Simple Ways to Boost Your Child's Overall Success during the Summer Months

Written by Esther Kamoche Robinson 06.27.25 EST 9:00 am

Summer is a great time to relax and enjoy life in a fun way. It is also a great time to boost your child's overall success by incorporating some small yet practical ways to ease their transition into the next school year. Set time aside to help your child practice real-life skills that they may be struggling with at school or at home. It can be as little as one or two days to five days a week. As your child's first teacher, you know your child best and you know what will work best for your child and your family.

During the summer months, you can help your child work on counting money, telling time, and practice computation skills like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. For older children and teenagers you can work on the above skills as well as teaching your children how to budget using a real or an imaginary budget. You can also teach them how to mow the lawn, make simple meals, how to do new tasks, or how to plan a vacation or a quick road trip. By making learning and real situations fun you can help boost their self confidence and help them find purpose in what they are learning. By incorporating real life experiences you can help accelerate their love of learning. When visiting museums, parks, historical places, and attending summer concerts you can give your child meaningful ways to apply what they have learned during the school year.

Many children today for a variety of reasons struggle with communicating with others. As parents we can help our children learn how to communicate better by teaching them and helping them practice how to write thank you letters or emails, practice interviewing skills, talking on the phone, and practice having real conversations with real people. We can also teach them how to use correct body language to show interest and how to use proper etiquette using digital media and in real world situations.

Summer time is also a great time to brush up on reading skills. Children today have access to thousands of free digital library books and resources as well as access to real books. By having your child read for about 15-30 minutes each day you can help your child increase or maintain their reading abilities. You can make reading fun for your child by reading with your child and asking meaningful comprehension and vocabulary questions to boost their understanding of the text. You can read some of your favorite classic stories from your childhood or you can get new book and media ideas from your local library. You can also help your child by helping them learn sight words from the previous grade levels or for their upcoming grade level. Practicing their reading fluency and even their spelling goes a long way in helping them become good readers and writers.

As parents sometimes we feel overwhelmed so don't discount the importance of free play. What you can't do you can outsource to others. It does indeed take a village to raise a child and even if your village is small, your child can still find success. It just takes some creative thinking, patience, and perservance. In the end, all your child truly needs is You. Everyday you can make a difference in boosting your child's overall success.