School’s out and your kids are likely ready to kick back, relax, and enjoy time with friends. But education experts say that while summer break is a much-needed respite from school, kids also need to be building on the skills they acquired throughout the school year. Otherwise, they run the risk of experiencing a phenomenon known as “summer slide”—and it can effect kids in almost any grade.  

“Summer slide is a term educators use to describe the amount of progress a student loses during the summer when they are not applying their academic skills,” says Curby Alexander, PhD, a professor of professional practice in the College of Education at Texas Christian University.

In fact, some researchers have found that kids can lose up to 28% of their reading gains and 34% of their math gains over summer vacation. Fortunately, there are actions you can take to ensure this doesn’t happen to your kids. Here’s what education experts recommend.

Most of the time, the summer slide—in other words, the deterioration of intellectual skills gained during the school year, during a period when kids are on breaks—is associated with a student’s reading skills, says Alexander. 

“In most elementary schools, teachers keep detailed records of a student’s reading level and their progress throughout the year. If a student is reading consistently, receiving high-quality reading instruction, and being challenged with increasingly difficult texts throughout the year, their reading skills should improve and their reading level will increase,” he says. 

But when students return to school in the fall after a long summer break, teachers often notice their students’ reading levels are lower than when they left at the end of the previous school year, says Alexander. Math, writing, and other content-area knowledge probably experience a similar regression as well, he says.

“That’s learning students worked hard to achieve that can slip away in just a few weeks without consistent practice,” adds Amber Braverman, an instructional specialist at Kumon Learning.

Once school lets out, daily phonics warm-ups, and guided math challenges and social activities could disappear (unless families are proactive about signing their kids up for camps or extracurriculars, and not everyone can be or has the financial resources to do so), says Marie Russell, MS, program chair of child studies and early childhood education at Post University. 

“Without intentional touch-points, such as a quick question at breakfast or a spontaneous counting game, both academic and confidence muscles go unused,” she adds.

 Skills in math, reading, and writing require repetition and consistency, especially when a student is still in the process of acquiring and mastering these skills, says Alexander. These skills need to be exercised, much like the human body. 

“If a person wants to get in shape to run a 5K race, they will typically start a workout plan and stick with it over a period of weeks or months in order to prepare their body to run multiple miles without stopping,” he says. “If someone stops training after the race is over, they will naturally lose some of their conditioning because our bodies adapt to our current level of activity.”

The same is true for reading and math. During the summer, some children continue to read for enjoyment, play board games with their families, take vacations, play outside, and attend summer camps with enrichment activities, says Alexander—these are all completely normal and commendable ways to spend summer vacation, and parents shouldn’t feel guilty for prioritizing these activities. 

But it also wouldn’t hurt to make sure they also read a chapter or two a day of a book of their choice, or complete a math workshop once a week—and to make sure their time scrolling YouTube or Instagram is strictly limited. 

“[Kids] need summer to have some unstructured time for play, creativity, mind-wandering, and connecting with their family and friends,” he says. “[But] when that time is filled with sedentary activities and excessive media consumption, there will be more loss in academic progress throughout the summer months…These activities negatively affect a child’s motivation, attention span, sleep, physical fitness, and mental health.”

All kids are susceptible to summer slide to some extent, says Alexander. Research indicates that the summer slide might be most severe for kindergarten through second grade students, as middle school-age kids.

“Young children are still developing, and the progress they have made is more quickly lost,” he says. “This is why routines are so important for young children because they benefit from consistency around sleep, eating, play, healthy interactions, and intellectual pursuits like reading, discovering, and learning.” 

He says these practices are not only helping the brain and body develop, but they lay the groundwork for kids to respond and adapt to challenges.

Every child experiences summer slide differently; but one common outcome is that most children regress in some amount over the summer months, says Alexander, especially if they were sedentary and overstimulated through various digital media all summer. 

“They will most likely have a harder time getting back into the routine of school because they could have lost half a year or more of progress,” he says. “Many of the gains they made the previous year will likely be lost, which means they will not be as prepared as they need to be in order to meet the challenges of the upcoming curriculum.”

Summer slide can range from trivial to large declines each summer break depending on the kid and the opportunities they have during the summer, says Megan Kuhfeld, PhD, director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA, a company that regularly assesses students. 

“While most teachers report spending the first two to six weeks of the next school year reviewing prior year materials to get kids caught up, that catch up will not be sufficient for all students,” she says. 

What’s more, once kids are back in school, they may hesitate to read aloud, shy away from collaborative games, or struggle with simple problem-solving, adds Russell. “It all combines to erode both skills and self-esteem. Over successive summers, these small dips accumulate into wider gaps across academics, social interactions, and even physical coordination.”

While not all children will experience summer slide, Kuhfield says it is important to be aware if your child is at-risk academically and could use additional academic support during the summer. 

“Research suggests that both at-home and formal programs can boost reading and math skills during the summer, but students have to attend regularly and programs have to be sufficiently engaging to be effective,” says Kuhfield. 

The cumulative effect of regressing academically every summer means kids are starting off every school year in a deficit, as previously mentioned. 

“Parents can guide their children toward summer activities that are fun [and] intellectually stimulating rather than defaulting to those activities that just keep them quiet and require little effort,” he says. “It takes planning, initiative, and effort, but the benefits make it worth the investment of time and energy.”

Not every kid is going to need to attend, say, a summer school program. Instead they might simply need reminders to engage in some light intellectual activities like practicing their multiplicational tables, and there shouldn’t be any pressure to achieve perfection but rather gentle encouragement to hone their skills.

First and foremost, during the summer, ensure your kids are reading a few minutes each day and look for opportunities to participate in a summer reading program at your local library. 

Also, ask your child’s teacher for recommendations for age-appropriate books or activities to work on during the summer, suggests Kuhfield. Here are some other things you can do.