Summer Enrichment Resources

As you move into summer we hope you and your children will engage in lots of enjoyable reading experiences.  These may include your children reading with someone, reading independently, or listening to audio books.  We want your children to love learning, and one way to spark this love is voracious reading.

To optimize love of reading, we encourage your children to reread some of their favorite stories from years past, as well as to read high-interest books that are within their reach (not too hard, not too easy). 

Near the end of the school year, teachers will email parents of students in Grades 2-5 indicating the suggested Level ranges for each student (as measured by the Fountas and Pinnell Reading Assessment).  Please see below for the Leveled Reading Lists, an optional Summer Reading Challenge and Book Log.  We ask that each student read at least five books of their choosing this summer and record the titles on the Book Log.

Meanwhile, as you support your children in reading, please keep in mind that in addition to the reading level of a book, other factors such as background knowledge, interest, and whether a book is fiction or non-fiction, will also influence how well your child reads and comprehends.  Either way, a good rule of thumb is if there are more than 4 words per page (after reading a few randomly selected pages) that your child can’t identify or understand, try a different book.

Finally, should your child be interested in reading book that are above their current level, we recommend that you support them by either reading with them or accessing the audio version of the book.  Also, please keep in mind that books in the Level U and above range (as measured by the Fountas and Pinnell scale) tend to be in the “teen” experience and for younger readers, it may be hard to make meaning at this level.  A good rule of thumb is if the main character of a story is significantly older than your child, it may not be the best fit.  Your local library and the following websites are also great resources for finding good fit books for your youngsters.

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/bookwizard/

https://www.booksource.com/

www.commonsensemedia.org

Have a Wonderful Summer and Happy Reading!

Questions?  Contact Susanne Rusan, Upper Division Director or Laura Krentel, Upper Division Reading Specialist

Click the image to open or download the document.

Summer is a wonderful time for rest and relaxation. As you spend time with your children, we hope that you will also encourage them in fun math opportunities to continue their learning. Just as we support summer reading, we also recommended that children practice their math skills over the summer, too. Listed below are several options of ways students can practice and hone their math skills.

• Make math a part of your everyday conversations and activities. Count your steps when going for a walk, determine in advance the change you will get at the store, have older children determine the tip on your dinner bill when ordering take out, or notice shapes and angles around your house. Baking with your child practices measurement and fraction skills. 
   
• Make it a goal to play a math related game together every week- check out the list of games in the resource section. Play “Guess my Number” with your child, basically a 20 questions with numbers.  Think of a number and tell them the range and then let them ask yes or no questions to get clues.  Talk about which questions best help narrow down the numbers (“Is it odd?” versus “Is it 3?”)  For older children, include fractions or decimals. 
   
• Have your child practice their math facts. Board games and card games are a fun way to practice.  Play Blackjack or cribbage or have your child be the scorekeeper or banker while you play board games. Students in Grade 2-4 also have a free Reflex account which they can use to practice all summer.  They have been exploring this program and have shown good progress during Distance Learning.  Another free website is www.XtraMath.com.  Many students already have accounts but it is easy to set up a free account for your child, if needed.  Both these websites help students build their fact fluency and automatic recall.
   
• Students in the Upper Division have either a DreamBox or IXL account. Those accounts are accessible through late August.  The school also purchased accounts for students in Kindergarten- Grade 1 so they will also be able to access Dreambox throughout the summer. I encourage all students to log in either on a PC or iPad for at least 30 minutes twice a week.  Just as a reminder, you will need to use the following codes to log in:
  
  NPS URL for PCs:  https://play.dreambox.com/login/bbuv/nationalps
  
  School code for iPads- bbuv/nationalps
  
  If you log into IXL through the web, just remember you will need to include “@npsdc” to your child’s user name or you can use this link: www.ixl.com/signin/npsdc
   
• This year many students have enjoyed the Tangy Tuesday puzzles created by Greg Tang.  On his website, www.GregTangMath.com you can find a summer math challenge. There is a game board for each grade level which lists games and activities, all available on his website for free. This might be a winner for students who enjoy on line games and puzzles. 
   
• Purchase the Summer Math Skills Sharpener book. Many of you have ordered these in the past.  Parents should order the book that corresponds to the grade your child has just completed.  Just to clarify, a current second grader (rising third grader) would order the second grade book.   Ordered directly from the publisher, the book is delivered directly to your home in 5-7 business days.   Books are available for students who have completed PK through Grade 6. 
  
  Each book provides 30 lessons of mixed skills practice.  The lessons are designed to be completed in 20 minutes, three times a week for ten weeks.  You are encouraged to find a way to weave these review pages into your child’s summer routine enabling him or her to gradually complete the book rather than rushing through all the pages in a short window of time. 
  
  For more on the Summer Math Skills Sharpener visit their website at http://www.summerskills.com/summerskillsbooks/math_books
   
• Another resource I’ve recently discovered is the Summer Bridge Activities, available on Amazon. This workbook provides 15 minutes of daily activities for 12 weeks of brain building practice in Math, Reading Comprehension, Grammar and Vocabulary.  There are even goal setting tasks and physical breaks built in. More information is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=summer+bridge+math&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
   
• Read a math related book. Stuart Murphy and Marilyn Burns are two authors who have written good math themed books often with suggested activities at the end of the story.

I hope you and your child find many age appropriate ways to explore math during the summer.  Have fun.

All Ages

Do:  Ask “How did you get that?”  “Can you show me another way to do that?” “Remember how you did ________, see if you can use that same strategy to solve this problem.”

Don’t: Try to tell or show your child how to figure something out.  He or she will learn much more by figuring it out for him or herself.  You can always say “Show me how you figured that out?”  Then wait and listen and say, “Here’s how I figured it out.”

Entering First Grade

Do

• Help foster a positive attitude about math.
• Play games and talk about math in the real world. Go grocery shopping together, count change, bake and cook, or do any of the daily activities we all do that involve mathematical reasoning and reinforce number sense.
• Count with your child whenever possible. Practice counting up and practice counting down. Count small groups of items and play games that reinforce counting, which includes everything from Chutes and Ladders and dominoes to Parcheesi.
• Have your child practice estimating. Show them small groups of items and ask them to estimate how many are in the group. Then count them and check your estimates.
• Practice the addition and subtraction facts to 5 as well as recognizing numerals to 20. 

Don’t: Teach your child to do any standard algorithms.  Research has shown that if children memorize a way of solving a problem before they develop the understanding of why those algorithms work, it actually make learning the concepts more difficult. 

Entering Second Grade:

Do:

• Play games and talk about math in the real world.
• Reinforce addition and subtraction facts. The expectation at NPS is that students entering Grade 2 have mastered their addition and related subtraction facts to ten. The MOST effective way to do this is through games, not flash cards or workbooks. The games work best when kids and grown-ups are playing together.  And don’t try to lose: your child will beat you soon enough! Have fun together.
• Ask your children to explain how they came up with the answer. It is great practice to have them verbalize strategies that they used to figure out an addition or subtraction problem.
• Practice estimating to develop measurement sense: Try estimating the number of windows in your house- then count and see. How about pairs of shoes? Can you make an “educated guess”? Do you have personal benchmarks to help you decide when something is about an inch or a foot long? How many pounds is that watermelon? How heavy is your neighbor’s dog?

Don’t:

• Do not introduce the “carrying” algorithm for addition.  It is a quick and efficient way to add and all of us have learned to use this short cut method, but children who learn this algorithm too soon lose all sense of our base ten system and have a hard time telling if their answer is reasonable.
• Please, do not introduce the “borrowing” subtraction algorithm.  It is a quick and efficient way to subtract, and we all learned to subtract that way, but children who are introduced to this algorithm too soon (before 2^nd grade) have a much harder time understanding other subtraction strategies and truly understanding what happens during subtraction. Don’t worry, they will learn the algorithm before the end of the year, but not until they have learned what subtraction is all about!

Entering Third Grade:

Do:

• Play games and talk about math in the real world.
• Reinforce addition and subtraction facts for the numbers 1 through 20. The expectation at NPS is that students have mastered the addition and related subtraction facts through 9 + 9.  The MOST effective way to do this is through games, not flash cards or workbooks. The games work best when kids and grown-ups are playing together.  And don’t try to lose: your child will beat you soon enough! Have fun together.
• Reinforce the addition and subtraction strategies they learned in Second Grade (partial sums and trade first) in the context of story problems you can have fun making up.
• Ask your children to explain how they came up with the answer. It is great practice to have them verbalize strategies that they used to figure out an addition or subtraction problem.
• Ask your child to model what is happening in a problem.  Use rocks, pennies, blocks to show what is actually going on when the numbers are combined or separated.
• Practice estimating to develop measurement sense: Try estimating the size of the crowd if you go to a concert or stadium together. Do you know how scientists estimate the numbers of migrating animals from airplanes? Do you have personal benchmarks to help you decide when something is about an inch or a foot long? How many pounds is that watermelon? How many cups in a gallon of lemonade?

Don’t:

Please don’t encourage your child to do computation a certain way.  Some students are still working on the standard algorithms for addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers. It makes it harder for them to develop a solid conceptual understanding of the relationships between operations if asked to do computation a way that doesn’t yet make sense to them.

Entering Fourth Grade:

Do:

• Play games and talk about math in the real world.
• If necessary, reinforce basic addition and subtraction facts. The MOST effective way to do this is through games, not flash cards or workbooks. The games work best when kids and grown-ups are playing together. 
• Reinforce the addition and subtraction strategies they learned in Third Grade in the context of story problems you can have fun making up.
• Reinforce the basic multiplication facts. The expectation is that students entering Grade 4 have mastered their multiplication facts through 10 X 10. Multiplication.com is a wonderful site with games that practice all the basic facts in a fun way.  Some children find practicing their facts with music helpful (The City Creek Press CD “ Times Tables the Fun Way” is a good resource).
• Ask your children to explain how they came up with their answers. It is great practice to have them verbalize strategies that they used to figure out an addition or subtraction problem.
• Practice estimating to develop measurement sense: Try estimating the size of the crowd if you go to a concert or stadium together. Do you know how scientists estimate the numbers of migrating animals from airplanes? Do you have personal benchmarks to help you decide when something is about an inch or a foot long? How many pounds is that watermelon? How many cups in a gallon of lemonade? Compare metric and standard units.  How much would you weigh on the moon?

Don’t:

Please, do not teach your child the standard algorithm for long division. They will learn it after they have had a chance to develop a better conceptual sense of division and have learned to divide a much easier way!

Entering Fifth Grade:

Do:

• Play games and talk about math in the real world.
• Practice the four operations making sure your child is comfortable adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithms. Practice the basic multiplication and related division facts, multi-digit multiplication (using the box method), and division using partial quotients.
• Help your child integrate math and language by discussing math! Have fun making up word problems for your child to problem solve.
• Help your child understand all the ways economists, businessmen, physicians, and scientists and many other professionals depend on their math expertise every day and why math is important for developing their thinking skills.

Don’t:

Please, don’t try to teach your child the standard algorithm for long division, algebra or other more advanced mathematics.

Entering Sixth Grade:

Do:

• Play games and talk about math in the real world.
• Make sure your child has memorized their basic facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  Practice the four operations making sure your child is comfortable adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers and decimals using the standard algorithms. Practice multi-digit multiplication (using the standard algorithm), and division using partial quotients.
• Help your child integrate math and language by discussing math! Have fun making up word problems for your child to problem solve.  Include problems with fractions and decimals. 
• Look for and discuss with your child graphs and statistics.  What does the graph show?  Why are statistics helpful?  Discuss how data can be misleading. 

Don’t:

Please, don’t try to teach your child the standard algorithm for long division, algebra or other more advanced mathematics.

Board games, logic puzzles, and card games are great ways to review math and help develop planning and strategic thinking.  Try to play a math related game together every week. 

These games are great fun and can be played by almost all ages.  All are available on Amazon or perhaps at your local toy store.

24 game (ages 9+)

4 Way Count Down (ages 6+)

Battleship (ages 7+)

Blink (ages 7+)

Blokus (ages 7+)

Checkers / chess

Connect 4 (ages 6+)

Continuo (ages 5+)

Dweebies (ages 6+)

Gobblet (ages 7+)

Keva Planks

Make 7 (ages 7+)

Make and Break (ages 8+)

Mancala (ages 6+)

Mastermind (ages 6+)

Math Dice Jr (ages 9+)

Number Slap Jack (ages 4+)

Othello (ages 8+)

Pentago (ages 6+)

Quirkle (ages 6+)

Quorto (ages 8+)

Rat A Tat Cat (ages 6+)

Rummikub (ages 8+)

Set

Sherlock (ages 5+)

Sleeping Queens (ages 9+)

Snap It Up: Addition and Subtraction

Snap It Up: Multiplication

Sum Swamp (ages 5+)

Tantrix (ages 8+)

Tenzi (ages 5+)

Tiny Polka Dots (ages 3+)

Uno

Witka Magnetic Building Block (ages 6+)

Yahtzee (ages 8+)