June 2024

Keeping Children Engaged During the Summer with Dr. Paula Lopez

As summer vacation approaches, we understand your desire to keep your children active and learning. Today, Dr. Paula Lopez highlights the critical importance of keeping kids engaged during these months to prevent summer learning loss and its lasting effects.

1: The Importance

When the school year ends, children in high-poverty environments struggle not only with basic needs like healthy food and safe places to spend their days, but with losing precious time during the summer months to continue their learning. The cumulative effect is a crisis in the making: by the fifth grade, summer learning loss can leave low-income students two-and-a-half to three years behind their peers.

2: The Effects

Students who fall behind over the summer are less likely to graduate from high school or go on to college.

Creating opportunities for summer learning sets the stage for innovation, creativity, and leadership in every community: the young people we nurture today are the foundation of our society tomorrow.

3: The Risks

Declines in physical activity over the summer can have adverse effects on children’s health (e.g., weight gain). Numerous studies have shown that body mass index increases more in the summer than in other seasons.

Excess weight gain can lead to obesity and poorer metabolic, cardiovascular, respiratory, and mental health for children.

Talk with your provider at your next visit about any questions you have regarding summer activities with your children.