingual and English-language learner resources.

EPIC!, free for 30 days: Epic! is the leading digital library for kids 12 & under.They can instantly access 40,000 of the best books, learning videos, quizzes & more. To empower students to keep reading and learning at home during school closures due to coronavirus (COVID-19), they are offering FREE Remote Student Access to Epic through the end of the school year (June 30th), by teacher invitation. Students will have anywhere, anytime access to the full Epic library on all devices, including books or collections assigned by their teachers.

NASA at Home: A fantastic website offering a large collection of science lessons, activities, and virtual tours for kids curated by NASA. From formal lesson plans to amazing imagery and stories about how science and exploration are lifting our world. There will also be ongoing opportunities to chat and interact with scientists directly.

Nature Lab at Home: This site offers downloadable curriculum about nature and science. The Nature Conservancy and its 550 scientists have created Nature Lab: to help students learn the science behind how nature works for us and how we can help keep it running strong.

San Diego Children's Discovery Museum: This site offers hands-on "STREAM" activities focused on science, technology, reading, engineering, art, and math.

Exploratorium in San Francisco: They provide free ongoing exploration of science, art, and human perception through educational resources supporting online teaching and learning for all ages. Dive into the Exploratorium’s vast collection of at-home activities to feed your child’s curiosity.

Georgia Aquarium, free: Get some “face time” with penguins, jellyfish, sea otters, beluga whales and more on Georgia Aquarium’s multiple webcams. They offer daily live streaming events, regular updates on their animals, downloadable lesson plans and resources and a the chance to learn about all the animals in the facility.

They’ve just added “Virtual Yoga by the Water”. In partnership with Dancing Dogs Yoga Studio, they invite you to break a sweat at the most unique and inspiring fitness studio in Atlanta – all from the comfort of your own home! Filmed in front of our Ocean Voyager exhibit offers stunning views of whale sharks, manta rays and more. Designed to challenge students of all experience levels, now is the perfect time to dive into something new.

Story Time from Space, 6- to 10-year-olds: Story Time from Space is a project of the Global Space Education Foundation. They send children’s books to the International Space Station. While in space, astronauts are videotaping themselves reading these books to the children of Earth, while the text and images from the book are displayed on the screen. The videos are then available on Story Time from Space website.

We don’t have a parenting manual at home that allows us to turn to Chapter 4 on children and pandemics so that we know what signs to look for in our kids or even in ourselves. We’ve never faced anything like this before so there is no research to fall back on. If you're like many parents out there, you're probably questioning whether isolation measures and physical distancing are doing lasting damage to your kids' emotional development. But there are some signs we can watch out for that may signal mental health issues.

Sleep Issues: Sleep disturbances are common in difficult times, so kids may experience insomnia, nightmares, waking in the night or other irregularities.

Mood Shifts: Clinical Psychologist John Mayer advises parents to look for changes in “normal behavior” or temperament. Behaviors to be aware of include angry outbursts, sudden bouts of crying, sullenness, irritability, loss of interest in favorite activities and isolating from others. Kids don’t always verbalize their struggles, but anxiety, depression and other mental health issues can manifest in unusual behavior or moods.

Clingy Tendencies: You might see an increase in clingy behavior. You want to pay attention to if your child is following you from room to room, is having a hard time if you are out of eyesight or is unable to separate at all.

Withdrawal: On the other end of the spectrum, some kids may start to ignore the family members in their home or choose to reject the opportunity to connect with loved ones virtually. Some children may become more withdrawn and retreat into their rooms to spend more time on technology and phones.

Regressive Behaviors: Behaviors that you thought your child had grown out of may suddenly reappear. This might include things like thumb-sucking, needing a special toy for comfort, bed-wetting. This is normal during periods of stress like this but it’s something you want to keep an eye on if it continues.

Changes in Appetite: Keep an eye out for changes in eating habits in your child's eating habits. Have they suddenly lost their appetite or starting eating for extra comfort? This usually affects older kids and teens.

Reassurance-Seeking: Kids and teens may express worries about their own or others’ health, the future and even death. This is often a sign of internal anxiety, so it’s important for you to be present to offer that reassurance and a sense of stability.

Trouble Focusing: Older kids and teens may struggle to focus on educational tasks or procrastinate as they get easily distracted. Robin Gurwitch, a Duke University psychiatry professor specializing in family and child mental health says… “It may be a child forgets to complete a chore she has done for a while. It may mean that you tell him to complete a task and he can’t remember what you just said.”

Acting Out: Children may start pushing boundaries, displaying higher levels of aggression, disobeying instructions or getting into more arguments with family members.