Summertime and the Reading is Easy with UTR’s STEM the Summer Slide

June 27, 2016

Chief Master Sergeant Mitch Brush, National Guard Bureau, recording a STEM title with United Through Reading.

For children, summertime is a season full of backyard play, trips to the swimming pool, and popsicle juice running down the chin. It’s a time when books, studies and homework may sit idle in closets and under the bed. For many children, the only reading and learning that occurs over the summer months is while propped on a pillow with heavy eyelids enjoying bedtime stories with mom or dad.

For military children, when one of those parents is away from home those bedtime stories can be less frequent as the at-home parent has double duty keeping  up with the household during a deployment.

At United Through Reading, not only do we provide a solution for maintaining family bonds and bringing mommy or daddy’s voice home to their military children, but during summer we check another box for families by calling attention to the learning loss that children experience over the summer and creating a campaign to STEM the summer slide throughout the heat-soaked months of June through August.

Several studies have cited a link between parents’ repeated and extended deployments and their kids’ academic difficulties. Because summer is already a time when any child can fall behind in reading achievement, we feel strongly at UTR that our STEM the Summer Slide campaign fills an important gap in educational focus during the summer.

This summer is no different. Starting this month titles like Surprising Sharks (Read and Wonder) by Nicola Davies and Germs Make Me Sick! by Melvin Berger and Marylin Hafner are being sent home to military kids all over the globe. See the full list here.

Learn more about United Through Reading’s STEM the Summer Slide campaign in this recent Education Week article. 

Help support our STEM the Summer Slide campaign and the mission of United Through Reading by donating today.