Some parents in my son's second-grade class have formed a literacy group (book club) for our children over the summer. It will be facilitated by one of the parents. All the children will read the same book and the parent in charge will design some questions for the children to discuss each week when they meet. I wonder if this model could work for math as well. Kids in a summer math group could meet and solve word problems together or something like that. The challenge is that it could be a lot of work for the parents but it could also be really rewarding for the children and would have the added benefit of keeping them connected to their classmates over the summer. Anyone tried this?

I haven't tried it, but I like the summer math group idea. The math specialist at my daughter's school recommended a review book for the kids to use over the summer(I'm happy to share the title if you're interested). I bet the kids would have a lot more fun doing it if they had a "math playdate." The workbook would alleviate some of the work for the parents. Re: the book club. When my daughter had a 3rd grade book club, we did it in pairs, and the two children of the parent facilitators contributed some of the questions, which really got the kids involved. When it was our turn to host, my daughter was so excited she decided to make a word search, using character and place names from the book. (She googled "make a word search" and actually did it herself on the computer!) The next meeting, one of the host kids made a crossword puzzle, and so on. It was useful to have a book-related activity for when the kids got a little restless, and they loved it.

There are some interesting articles right now on summer learning loss. Check out this week's blog on the topic as well as this recent article from the Washington Post.