Hi, welcome to this week's Mindset session. This is one of the last mindset sessions. I wanted to take a moment to discuss with you what you should do after completing the course.
If you guys are already enrolled and ready to go to kindergarten, you know exactly what you'll do when this course is over.
But what if you're not? What to do if kindergarten is still a few months away?
Should you take a learning break after preschool?
The first thing I want to tell you is you should take a break immediately. Transitioning from a rigorous preschool program to a kindergarten experience can be a little overwhelming and daunting, not only for your child, but also for you.
So, if you have the time available, go ahead and feel free to take a break from structured learning activities. There's no need to do it continuously.
Addressing the “Summer Slide”
We've all heard about the summer slide and children losing information during the long summer break. Indeed, there is some concern about losing more memorized tasks, such as letter sounds and math, if you're going to take an extended, months-long break, for instance.
Certainly, you can do refresher work throughout the summer to ensure your child doesn't lose some of those skills, such as counting or letter sounds. However, don't feel the need to maintain the same pace.
Easy ways to keep pre-k skills fresh over the summer
Read to your child regularly.
That keeps so much going in their minds just by having a regular devoted reading time.
Focus on weak areas.
So don't feel the need to cover every single subject area. If there are one or two areas that you know your child needs a little more work on, or you would feel more comfortable if they had a little more work on those areas before starting kindergarten, simply focus on those things and don't worry about the rest.
Reinforce learning by exploring your child’s interests.
You can also use this time to re-explore favorite areas. If your child has a passion for nature studies, then feel free to throw yourselves into that completely. Let your child go bonkers on the areas that they're really interested in and that they really loved from this program.
Maintain a rich learning environment.
Just take everything you've learned about fostering this learning partnership and creating a learning-rich environment in your home, and continue to implement those principles in your daily life.
Talk to your child, play with them, ask questions, and answer their questions.
If you're doing those things regularly throughout your day, then you're well on your way to fostering an incredible educational environment for your child, where they will continue to learn.
So don't worry if you're going to take a break from structured learning activities for a while. They are still going to be learning, still going to be growing, still going to be benefiting so much from just the changes that you are probably integrating into your lives from all of the information that you've picked up throughout this course.
Enjoy a well-deserved break
So it's a well-deserved break for both of you. This has been a rigorous course, and it is a lot of work. It's a lot of work for you to put it together and ensure that you're gathering the supplies every week and integrating the activities.
So take that break, let your child have that break. A lot of times when you come back from a break, you're even more prepared to re-engage with the learning process. So enjoy that.
Next week, we will have a summary video for you to wrap things up. I hope that you have enjoyed this process throughout, and I hope that you have just developed an entirely new and wonderful learning partnership with your child.
We'll see you next time for the wrap-up video.